Red states, proving H.L. Mencken right over and over and over again:
The National Association of Rail Passengers, the premiere national organization speaking for the nearly 40 million users of passenger trains and rail transit, denounced the budget outline released today by the Trump Administration, which slashes investment in transportation infrastructure. These cuts to Amtrak, transit, and commuter rail programs, and even air service to rural towns, would not only cost construction and manufacturing jobs, but place a disproportionate amount of pain on rural and working class communities.
“It’s ironic that President Trump’s first budget proposal undermines the very communities whose economic hardship and sense of isolation from the rest of the country helped propel him into office,” said NARP President Jim Mathews. “These working class communities—many of them located in the Midwest and the South—were tired of being treated like ‘flyover country.’ But by proposing the elimination of Amtrak’s long distance trains, the Trump Administration does them one worse, cutting a vital service that connects these small town economies to the rest of the U.S. These hard working, small town Americans don’t have airports or Uber to turn to; they depend on these trains.”
On top of the jobs Amtrak provides (and those who service the tracks and provide security, etc.), you have to wonder how many other businesses will be hurt by these cuts- diners, motels, rental car companies, etc. And look where the cuts happen:
That ain’t the Acela corridor.
Wingnuts never cease to amaze me how much pain they are willing to inflict on themselves to make rich people happy.
Roger Moore
They are doing it to make Those People even more miserable; helping the rich is mostly incidental– to them. The rich, of course, have different ideas.
Major Major Major Major
CNN alert sez Mitch has scheduled his “turn the senate into the house” vote for Thursday.
Baud
By liberals. They’re tired of liberals treating them that way.
For conservatives, they’ll sell out their children to fight for elimination of the estate tax.
Baud
@Major Major Major Major: So be it. I hope we reward our Dems in 2018.
Baud
BTW, conservatives are constantly fighting to privatize the Post Office. Who do you think will be hurt the most by that?
debbie
@Major Major Major Major:
Why won’t someone stand up and shout “Liar!” whenever McConnell drones on about how the Dem’s filibuster threat is unprecedented and Republicans never filibustered?
TenguPhule
Will our wingnuts get a clue?
No Sir, No Sir. So what can we do?
rikyrah
oh well.
Elections have consequences.
I know I sound like an elite…but, the rest of the world looks at Amtrak and laughs at us. That they would cut Amtrak is ridiculous.
I.HATE.YOU.MAYO.NATION.
for all that you have inflicted on this country.
Clinging to the Whiteness is THAT important?
Don’t ask me to understand these muthaphuckas.
TenguPhule
@debbie: Senate rules. Yes, there actually is a rule about not being able to call out another Senator no matter what they do.
TenguPhule
@Baud: Fedex and UPS. They sure as hell don’t want to have to service where the USPS has to go to.
rikyrah
@Baud:
We know who.
Yet, they will find an excuse to explain away that too.
Major Major Major Major
@TenguPhule: Oh noes, they might violate the holy comity of that sanctified chamber by *gasp* breaking a rule.
prob50
@rikyrah:
Well, “D’uh”, obviously Obama’s fault. Everyone knows that.
Baud
@TenguPhule: These are conservatives. No one will have to do anything to serve local communities. At most, they’ll be subsidized heavily for doing so.
TenguPhule
@Major Major Major Major: Unfortunately its a little more serious then that. Violation can be used as grounds for expulsion from the Senate. And the Republicans would do it.
Steeplejack
I don’t see the problem. Doesn’t everybody have a private jet to get them around?
Yarrow
Feature not a bug. Economic hardship and isolation got him votes last time. Why not keep going–more votes next time.
Yarrow
So…this is also happening:
BBA
Ya know, cutting the extra-slow long-distance lines that are only useful to aviophobes and focusing on the lines that people actually ride isn’t a totally harebrained idea. But now watch all the lines through swing states get mysteriously saved and the Acela get cut in the final version of the budget.
Major Major Major Major
@TenguPhule: I don’t see how it would make a difference, if they’re just going to run the chamber as a one-party deal anyway.
Baud
@Yarrow: Send in Jared.
Davis X. Machina
They can just fly.
Oh, no they can’t.
Trump is cutting Essential Air Services too.
mai naem mobile
These fucking morons think Urban Boy Dolt 45 gives a shit about their crappy little dying rural towns. He doesn’t and he never will because he can’t make a dime off them personally. I am beginning to think that the reason urban areas did not vote for dolt 45 was because we are conned less easily
MattF
Jen Rubin continues to surprise me. Her latest post (correctly!) characterizes Trump’s recent accusations about Hilary Clinton with an allusion to Clinton Derangement Syndrome. So, where’s she going to end up?
JPL
@TenguPhule: Cruz did/ Is it okay if you are a repub?
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
I think they’ve given up on things ever getting better for themselves and their communities. They voted for for Trump because he signaled he was with them but they didn’t expect him to do anything for them. What they expected was that he’d wreck things for the rest of us. If things ain’t getting better for them they’d rather us high falutin folks that are doing okay join them in misery. They think Trump will make that happen and they might be right.
crawdad
Did anybody bother to ask the people in these small towns that are affected by the cuts what they think?
Baud
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?: This might be the correct analysis.
jl
@BBA: Not in California. Lot of ‘long distance’ lines are jammed with regular people. But I don’t see any of those in the list of places cut off from service. Because of what I do not know. CA GOPers know how many of the ‘lesser people’ use those lines in CA. Or they are hooked up to some of the more popular tourist lines with lots of business (Coast Starlight or CA Zephyr through Reno, edit: no, Reno is gone. No more Ski Trains? Oh no!)? Or they get a subsidy from the commie State of California? I see cities served by the bus extensions cut though.
SiubhanDuinne
@rikyrah:
You are so right. It’s all about the automobile, as we know all too well here in metro Atlanta.
Patricia Kayden
@Baud: Their voters. But their voters seem okay with pain as long as those Brown and Black people get what’s coming to them. They are masochists.
SiubhanDuinne
@JPL:
Y,IIOKIYAAR. SATSQ.
clay
@Yarrow: Obama’s fault, obviously.
Aleta
I guess when he campaigned on building infrastructure he only meant pipelines and toll roads. The good news for T buds is that together with the elimination of fuel conservation standards, this will increase consumer demand for oil and gasoline and their stocks !
raven
@crawdad: sheeeeeeet
trollhattan
@Baud:
Whenever I read this I think “But, he’s in prison” but then remember it’s Jared’s daddy who went to prison and this Jared isn’t the sandwich kid, but perhaps can also, too, go to prison.
Donald Trump did worse things with girls than the Jared who is in prison.
Patricia Kayden
@prob50: Trump is blaming President Obama for the chemical attack on civilians which occurred in Syria today so yeah. Blame the Black man indefinitely for every dang thing that goes wrong.
Ladyraxterinok
Driftgĺass posted a discussion Monday, Including a link to a
NYT article about Trump voters in OK being hurt by budget cuts to services they depend upon. But of course they still believe in him. It reminds me of a neighbor of my parents.
She came over to complain about a problem she was having. When myy folks pointed out that the problem was the result of Reagan’s policies, she said that he didn’t know what was happening. It was all the fault of his staff!!
MattF
@Ladyraxterinok: If only the Tsar knew!
Mike in NC
Six months from now there will be an excellent chance of our being at war with North Korea even as the US economy starts to slide into the Great Trump Recession, caused by enormous tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, plus the ripple effect of his ‘skinny’ budget on the rest of us.
lollipopguild
@MattF: The Tsar/Reagan/Trump can NEVER fail, they can only be failed.
Mnemosyne
@crawdad:
Since you claim to have your finger on the pulse of The People, why don’t you tell us?
My guess is that they’ll be happy until they realize that it actually hurts them, and then they’ll whine that nobody told them that bad things would happen if Trump was elected. Hoocouldaknowed that not having an airport within a 5-hour drive would actually affect them and not just other people?
Patricia Kayden
@Davis X. Machina: They can Uber it or ride a bike. Quite frankly, Trump and his ilk could care less how his poorly educated supporters get around. How much pain can he inflict on them and still have their support. We will soon find out.
Corner Stone
So tired of this Ivanka fucking fraud. She has the best PR people on the planet, and nothing else going for her. What a joke.
Aleta
All the stops used by Amtrak passengers to Disney World are cut ….
Patricia Kayden
@Mike in NC: Yep but Trump and his family and his 1% will make a killing in profits on the defense industry so it will be cool.
BBA
@jl: I was talking more about the twice-a-week cross-country trains, which are slower, more expensive, and less frequent than the Greyhound. So why not just take the Greyhound?
And I say this as someone who loves trains and wants the feasible ones to get funded.
efgoldman
@Patricia Kayden:
We here should understand what most voters don’t: Mandarin Malevolence and his evil minions can propose any goddamned thing they like – congress writes the budget.
Sure, some of the kkkrazy kkkaukus are round the bend enough to vote to screw their constituents. Most, like on Granny Starver’s Deathcare proposals, will not.
Steeplejack
@Corner Stone:
Apparently she was yapping about the women’s pay gap today. Hey, honey, why don’t you pay your goddamn interns?! That would help a little bit.
BBA
@Aleta: Sanford isn’t on the list, so the AutoTrain from Virginia will keep running for now.
All the people within reasonable train distance of Orlando are shit outta luck, at least until the Brightline opens.
Ladyraxterinok
@MattF:
She thought he was so nice. And he was such a handsome movie star!!
Omnes Omnibus
@MattF: The Cossacks work for the Tsar.
rikyrah
@Corner Stone:
Complete and utter joke.
JPL
Next campaign through the Appalachians, Trump will say he had no choice cuz Obama gave all the money to the others.
rikyrah
@Patricia Kayden:
Here’s the thing. Black and Brown people, while they won’t like it, have been through and survived bad times.
Can Mayo Nation say the same?
namekarB
@jl:
Amtrak’s Coast Starlight (follows the West Coast between San Diego and Seattle) is one of the few Amtrak long distance trains that make money. One wonders why they want to eliminate that train. More likely nobody really looked at the numbers before heaping it in the dumpster
Tilda Swintons Bald Cap
@rikyrah: Preach !
Corner Stone
@Steeplejack: “My father wants to create 25M jobs. And women have to be a part of that.”
Ummm…that means no fucking thing respect to equal pay. I fucking hate Ivanka Trump. And her silky modulated tone of voice. Like she is educated on the important matters of the day. And influential and meaningful.
So freaking pervy
lollipopguild
@namekarB: All those evil DEM voters on the left coast need to be punished.
Steeplejack
@Corner Stone:
Touching below the panty line no bueno.
Major Major Major Major
OT: In the service of figuring out how to do something else, today I made a little graph of the post categories here at balloon-juice, and which ones occur together.
prob50
@namekarB:
It’s not always about the money. Sometimes it’s just fun to punish areas that didn’t vote for you. They’re so helpless, it’s as easy as torturing small animals, except the people’s pained squeals are audible as real words, which makes it much more fun.
Lizzy L
What efg said. House members in the red states, let alone the blue states, are not going to vote for this, or for many of the projected domestic cuts in the administration’s budget. It takes months — six, eight — for budgets to be proposed, negotiated, and passed.
The news from Syria is horrifying; the NK news is terrifying. I loathed GWB for getting us into war in Afghanistan and Iraq, but I don’t recall ever thinking that he was likely to use nukes against anybody. I have no such confidence any more. In fact, I think it’s likely.
Baud
There’s always hitchhiking.
SiubhanDuinne
@Major Major Major Major:
Wow, that’s really pretty!
ETA: If I could get that printed on heavy paper or lightweight canvas, I would order it, frame it, and hang it in a prominent location in my apartment. Seriously, I would.
KS in MA
@BBA: Those long-distance trains are kinda slow, it’s true. That’s why it might be a good idea to convert them to high-speed rail, like the other civilized countries of the world. Might spread a bit of wealth around the country in the process… Oh, right, somebody already thought of that.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: I have seen one too many horror/slasher movies to know, that’s a no no.
waysel
@Major Major Major Major: Nice. Psychadelic, in fact.
KS in MA
@Baud: FTW
Major Major Major Major
@SiubhanDuinne: I don’t know if I would want most of those words on my wall.
Iowa Old Lady
@Major Major Major Major: That’s beautiful.
Major Major Major Major
@Iowa Old Lady: all the rendering is a software library, you just gotta know how to talk to it right, which is what I was working on ?
John S.
@BBA:
The Brightline will only be servicing south Florida, and Orlando is part of some undefined phase 2.
I have a feeling their fares are going to be ridiculous.
Roger Moore
@namekarB:
That’s LA to Seattle. San Diego to LA requires a separate train, the Pacific Surfliner (which actually continues to San Luis Obispo).
jl
@BBA: I don’t think there are any twice a week Amtrak lines operating in CA. And for shorter hops, the lines are about as quick, or quicker than driving. Going on day business trip from SF to Sacto on I-80? You are nuts to drive unless you have to. If you are going anywhere near a downtown in Bay Area to anywhere near downtown in Sacto, you take the Capitol Corridor.
And about the same for San Joaquin.
jl
@namekarB: @prob50:
Well, the link says it’s the Trump WH budge proposal, so maybe it is full of mistakes and total BS, so the list is BS. Or it’s not complete list.
Maybe CA subsidies the lines enough that are de facto commuter lines now that we can keep some service regardless of the feds.
Anyway, my only point was that in CA, a lot of Amtrak(-California funded) lines are NOT frivolous vacay for train weridos with too much time on their hands anymore.
WaterGirl
@SiubhanDuinne: It is way cool! Did you try moving your cursor around? I thought it was cool when it was static, but it’s way cool and colored when you move around.
Go M4!
Tenar Arha
@rikyrah: You ever feel like you’re in an endless loop of the Black Knight scene in Monty Python’s The Holy Grail? Except in this version both sides ;) are cutting off arms & legs, it’s just we-as-Arthur are willing to admit we’re getting wounded.
No One You Know
This from Propublica cheered me. More, please.
Steeplejack
@Corner Stone:
Goddamn, Stephanie Ruhle (apparently an MSNBC Live anchor, but I’ve never seen her before) just gave Ivanka a sort of left-handed tongue-bath on Hardball.
Well, it was a while ago. It took me some time to transcribe it exactly.
I took the time to transcribe that exactly, and it’s even more incoherent than when I first heard it. It hits so many wrong notes all over the place. Stephanie Ruhle sounds slightly screwy in an “I want to be Oprah” kind of way. But she sounds sane and makes some good points in other parts of the segment. Go figure.
Steve in the ATL
@SiubhanDuinne:
I’m in Boston and I have never been so homesick for Atlanta traffic and collapsed interstate bridges.
You people weren’t kidding about Boston drivers.
And Waze keeps telling me things like “2.5 miles away; 32 minutes”
rikyrah
@Tenar Arha:
Nothing that has happened has been surprising. It’s going as bad as I thought that it would. Doesn’t make me happy to be right. It’s why I stay in a consistent rage.
WaterGirl
@Steeplejack: I hate to repeat myself, but holy fuck.
We’re supposed to be grateful that the sociopath’s greedy and totally-unprepared-to-run-a-government family members are on the case. Count me out.
Corner Stone
@Steeplejack: She’s another MSNBC Republican asshole. Former Bloomberg Financial reporter. She’s a hardass on anything that sniffs of left of hard right commentary.
Roger Moore
@Steve in the ATL:
Boston was the first place I thought people really needed one of those “If you don’t like the way I drive, stay off the sidewalk” bumper stickers.
Steeplejack
@WaterGirl:
And citing Sarah Huckabee Sanders! There’s a solid source.
Dread
Republicans: If you vote for us, we will fuck you in the ass.
Voters: Okay…
Later.
Voters: I never expected they’d fuck me in the ass!
Mike in NC
@Steve in the ATL: When we watched the Ben Affleck movie “The Town”, about bank robbers, my wife asked me if everybody in Boston drove like maniacs. I said, “Absolutely!”
Steve in the ATL
@Mike in NC: and roughly 40% of the people I’ve seen here have been wearing Brady or Gronk jerseys
Steve in the ATL
@Roger Moore: it’s been raining all day, so i assume everyone is being extra careful too
cain
@Baud:
Yes, let’s do that!
Steeplejack
@Corner Stone:
Non-prime-time MSNBC is a no-fly zone for me (except for the bronze news goddess Joy Reid). I know Tweety, Rachel et al. are not representative of the network as a whole. But this still struck me as crazy. I was wondering if “Let’s have an open mind and an open heart” is some sort of Christianist dogwhistle.
Roger Moore
@Steve in the ATL:
Based on observations in other cities, that seems like an unsafe assumption.
J R in WV
We rode from Toulouse to Paris on a standard issue French train. After we got underway, I made my way to the food service car, which provided a great lunch, and two bottles of French (duh) wine at a very reasonable price.
After a while, a conductor came along to check our tickets. We both admired his train, which was at least a little better than a standard Amtrak train. He rolled his eyes, and said “This?!?!” as if to say the high-speed French trains were the real deal, and this was for the working people.
We haven’t done a high-speed European train yet, but it’s on the list of stuff to do while we still can. It must be like flying Air France, which is as much better than Delta as you might imagine. Even in coach, the food is great, and it comes with a bottle of French wine. Even cheap French wine is better than a coke.
I love trains, all of them. I rode on the last steam local passenger train back in the mid-1950s, and it was great. I was probably 6, and going into the tunnels was dark, as there were no lights in the cars, because it wasn’t night time outside. Cool, he thought!
Aleta
@BBA: I see Sanford on the list. I expected they wouldn’t be stupid enough to cut all three DW stops, so I checked. But then again, they probably just went for a budget number w/o troubling their brains about what it meant. Or perhaps they plan to negotiate with state politicians according to loyalty pledges. Who TF knows.
Ruckus
@Steve in the ATL:
Rain lets you kick the back end out a bit easier so that you can make a sharper corner. That’s what it says in the “Hold My Beer and Watch This” driving manual anyway. Also, in my experience driving in Boston, the only careful drivers live (and drive) in some other place. And that place is not Chicago, NYC, LA, SF, Atlanta, Miami or Seattle.
Ruckus
@J R in WV:
I took a 9 hr Amtrak ride last yr and the first 4 hrs was on a bus. I’d bet that French worker train was far better than my ride. In 1971 I rode on a train in Belgium and it was better than the Amtrak. Now having said that, it wasn’t all that bad, the food was OK, not outlandishly priced, a small but reasonable selection of beers, employees were mostly very cheerful. Also met a few nice people.
Omnes Omnibus
@J R in WV: TGV is nice. I did London to Paris a few years ago. Only glitch i had was convincing the French guy in my reserved seat that his ticket was for the 9:30 train and I had that seat at 8:30. He eventually became apologetic.
Steeplejack
@Omnes Omnibus:
Of course I read that as “apoplectic” at first. Cultural bias at work.
Steve in the ATL
@Roger Moore:
Sorry, needed the sarcasm font, but I was afraid that Yarrow would have a stroke if anyone else used it today
trnc
Another group that will be affected by these rail cuts – military families. A number of the cities listed have military bases, so soldiers on leave will have to find other ways to get out of town.
Steve in the ATL
@Ruckus: WTF is with Seattle drivers? They put their Subarus in the left lane on the highway and go five under the speed limit. Is it the legal weed?
A Ghost to Most
@Roger Moore:
I thought the same until I had occasion to drive in Paris. As I stopped at a red light in the right lane of a two lane street, a car pulled up to my left, then a car pulled up to his left, then a car pulled up to my right in the parking lane, then a car pulled up on the sidewalk. The car on sidewalk beat us all when the light changed. The Belgian guy with me said it was worse in Rome.
Omnes Omnibus
@A Ghost to Most: Bucharest is worse. I’ve never driven in the ME or Asia.
schrodingers_cat
@Omnes Omnibus: But at least there are no cows on the streets, right? I have once shared the road with an old elephant in Mumbai. For reals.
Steve in the ATL
@Omnes Omnibus: I was going to joke that ME can’t be that bad as there are no women drivers, but I didn’t want to risk offending anyone
Omnes Omnibus
@schrodingers_cat: There is a reason I added my caveat.
@Steve in the ATL: You’ve gotten into the rum, haven’t you?
Vhh
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?: Curtain rods, sparrows, cardboard boxes under bridges etc.
Aleta
A few of the proposals being submitted for The Wall. Some gallant ones stand no chance of course.
efgoldman
@Steve in the ATL:
You just couldn’t get here in time for the meetup with Cole, COULD YOU.
Some lawyer you are.
3Jane Tessier-Ashpool (a/k/a Lorinda Pike)
Well, there goes The City of New Orleans. Looks like you can get out of Chicago, but if Memphis, Jackson, and New Orleans don’t have Amtrak service, then what’s the use?
And the Southern Crescent is toast also.
Damn, I’m going to miss going to New Orleans on the train. That was fun.
opiejeanne
@Steve in the ATL: I drive in the Seattle area and their sleep-driving makes me nuts, being from the LA area. Not all of them, certainly not the guy behind us who was so enraged that we slowed slightly to change lanes (matching speed with the space in the adjacent lane, waiting for one drive to take the hint that we were coming over) that he leaned on his horn the entire time until we were in the other lane, then swerved his big black pickup at us as he passed. It was rush hour, we were on the 405 near the 5 interchange, but he didn’t lose a second of travel time because no one had filled the space ahead of us. I figure that guy is a transplant from somewhere else because they’re not usually ugly like that. What’s really annoying is when they pace you, drive next to you and match your speed. Also, on the East Side they forget how to drive when it rains, and totally panic when there’s 3 inches of fresh snow on the freeway.
I’ve driven the freeways and surface streets in SF, LA, the part of Paris next to Orly (outside Paris on the lovely highways the French are very polite drivers and I felt like a rude idiot), NYC (missed the interchange to avoid going across a big bridge heading for the Bronx then up 95, drove the outer loop around Boston during rush hour in the summer, but the scariest place was trying to enter a freeway in San Diego. The onramps used to be very short and they would not let you in, would speed up to block you until you ran out of lane and slammed on the brakes. Happened to me once and I was so damned mad I couldn’t even curse properly.
Steve in the ATL
@efgoldman: I’ve been waiting at the restaurant for hours. Where are you guys?!
efgoldman
@Aleta:
“Plan”? They don’t “plan.”
It’s all id and instinct with them.
I’m not sure anybody in the WH, including the “budget” asshole, can add a column of figures. OTOH, they have all of Granny Starver’s nice asterisks they can borrow.
efgoldman
@Steve in the ATL:
Seriously, where are you staying and for how long? A bigger deluge on Thursday. i just had to go out and buy a ShopVac for the basement, although the Fide Dept left a pump, and we caught it before it got really bad.
Steve in the ATL
@efgoldman: leaving tomorrow night. Short trip–have to go to Augusta on Thursday!
schrodingers_cat
@Omnes Omnibus: Elephant was pretty cool, though. An old temple elephant out for stroll with his handler. Very stately and slow. .
Steve in the ATL
@schrodingers_cat: sounds like a Seattle driver
opiejeanne
@Steve in the ATL: Ha! When we were about to move to Washington Dave’s boss predicted we would buy one. We were baffled because we had never mentioned how many Subarus there are on the road here.
Now we have one.
Steve in the ATL
@Mike in NC: the only thing in Boston that’s worse than the driving is the accent
Tripod
It’s a shakedown. Pence pulled this shit in Indiana. He turned over operations of Indy to Chicago to a low bid operator and shook down local communities for funding.
The short haul corridors are all state funded. They want to shake out the state and local $$$ from the LD trains.
Greenergood
And meanwhile, while Acela runs crap trains along the US East Coast, China is sending a train from China to London, and will send many more: http://www.bbc.com/news/business-38654176
NotMax
Literally (!) attempting to drive the country off the rails.
amk
#maga beats them all.
Omnes Omnibus
@amk: The 7th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled to today that the 1964 Civil Rights Act also applies to LGBT employees.
Ruckus
@A Ghost to Most:
Had a taxi ride in Naples a few decades ago. Four of us and the driver in a medium size Fiat, me in the front seat next to the driver. Heading into an underpass with train tracks down the middle and a red light at the other end. Driver goes into the center, on the train tracks, with a train coming, gasses it up and hits the intersection just as the red light goes green, cuts into the left hand lane just in time to miss the train. My thought was that he must be pretty confident that no one in Naples has ever run a red light. My second thought was FUUUUUCCCCCKKKKKK!!!!!!!!!!!!
Central Planning
@Ruckus: I’ve driven in 5 of those 8 cities you listed. As long as you have a “Take no prisoners” or “It’s a rental” mentality, you’ll be fine.
Chet Murthy
@BBA:
Doubt it. Too many moderately rich folks (read: “wall streeters in CT”) use Acela to commute. I mean, sure they can afford to drive. But the traffic would be murder, and even with a driver, you’re stuck in it, and with the variability.
OTOH, even the northeast corridor isn’t profitable, so maybe they’ll axe it. Just …. hard to believe they’d inconvenience that many richies.
Chet Murthy
@MattF: There’s a modern-day version of that in China, from what I remember reading. People from the sticks will travel to Beijing to present their case for redress to the central government. Local government bodies will hire (basically) thugs to intercept the folks as they debark from the trains (or queue up at the offices) and threaten/bribe them to go back home. B/c of course, the less the central govt knows of misrule in the provinces, the more the local satraps can make out like bandits.
It’s apparently a really serious problem in China.
Original Lee
@J R in WV: Getting ready to ride trains in Spain this weekend. I hear that they’re pretty good. Hopefully I’ll be able to support the hearsay with my own anecdata next week.