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Is It Time to Franchise the Long Distance Passenger Trains?
By Noel T. Braymer What’s the answer for America’s Long Distance Passenger Trains? Since W. Graham Claytor retired as Amtrak President in 1993 the Long Distance Trains have been slowly decaying. New and more equipment is needed now just for current demand. The equipment is now not being properly maintained which often causes problem on…
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How To Build a New Railroad Without Federal Money
By Noel T. Braymer The most critical segment for decent passenger rail service in California is a new alignment between Los Angeles and Bakersfield. The current route built mostly by hand with mules and black powder would still take around 4 hours even if millions for track improvements were spent to get between Los Angeles…
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Passenger Trains and Buses Should Connect With Each Other
By Noel T. Braymer For years in the past the Greyhound Bus Company complained about how unfair it was that as a private business it had to “compete” with Amtrak which received a government subsidy. An example of this is a California State Law, Senate Bill 804 (Perata) for the year 1999 which Greyhound sponsored.…
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Capitol and other CA Corridor Statistics (September, 2013)
By David B. Kutrosky, Managing Director Capitol Corridor Joint Powers Authority Year-over-year ridership on the Capitol Corridor trains was even with last September. 132,937 passengers rode the Capitol Corridor trains in September 2013, closing out FY 2013 with a total of 1.70 million riders and representing a 2.6% decrease in riders compared to FY 2012.…
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How to Operate Passenger Trains at a Profit
By Noel T. Braymer It is no secret that the key to being profitable is to bring in more money than you spend. To run a profitable passenger railroad the keys are maximizing productivity and increasing revenue with increased ridership. Here are basic steps that other successful transportation services use to do more than just…
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Notes on the October 5th’s RailPAC/NARP Meeting San Francisco
By Noel T. Braymer I wasn’t in the mood this time to ride buses for 2 night in a row for this year’s meeting in San Francisco. So I got a flight out of San Diego at 7:56 AM for an arrival at 9:35 AM at San Francisco. Since the first Coaster Train to San…