Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

This country desperately needs a functioning Fourth Estate.

There are consequences to being an arrogant, sullen prick.

The most dangerous place for a black man in America is in a white man’s imagination.

The new republican ‘Pastor’ of the House is an odious authoritarian little creep.

I’d hate to be the candidate who lost to this guy.

There are a lot more evil idiots than evil geniuses.

I’d try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

You know it’s bad when the Project 2025 people have to create training videos on “How To Be Normal”.

Do not shrug your shoulders and accept the normalization of untruths.

Jack Smith: “Why did you start campaigning in the middle of my investigation?!”

In after Baud. Damn.

Oh FFS you might as well trust a 6-year-old with a flamethrower.

Democrats are back in array!

Narcissists are always shocked to discover other people have agency.

Lick the third rail, it tastes like chocolate!

Hey Washington Post, “Democracy Dies in Darkness” is supposed to be a warning, not a mission statement.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

The fundamental promise of conservatism all over the world is a return to an idealized past that never existed.

We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.

New McCarthy, same old McCarthyism.

When do the post office & the dmv weigh in on the wuhan virus?

You are here: Home / Politics / Biden Administration in Action / Friday Morning Open Thread: President Joe Biden, Train Guy

Friday Morning Open Thread: President Joe Biden, Train Guy

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Another Biden admin guy who’s putting in the work:

U.S. Labor Secretary Marty Walsh kept railroads and unions at the bargaining table for 20 hours, fueled by sandwiches and baked ziti, to clinch a make-or-break labor deal early Thursday.

With President Joe Biden insistent and the U.S. economy in the balance, there was no room for failure and no time for a traditional style of negotiations with rounds of document exchanges, he said in an interview.

“I wanted to get this deal done,” said Walsh, a former Boston mayor who canceled a trip to Ireland and speech to Irish legislators to broker the talks.

After more than two years of negotiations, railroads and unions faced a 12:01 a.m. Friday deadline to reach a contract and avoid a rail shutdown. That would cost the U.S. economy $2 billion daily by stranding critical goods, closing factories and paralyzing industries and travelers…

“I did not celebrate until I had initials on the document,” Walsh said. He called White House National Economic Council director Brian Deese to give him the good news early Thursday morning.

Walsh said it was a good contract for both workers and employers. He urged both sides to begin the next contract talks earlier to avoid a repeat of the last-minute negotiations.

Biden met with government officials, railroad and union leaders at the White House after the deal was announced and paid tribute to Walsh “for his tireless round the clock work.”

So, in the same week that things seem to be turning around dramatically in Ukraine, a potential railroad strike in this country was threatening to cut the legs out from under the still-staggering supply chains and damage the general economy going into the extended holiday season. And you could see it coming: The Republicans would use a railroad strike to blunt the apparent momentum that the Democrats had derived from the Supreme Court’s radical destruction of reproductive rights. The elite political media, dedicated as always to its role as national racetrack touts, would play along. Republicans would force the president to choose: appear as a tool of the unions and, thus, play the scapegoat in an economic car crash; or lose a lot of his most valuable political capital, namely his close relationship with organized labor. It looked like a nifty trap for a party hamstrung by its cracker-factory roster of candidates.

Except that the president easily extended his winning streak from the summer toward the fall…

The union still has to ratify the deal, but it also includes a mandatory cooling-off period if the union votes the agreement down, so a strike would not automatically ensue if the deal is rejected. However, after the events of the past seven years, avoiding a catastrophe ranks as an unalloyed triumph.

The streak continues.

Previously:

Reader Interactions

223Comments

  5. 5.

    different-church-lady

    Chrissake, I’d rather pay for rail workers getting sick days than a volleyball stadium for the daughter of a rich football player.

  7. 7.

    Betty Cracker

    My dog Pete is having minor surgery today (a thing with his nose). He should be fine, but I’m a wreck. I guess it’s too early to slam a couple of shots?

  8. 8.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Over at Outside the Beltway yesterday, James Joyner noted,

    The nature of the settlement is unclear but President Biden and his team deserve credit that they won’t get. It’s hard to sell a crisis averted.

    To which I replied,

    By this point he should be used to not getting any credit, just the blame.

  13. 13.

    Baud

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    While I completely appreciate the sentiment and have expressed it myself, Joyner could actually, you know, give Joe credit, which I also try to remember to do.  (Maybe he does elsewhere).

  20. 20.

    Baud

    @OzarkHillbilly: A little.  But it seems like the point is to talk about how he won’t get credit.  I completely get it, and constantly express that frustration myself as a lowly blog commenter.  I feel like people with a bigger microphone shouldn’t act like that though.  I’d rather see them be more affirmative than cynical.

    But I’m making a lot of assumptions based on a short statement.

  23. 23.

    evodevo

    yep…same with fulltime rural carriers…you get a very few days sick leave, and they penalize you for using it…

  25. 25.

    Spanky

    There is no minor surgery when it comes to our pets.

    Best wishes to Petey Cracker and his worried family.

  27. 27.

    tokyocali (formerly tokyo ex-pat)

    I love rail travel. I don’t have much experience in the US. I once traveled Amtrak from NY to Fl in high school and I traveled the LA to San Diego corridor a few times. I recall riding the train in Italy when I was a child. We stopped at a station and my aunt lowered the window and bought the most amazing apricot juice from a vendor on the platform. Then on another trip we took the TGV to the border between Italy and Switzerland and had croissants and other Continental breakfast goodies served in our compartment.

    In Japan, trains are everywhere. Bullet trains cost, and aren’t as fast as flying, but they make good speed. They zip across the countryside and get you where you want to go. Even slower trains have their perks. My husband and I take the train from Tokyo to the Izu peninsula to visit a hot spring we like, and watching the city fall away to the coastal towns with majestic views brings me a great sense of peace.

  28. 28.

    clay

    I’m still flabbergasted that in the year Two Thousand and Freakin’ Twenty-Two, there existed an industry (unionized!) where the workers did not get paid medical leave!

    I mean, I’m thrilled that the workers have won this concession, but what the heck has that union been doing for the past 5 decades?

  30. 30.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Baud: Here’s the context:

    NYT: “Railroad Unions and Companies Reach a Tentative Deal to Avoid a Strike” – The nature of the settlement is unclear but President Biden and his team deserve credit that they won’t get. It’s hard to sell a crisis averted.

    Just a blurb noting that Biden got it done but won’t get any credit for it. It’s in a “Tabs” post, something he and Dr Taylor do from time to time where they want to note some things but don’t feel the need to write a full post on any of them.

  36. 36.

    Jeffro

    Good morning peeps.

    I caved at the last minute and started a 30-day trial of Amazon Prime so that I could watch the Chargers-Chiefs game last night.  And it is solely because I was there (virtually speaking) and rooting for the Chiefs that they managed to pull out the W. 😉

    (Ok it really wasn’t allll due to my watching…just the 99-yard pick six LOL)

  37. 37.

    Anonymous At Work

    The clarity of the issue, “Rail workers wanted sick days and they got sick days,” sells itself directly.  Next time someone complains that knows better, you can ask him (it will almost certainly be a “him”) whether he’s ever used sick days in a job.  The only issue is whether people can believe that workers in an industry in teh US, any industry, don’t get sick days.

    As a follow-up, I wonder if Congress can do anything to help curb the mis-use of JIT Scheduling Software that keeps people “on call” for work for far too long each week.  Maybe something like “Every hour on call but unworked equals 15 minutes towards OT (or a higher threshold but essentially represents credit towards OT).”  Putting a price tag on “on call” hourly work puts a cost on employers for over-using the system.

    Thoughts?

  38. 38.

    Barbara

    Remember, the fight over a rule imposing “no medical leave” occurred during the course of a global pandemic that has killed more than one million Americans.  I used to work in the restaurant industry, I mean, eons ago, but it was clear then that “no sick leave” was not just bad for the sick worker, but their co-workers and customers.​ Maybe if the railroad executives had to work alongside the union rail workers they might get a little smarter.

  39. 39.

    Geminid

    @schrodingers_cat: AMTRAK will get even better thanks to the $60 billion allocated to it in the Infrastructure bill. AMTRAK’s chief said this exceeds all capital investment since the system was created. AMTRAK will finally expand a service map that has remained static even as the nation’s population grew by well over 100 million people.

  41. 41.

    Chief Oshkosh

    Our local news stations were SO annoyed that they couldn’t run their prepared bullshit pieces about a(another) Biden failure that they ran them anyway. Didn’t change a thing except the live lead-in that now mentioned “This is what COULD have happened…”

    I went from shrugging about the MSM to now actively cheering for their demise. And I don’t mean that as an industry.

  43. 43.

    Anonymous At Work

    @clay: “We’ll move it by truck” or similar as a threat for more downsizing combined with JIT computer scheduling that gives workers little notice of shifts and fewer hours, while moving the money to Wall Street as dividends and buybacks, so that there’s no fat to trim next time a union contract is being negotiated.

    It’s like squeezing a tube of tooth paste but for money, with all the money going to one end.  Next time you squeeze it, you have to take from the far end.

  44. 44.

    Obvious Russian Troll

    @Anonymous At Work: You’ll still get some ass hat that says they never get sick and people today are soft and blah blah blah.

    (Which means they go into work when they get sick, and which after the recent unpleasantness is not exactly a surprise.

    Edit: they should absolutely be forced to compensate people for being on call. Plenty of companies abuse on call, and there should be a price tag to prevent them from doing it just because they can.

  45. 45.

    tokyocali (formerly tokyo ex-pat)

    Husband retired last year as a portfolio manager, global equity. We don’t always see eye to eye on government policy. But I get to vote. He only gets to pontificate and invest. Yet, when the rail workers deal came through, he clarified the English with me asking if it was 24% over the five years. I said yes. He replied that it was cheap. The rail workers had every right to strike. I had no words because, well, yes, I agree.

  46. 46.

    Josie

    I am astonished that full time workers would not have sick leave of some kind. On another note, didn’t one of our commenters write a book about railway workers in the early days and their mistreatment by the industry? Sounds like we haven’t come very far from that time.

  50. 50.

    Ken

    @cain: In the alternate hellscape where he won, we’d be reading about how he averted the strike by sending in the re-militarized Pinkerton’s, backed by CBP, to crack some skulls.

  51. 51.

    Grumpy Old Railroader

    For railroad workers, sick days don’t really exist. Any unpaid absence is used against the worker in the railroad’s attendance policy (each railroad has a unique policy). Thus if one calls in sick, or marks off for a doctor appointment, or a birthday, or kid’s graduation, it is all the same. It is an unpaid absence that is used against the employee.

    Now against that backdrop, consider that for over-the-road railroad workers, one is given a 90 minute call to commence work on a train and can expect to work 10-12 hours (or more) before arriving at a distant terminal where the train is handed off to another crew. You get 8-10 hours off for rest and wait for the call to take a train back to your home terminal. On average, a crew waits for that call at the far terminal from anywhere between 8 hours to 24 hours or more. Then you work a train back to home 10-12 hours (or more) and upon arrival get 10 hours off to get rested before the cycle repeats. One can expect to be away from home for 36-48 hours on average, sometimes longer. Get 8-10 hours rest at home and then the cycle repeats. What a life huh?

    If, as example, Kid #2 has a graduation coming up, you need to calculate when to mark off to be there on that day. This may require marking off a couple of days in advance of that event date so you are not caught out of town. Thus all those days between when you marked off and when you return to being available count as black marks against your attendance record.

    This brings us to the Biden enhancements to the proposed agreement. Prior to this, the unions had no leverage over “Attendance Policies.” Although they tried to negotiate agreements to cover employee absences, the railroads were not willing to give up their sole enforcement of attendance. So even though what Biden got us was “unpaid” time off, it will allow the unions to finally negotiate how attendance policies are enforced. This is a big big deal to the employees​​​​

  57. 57.

    narya

    I hate to fly, so I have taken many (as in dozens) of long-distance Amtrak rides; it helps that I live in one hub, and am heading near/to others (though the two-hour-ish layover in Pittsburgh at the asscrack of dawn I could live without . . .). But I enjoy it, as a thing in itself, not just as an alternative to flying! I get a sleeper, I bring some fermented beverages, and . . . it’s just pleasant. I am super excited about the $$ in the infrastructure bill; I remember talking to conductors decades ago about how they had to repair the trains by cannibalizing other trains. I’d love to see some high-speed rail, I’d love for Amtrak to not have to share track with freight, I’d love for Amtrak to control the tracks (bad track that Amtrak doesn’t control is apparently one of the things that slows the trains); no clue if that’s in the bill. And yay for the workers!

  62. 62.

    tokyocali (formerly tokyo ex-pat)

    @narya: If I didn’t have to fly to go back to the US, I’d happily stay off airplanes. As a kid, they were the great adventure. As an adult, they are metal capsules from hell that have me gripping the seat during turbulence while I try to hang on to my dinner. To be fair, though, I fly Japanese airlines and they do their best to make the experience comfortable.

  65. 65.

    JMG

    I have used Amtrak for travel between Boston and NYC for years and years. There’s no real good way to get from one to the other, but the train is easily the least bad way. It takes a little longer than it should, due to track conditions, it costs way more than it should, but it’s still the best way.

  66. 66.

    MattF

    I’ve taken many round-trips on trains between DC and NYC. In the quiet car, if I get to the station soon enough.

  67. 67.

    tokyocali (formerly tokyo ex-pat)

    I wish the US had invested more in rail travel rather than going all in on car culture. It makes you wonder how the country would look today.

  68. 68.

    Geminid

    @narya: There is money in the Infrastructure Bill dedicated to ease some big bottlenecks in the east coast portion of the rail system. Some work already had been been funded and begun. This should help passenger rail as well as freight rail.

    I don’t look for a lot of high speed rail projects anytime soon. Money spent on conventional rail and metropolitan mass transit goes a whole lot further. And for people who want a swift trip, our air transport system is already built out. Air transport is estimated to account for 4% or less of global CO2 emissions,* and planes can fly on carbon neutral fuels. A transition to such fuels may be mandated this decade, with a gradual phase in to cushion a price rise and allow production to ramp up.

    * Concrete production is estimated to be the source of 8% of emissions globally.

  69. 69.

    delphinium

    @narya: ​
    It is so great we are investing in state and federal infrastructure-such a contrast from the GOP whose motto certainly seems to be: Investing in stunts, not states.

  71. 71.

    rikyrah

    One of my favorite memories is the year we decided to have a Family Reunion in Seattle. And, we decided to go on Amtrak. We took The Empire Builder.  That was back when they had formal dining cars and the meals were actually prepared on the train (yes, I am dating myself. )

    The staff onboard told us that that line had never seen so many Black people on that route..LOL

    It’s one of my fondest memories.  Sitting up in the observation deck, viewing America.  On our return trip, we paid the extra money to go down to Los Angeles, and take the Los Angeles – Chicago route back.

    Amazing.

  72. 72.

    Geminid

    @tokyocali (formerly tokyo ex-pat): One bit of alternate history I’ve thought of is: what if the DC Metro System had been built in the 1960’s? That would have been a very good use of the “Great Society” money that flowed in the middle years of that decade.  It would have been right before the area’s population took off.

    Instead the Metro was built a couple decades or more later, and was shoehorned into a transportation system built around automobiles.

  74. 74.

    Boris Rasputin (the evil twin)

    @Betty Cracker: Dear Madame Cracker,

    It’s NEVER too early to slam a couple of shots. My brother Grigori and I approve of this course of action

    Best of luck to Pete and your whole family

  75. 75.

    CaseyL

    I haven’t taken an overnight train in over 40 years, but still very fondly remember a Seattle-Los Angeles trip.  I had a sleeper and loved loved LOVED being able to watch the world go by from my bed. I’ve been meaning to do it again, just never got around to it.  Now that Amtrak has finally gotten some meaningful funding to expand/spruce up, I may finally get around to it!

  76. 76.

    rikyrah

    Please understand that the Republicans wanted a strike.

    As did the MSM.

    Because,they wanted to blame the President.

    They has a sad. Especially the MSM…..they had the stories all ready.

  77. 77.

    Barbara

    @rikyrah: My husband (in particular) loves train travel.  We have done all kinds of historical train rides, mostly short, but we have also gone on some long haul Amtrak routes.  We took the train between Salinas, California (through Oakland) to Klamath Falls, Oregon.  We had a sleeper car, and when we woke up in the morning (left Oakland at around 10:00 pm) we were still in California (a little town called Dunsmuir). The scenery is so striking, so different from the East Coast.
    But my favorite was the train from Chicago to St. Paul, going past La Crosse, WI and heading up to St. Paul alongside the very northernmost parts of the Mississippi River.  What a treat.​

  78. 78.

    prostratedragon

    @rikyrah:  I’m thinking of doing that exact circuit in a year or two, hopefully with a stop at Glacier for at least one night. I did Chicago to Denver as a kid, my first long train trip.

  79. 79.

    MattF

    @rikyrah: Agree. The speed with which the story disappeared, the lack of background info, point in that direction. Negativity toward Biden is relentless.

  80. 80.

    Nora

    When my daughter lived in Galesburg, IL, I took the Lake Shore Limited from New York to Chicago, and then a more local train from Chicago to Galesburg. The Lake Shore Limited was lovely, even from a non-sleeping car (I was being cheap): you wake up in the morning and see the sun rising over Lake Michigan, which is absolutely magical.

  81. 81.

    Nicole

    @Grumpy Old Railroader: This is a great, simple summary of what was at stake.  Thank you.

    That Newsmax clip- very interesting to see the right-wing shills get caught flat-footed by the truth

    ETA: Count me among those who love traveling by train.  Also, I got to take the Acela First Class once, and did I ever feel FANCY.

  82. 82.

    Jackie

    @prostratedragon: When my daughter lived in IL, she and my grandkiddos rode AMTRAK from Chicago to Pasco, WA. The boys were little, and they absolutely LOVED riding the train to gramma’s house! They wore their engineer bibs and matching hats and got to “help drive” the train and even blow the whistle! Such great memories for them! And, a lot less stressful for mommy.

  84. 84.

    emmyelle

    I know this isn’t a genius insight or anything but yet again we see that blue collar white people have flocked to the GOP because they do not see the GOP as the party of their exploitative employers and they DO see the Democrats as the party that is giving free stuff to black people.

    Please tell me that electing an ancient centrist white guy kills this fucking spell.

  85. 85.

    delphinium

    @Barbara: ​
    I am in the early stages of planning a trip to Chicago next year and intend to take the train from NY instead of flying. I may have to look into doing a side trip like this-haven’t been to that area yet.

  86. 86.

    geg6

    Back in my early 20s, I used to take the train from Pittsburgh to DC to visit a friend who had moved to Arlington. It was a long but lovely day trip. I usually stayed overnight at my friend’s place even though I could have been there and home in a day. Mainly because I always had to be at the Pittsburgh station at some gawd awful time in the morning and my friend and I would start day drinking at about 3pm and go at it until late at night, all while eating our way through the city. I’d go back and pass out at his apartment and catch the train the next day at a more civilized hour.​

  87. 87.

    Miss Bianca

    @Betty Cracker: Oh, no, Pete! Best wishes to my favorite Internet pupper!

    Never too early to slam a couple shots. Unless you’re the one driving Pete to the vet, of course..

    @Baud: As always, you said it first (and better). Hail Baud!

  88. 88.

    cain

    I’ve only been on Amtrak once – it was an ok experience. But it was full of delays and what not since Amtrak is lower priority and so the goods train always comes first.

    I loved traveling in Europe by train – so awesome.

    But my first love was always traveling on Indian railways. So many sights and sounds – arriving at a station, hearing the vendors hawking their wares, the smells of coffee, fried foods – just lovely. The interesting part was in the 80s, before the introduction of plastic – everyone used sustainable methods – eg clay teacups for coffee/tea, newspaper + banana leaves/mango leaves for food. That said, people had a bad habit of just throwing it on the rails – instead of putting it in garbage cans. Civic sense is still a gap that Indian people need to learn – but the younger generation is much better.

    For the longest time I used to dream of going on the Rajdhani express from Bombay to Delhi overnight. It used to be the best train. I guess now there are many others. But rail used to be super popular in India and the primary means of travel.

  90. 90.

    Ruckus

    @Anonymous At Work:

    At the very least workers should not be on call for anytime day or night. I’ve stated here before that I used to be an employer and while decades ago working long hours and too many days a week were normal, it wasn’t as productive nor much fun at all. A person can get used to that, but that doesn’t mean one should have to. What we’ve heard about RR workers, their needing to be available 24/7 is just wrong. We have enough humans in this country to work reasonable and consistent hours and in this case the railroads make far more than significant and large money, there is no need to fuck over employees just because they can and they make a few extra bucks. Big business is based upon moving large amounts of money from individual pockets to pockets so stuffed full that there really isn’t room for more. Screwing those individual pockets for a lot more pocket stuffing for a few is bullshit.

  91. 91.

    cain

    @clay: There is no way that mgmt was going to win given what was asked is what every other employee has in every other sector. That they didn’t have that during a brutal pandemic is breathtaking in its cruelty.

  92. 92.

    Miss Bianca

    @Grumpy Old Railroader: When you lay it out like this, I find myself wondering how railroads have *any* workers at all. They’re unionized, and they still work under conditions that sound like they come straight from the 19th century?

    (My ex-husband told me a story about one of his ancestors who worked on the railroad in those days. He lost an arm in an accident on the job. The railroad barons in their magnificent munificence gave him the rest of the day off.)

  93. 93.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    @Geminid: I think I read years ago that Amtrak had fewer cars on their entire nationwide system than many municipal systems. They’ve been systematically starved by every Republican Congress and President going back at least to Reagan.

    There are a lot of downhill trends that started in the Reagan era that may finally (I lived to see it!) be reversing.

    I can’t say how happy I am to see the pendulum finally, FINALLY swinging on unions and the popular perception of them.

  95. 95.

    Roger Moore

    @clay: ​
     

    I’m still flabbergasted that in the year Two Thousand and Freakin’ Twenty-Two, there existed an industry (unionized!) where the workers did not get paid medical leave!

    As I understand it, they did get paid medical leave, but they were required to schedule it a long time in advance. That’s OK for things like doctor’s appointments and elective surgery, but it doesn’t work at all for sickness, accidents, and most of the other things we want medical leave for. The equally big thing is they were on call essentially 24/7/365 except for that long-scheduled time off. They didn’t get weekends or even a regular day/swing/night shift.
    This kind of scheduling abuse is something Congress really needs to look at. I can understand why some industries need to have flexible scheduling, but they need to pay some kind of price for it. Employers should not be allowed to demand their employees be permanently on call without compensating them somehow for their on-call hours.

  99. 99.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    @cain: I’ve been a frequent Amtrak rider my whole adult life, but almost entirely within the Northeast Corridor. I have over 100,000 points on my frequent rider account which I’ll probably never use up. I just had to do a trip on basically a day’s notice from NYC to Philly on the Acela and it cost me no money, just 8000 points. Many trips are more like 2000.

    The Northeast Corridor has been pretty crowded lately. I’m not sure what’s going on, but they’re selling out every seat on the Acela (the expensive express train). It’s still a nice ride, but not how it was when the cars were about half full.

    Still I’m glad they’re getting the ridership. Amtrak has always used the Northeast Corridor to subsidize the rest of the system. It will be amazing when they actually get the infrastructure investment and can do things like improve tracks and have actual high-speed trains. It’s amazing they’ve done as well as they have while living for decades on the change between Republicans sofa cushions, but the system is an embarrassment compared to Europe.

    @Nicole:

    Also, I got to take the Acela First Class once, and did I ever feel FANCY.

    If you ever take a train in Europe, I recommend going First Class. Unlike here, there’s not much price differential with Second Class, and it’s definitely fancy-schmancy. Treat yourself.

  102. 102.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    Well since this an open thread. Going by what the lawyers are saying about Cannon’s latest rulings in that Classified Documents case she sounds like a complete arrogant ignoramus of a tool, but she is a Federalist, so I merely state the obvious. My take is she though she was going to school the DOJ on the TRUE meaning of the law, got humiliated, and like a typical asshole, dumped the mess she created on someone else (the special master) and then made a bunch of petty rulings to punish the DOJ for daring to be right and blew off the real issue with national security.

    Somewhere, there is a  quality assurance department missing a low level manager.

  103. 103.

    prostratedragon

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym:

    “The Northeast Corridor has been pretty crowded lately.”

    Gas prices? A price spike years ago, I forget why, lead to instant ballooning of ridership on the Wolverine, which I took almost monthly. Who knew the substitution elasticity was so high?!

    A lot of those riders continued after things calmed down, it appeared

  104. 104.

    dm

    @Anonymous At Work: As I recall one of Elizabeth Warren’s presidential campaign points was giving working people a chance to schedule their lives by penalizing “on-call” scheduling.  I think she talked about being able to set your schedule two weeks in advance.

  105. 105.

    Roger Moore

    @Geminid:

    One bit of alternate history I’ve thought of is: what if the DC Metro System had been built in the 1960’s?

    Or what if LA had spent money on buying and upgrading the Red Car system instead of building freeways?  I’m enough of a rail nerd to understand the Red Car system had some very serious problems beyond the traditional story of “bad car companies bought and destroyed the trolleys to get rid of competition”, but I also know the biggest problem was lack of capital investment.  If we had put the money we poured into the freeways into that much needed capital investment, we could have built a rail system that was the envy of other cities.

  106. 106.

    Betty

    @clay: Being thwarted by Congress who can force a deal on them and would have this time except for Joe and Marty. The courts routinely enjoin any strike.

  108. 108.

    Ruckus

    @Geminid:

    Los Angeles had a rail system and electric buses way, way back but in the 50s but it had to go to make room for the automobile. Today LA county has a much better rail system and they are enlarging it as I write this. Now no rail system will ever take everyone, every place they want to go but for a lot of people it does actually work pretty well. I take the train across LA county to my docs and dentist. The extension of the subway system ends up where I go and I’ll be able to travel 45 miles across LA county changing trains once, and walk about 200 ft to the front door of my docs office. Right now it’s 3 trains and a bus.

  110. 110.

    oatler

    @Jackie:

    ABC’s is die wurst. There must be an algorithm writing the news, programming its network bots to read everything in the present tense and neutrally Skew to Both Sides.

  111. 111.

    schrodingers_cat

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym: I had a first class season ticket from Marine Lines to Santacruz on the Western Line, when I used to take the local trains in Mumbai when I was at the University there. You could buy 3 months at time.    Its usually 3 times the price but students got a discount so it was about the same as the unsubsidized second class pass. You had to jump through few hoops,  get a letter from your department take it to the station master of your originating station etc, but it was so worth it.

  112. 112.

    Grumpy Old Railroader

    @clay:

    but what the heck has that union been doing for the past 5 decades?

    Why are you blaming the union? For many many years, railroad workers could mark off anytime they wanted and unless they abused the privilege, there was no problem. I can remember working my ass off for 10-15 days straight, then marking off, taking the kids out of school and we would go camping for 3-4 days. My grown kids still talk about those monthly camping trips.

    But in the last 20 years, the railroads (computerization) started tracking every little detail and it didn’t take long for them to zero in on employee availability. So draconian absenteeism policies were implemented along with slashing some of the work force. Less workers doing more work. Win!

    Yes the union has been fighting this for many years but the railroads were unwilling to give up any control over their policies. Plus you would have to understand the hoops that unions have to jump through in order to take any direct action. See, America (businesses) realized early on that allowing railroad workers to strike should be severely limited thus the Railway Labor Act was enacted and provided a series of steps that must be adhered to before a union can seek self help (strike).

    Part of the impasse over this latest national agreement was the unions wanted relief from or partial control over the absenteeism policies. The railroads were not going to back off their complete control. The Presidential Emergency Board recommendations completely ignored this issue. They did not address the unions’ main grievance.

    So Biden stepped in. He heard the unions. Because he intervened he created a crack in the railroads sole control over unpaid time off. Now, finally, the unions can move forward to negotiate with the railroads over unpaid time off.

    I know what the unions have been trying to do. I was a union officer for my last 20 years and represented a few thousand railroad employees of Union Pacific in seven Southwestern States. Sorry, but when I hear that phrase, my dander gets up

  113. 113.

    Grumpy Old Railroader

    @Enhanced Voting Techniques: ​

    I assume there are also a lot of railroad exec screaming about how they can’t get anyone to hire on with that kind of work polices.

    Life of a railroader is not for everybody. Nights, week-ends, on call, long hours but the pay and benefits are great. It is more of a lifestyle. You are rarely working under direct supervision. So we get a lot of eclectic group of employees.

    I have a sweatshirt that says: Still Plays With Trains

  114. 114.

    Josie

    @Grumpy Old Railroader: ​
     This is one of the things I love about BJ. We have people who actually know what they are talking about on a number of different subjects. Thanks for explaining something to us that I had no clue about.

  115. 115.

    narya

    I am excited (but not surprised, tbh) that so many jackals have taken long Amtrak trips. And yeah, I was reading up on the current negotiations (thanks, Jorts the cat!), and it’s barbaric. I’m glad they got a little bit of a break, and they really should get more.

  117. 117.

    cain

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym: Amtrak has been steadily getting more popular – and I suspect that some of that is because more people are traveling to other countries and using the rail transport there.

    The west coast I think it is pretty popular – but probably not as popular as the NE. The distances are too long – if we had a TGV style train then we could really see some  economic benefit going from Seattle to SFO with stops in Portland, Salem and Eugene

  118. 118.

    scav

    Yoikes, I didn’t know I’d actually got three Amtrak lines under my belt: Pacific Surfliner as well as the Coast Starlight and Lakeshore Limited.  Do love that waking up going through the mills right before Chicago.  Seeing all the back yards of little towns, especially at night.

  119. 119.

    topclimber

    @Nora: I have done most of my Amtrak on the Empire Line between Albany and NYC. You get a nice view of the Hudson that is always different as the seasons change.

    It used to annoy me that you could not take the Lake Shore Limited from NYC to Albany, even though it stops there to pick up passengers. It left NYC just before rush hour and was easier to get a last minute ticket for than the next two trains.

    I finally gamed the system because it turns out you can buy a ticket for one stop west of Albany (Schnectady) for the same price as Albany. No one ever stopped me from getting off before my official stop.

    So I got a chance to sit on the extra wide seats with tons of leg room and look out bigger windows. I am a simple person. This pleased me greatly. Beating the system made it so much sweeter.

  121. 121.

    Ruckus

    @narya:

    I’ve taken the train from LA to northern CA 2 or 3 times and yes it is enjoyable and cheaper than flying, it also takes an entire day to do. 2 times the buses from the LA area to Bakersfield, where you actually board the train broke down. Once the one I was on and once one we stopped to pick up people from another broken down bus. The entire trip took 14 + hrs. It can be driven in 8 hrs or less. And now it’s possible to take mass transit to the airport, so I don’t have to pay $20/day to park at the airport. When there is parking.

    Very few places in this country have actual, good mass transit, most of the time it is just not unreasonable. I’ve ridden trains/subways in many cities in several parts of the world and while we are getting better in the US, we still have a ways to go to get to reasonable.

    A trip I do want to make is the Trans Canadian, from Vancouver to Montreal. At the start of winter. And then train to DC as I’ve only been once.

  125. 125.

    Barbara

    @cain: ​TGV is pretty amazing. We went from Montpelier, France to Paris in around 4 hours, and then spent another 2 hours getting from the train station to our hotel (Bastille Day weekend). Spain, also, has significantly upgraded their train routes between major cities. Even the “slower” trains are now pretty fast.

  126. 126.

    trollhattan

    @Betty Cracker: I did some advanced consultant-like ciphering and determined it is past noon in Crackerville, so the answer is yes.

    The judges would also accept why are you waiting so long?

    Best to Pete the Pup.

  127. 127.

    Matt McIrvin

    @cain:

    Amtrak has been steadily getting more popular – and I suspect that some of that is because more people are traveling to other countries and using the rail transport there.

    I would think that would make Amtrak LESS popular, because, once you’ve seen how they do it over there, for Christ’s sake…

  128. 128.

    Barbara

    @cain: ​It’s surreal, isn’t it, to have been told so often how national security supersedes all kinds of civil rights and transparency, except, apparently if you are Donald Trump and you want to sell classified information to the Saudis. Just complete bullshit. So much bullshit I am not reading it. She is clearly corrupt. It wouldn’t surprise me if she is actually being paid by someone.

  129. 129.

    trollhattan

    @Barbara: ​Vs flying I’d take skipping security theater and being able to wander from car to car en route over flying ten times out of ten. Sign me up!

    US needs discrete passenger rail lines though, because sharing rail with freight is never good–the lines are mostly owned by the railroads and they get right of way, which murders schedules.

  130. 130.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Barbara: We rode the Renfe AVE from Madrid to Valencia. The speed and convenience of it are absolutely mind-blowing. That’s actually slightly more hassle than some other trains, I guess, because you have to go through a modicum of airport-like security to get your bags on and the AVE station in Valencia is in a different place from the other trains. But it’s still amazing.

  131. 131.

    Roger Moore

    @Ruckus:

    Los Angeles had a rail system and electric buses way, way back but in the 50s but it had to go to make room for the automobile.

    There was a bit more to it than that.  LA had a wonderful interurban railroad and pretty good trolleys in the major urban hubs.  The big problem was the interurban (the Pacific Electric Red Cars) never had a solid business plan to exist as an independent entity.  It was built using private money as part of Henry Huntington’s real estate development plans.  He built Red Cars to every new development so they would be able to connect to the rest of the area.  The way it worked, though, was that the capital costs of building the lines were paid for as part of the cost of the developments, and fares were kept low enough they were only enough to pay for day-to-day operations.

    When Huntington died, the real estate developments stopped, and so did system expansion.  While the Pacific Electric was privately owned, it was regulated by the Public Utilities Commission, which didn’t let them raise fares.  Since they were only bringing in enough money to pay for day-to-day operations, the system gradually decayed and the quality of service declined.  Competition from cars hurt ridership, especially because a lot of the system was run at street level, so traffic slowed the Red Cars as much as automobiles.  I’m sure the Great Depression didn’t help matters, either.  The Red Cars experienced a brief renaissance during WWII, when private driving was heavily disfavored, but it only masked the long-term decline.

  132. 132.

    Kirk Spencer

    I like riding the train. But getting the places I want to go requires long wee hour layovers at a hub or two, and sometimes a bus.

    For example Dallas to Indianapolis for Gencon.

  133. 133.

    sdhays

    @different-church-lady: I’m reminded, again, of the asshole “Papa John’s” CEO whining on TV during the debates over the ACA that it would cost another 10¢ per pizza to give his workers healthcare. 10¢!

    And he thought he was making a point that Democrats were being crazy and unreasonable.

  134. 134.

    trollhattan

    @Ruckus: We have the bones of a light rail system but just that, it needs to be fleshed out but the funding mountain is hard to climb and then there’s local resistance to having a TRAIN serve or even pass through their part of town (parts that frankly, ain’t that great in many cases).

    One of my measures of a city’s maturity is the ability to take rail transit to the airport. They’ve been faffing over that here for twenty years.

  135. 135.

    cain

    @Matt McIrvin: Well – I would say that the experience is still being able to work on your laptop or listen to music, read a book – those things are still there as part of train travel. But that also means that a lot of them would be happy to see service upgraded especially with rising demand.

    We keep congress and presidency for decade and we’ll see some great things – hopefully by then the fascist strain of the GOP will go away.

  136. 136.

    sdhays

    @Matt McIrvin: It can make you critical of Amtrak, but still want to take more trains. It opens your eyes to the possibilities and people can be more open to considering a train.

  137. 137.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    @Grumpy Old Railroader: Can I contact you offline?

    I’m a retired guy who has long toyed with the idea of a retirement career as a writer, and one of the articles I’ve long thought about writing as I rode various train systems was “how do you get to be a railroader?” (The working title in my head has been, “who are the engineers?”)

    I don’t even care whether it’s sellable, I want to research it and write it just for my own edification.

  138. 138.

    cain

    @Barbara: ​
     
    I love how she insinuates that she doesn’t trust the DOJ. Cuz you know, there is so much evidence that DOnald Trump is an innocent actor.
    She’s a federalist society judge pick – they are corrupt by definition. She does what they say.

  139. 139.

    Nicole

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym:

    If you ever take a train in Europe, I recommend going First Class. Unlike here, there’s not much price differential with Second Class, and it’s definitely fancy-schmancy. Treat yourself.

    You’re right, it’s very nice and not that much more than Second Class.  This summer we took 1st class from Dublin to Belfast and our seats had our last names above them, which was fun.

  140. 140.

    The Golux

    @rikyrah:

    When I was 14, my family took its one big vacation, which began with flying from Connecticut to Chicago, then boarding the Super Chief  to go from there to Los Angeles.  I had lobster tails for dinner the first night, and we took a side trip to the Grand Canyon on the way.  Lots of time spent in the observation car.  I’m so glad I had that experience.

    While we were en route to LA, the great airline strike of 1966 began.  It didn’t affect the next part of our itinerary (Hawaii), because Pan Am wasn’t on strike for some reason, but getting home required three unplanned days in San Francisco and three more in New Orleans.  What a drag!  Saw the Preservation Hall Jazz Band twice.

  141. 141.

    NotMax

    @Barbara

    Rode the rails from Luxembourg City to Geneva in the mid-1970s. When the train pulled into the station, one of the other people on the platform (who was waiting for another train to a different destination) nudged me on the shoulder and said, “It’s an Italian train. Good luck with that.”

    She wasn’t far off the mark. Once underway it certainly seemed the last time any mechanical maintenance or cosmetic upkeep had been done on the passenger cars was presumably sometime in the 1930s.

    ;)

  142. 142.

    Baud

    @cain:

    In the 20tb Century, it was the two periods between 1933 and 1948, and 1961-1969, when Dems controlled it all, that have the U.S. most of the good stuff we now take for granted.

  143. 143.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    @Nicole: We took the ferry once from Dublin to Wales and opted for First Class there. Man, was that nice. My wife still raves about that trip.

    Maybe we’ll do that particular ride again someday. We didn’t actually see any of Wales, we were just catching a train to northern England.

  145. 145.

    Roger Moore

    @Matt McIrvin:

    I would think that would make Amtrak LESS popular, because, once you’ve seen how they do it over there, for Christ’s sake

    This.  If anything, I think the main thing driving increase train ridership is just how bad the airlines have gotten.  Amtrak isn’t great, but the airlines are getting worse and worse.  That said, my understanding is the overall ridership numbers are misleading.  IIRC, the Acella corridor is the majority of Amtrak’s ridership.  It’s the one profitable route, and the entire rest of the system is kept running out of stubbornness.

  147. 147.

    trollhattan

    @cain: It’s further damning that Cannon was pushed through confirmation AFTER TRUMP HAD LOST THE DAMN ELECTION.

    Is it technically judge-shopping if you yourself created the judge?

  152. 152.

    realbtl

    The western long distance trips are great especially in winter. One of my favorites is Chicago to LA through the Rockies and Sierras.

    My partner and I will often reserve the small sleepers across the aisle from each other so we can switch sides as the scenery changes.

  154. 154.

    NotMax

    Fun fact.

    Oldest continuously operating standard-gauge rail service in the western hemisphere is the Strasburg Rail Road, chartered and incorporated in Pennsylvania in 1832. Originally used horse-drawn rolling stock and passenger wagons.

  155. 155.

    Dan B

    @Geminid: Your analysis that CO2 from concrete is twice what air travel emits but… CO2 from air travel is emitted at altitude where it causes greater warming more rapidly.  Even greener fuels still emit CO2, in many cases, or water vapor, another Greenhouse gas.  We need better high speed transportation, carbon pricing, and more non-travel means of connecting and experiencing the world.  Younger people are embracing virtual reality and similar means of “seeing the world”.  That’s  a good sign.

  156. 156.

    Sure Lurkalot

    @Barbara: Spain has really upped its train game. Last trip we didn’t bother renting a car. The longest route we took was Barcelona to San Sebastián, about 5 hours, and the seats were large and comfortable. Great way to see 2 of Spain’s fave tourist cities.

  157. 157.

    Grumpy Old Railroader

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym: ​“

    how do you get to be a railroader?” (The working title in my head has been, “who are the engineers?”

    The career trajectory is one hires on the railroad and they train you to be a conductor (about 3-4 months). Then they turn you loose and you end up working as a switchman (brakeman) on a night yard engine. After you get enough seniority you eventually migrate to working pool freight to exotic locations. Everything is by seniority so you might run out of air (seniority) at one location and be forced to work a distant location until you gain enough whiskers to get back to the location you want.

    Then when they need locomotive engineers, the bids go out to all the conductors and brakemen and the seniors get picked where they train for several months as Firemen (apprentice engineers) and once they get their card as a full fledged locomotive engineer (hoghead), the seniority game starts all over where you go to where you can work. There are times you get cut back from engine service to train service (winter season) but eventually you can work as a hoghead full time.

    So 1st 2-3 months training then work in train service for 1-2 years then start over in engine service being bounced around and up and down between engine service and train service for 1-2 years and then finally you have arrived, a full time locomotive engineer on the crap jobs until you build some more seniority to get the good jobs​​​​​​

  159. 159.

    Dan B

    @Barbara: Let me recommend Portland to Vancouver.  The ride along Puget Sound is idyllic.  A stop in Bellingham, or Anacortes, to take a tour boat through the San Juan Islands and / or a rental car to Mount Baker, or from Anacortes to Ross and Diablo Lakes and beyond in the North Cascades would be magical additions, as would a ferry through the Gulf Islands to Victoria or to Whistler or Manning Park from Vancouver.  Google images of Artist Point at Mt. Baker or Image Lake in addition to the other sites mentioned and note there are joys off the tourist track in each of the cities and their regions.

  160. 160.

    Dan B

    @rikyrah: My mother and brother and I were going to take the Empire Builder to Seattle for a high school graduation trip as consolation for not being allowed to go to the University of Washington.  There was a strike.  ;<(

  161. 161.

    Elizabelle

    @MattF:

    Maggs Haberman to Wolf Blitzer on CNN, via your link:

    … he just hired a very new high-priced lawyer who is being paid through PAC money. Even if it isn’t Donald Trump’s personal money, he doesn’t like parting with it if it is in his control. This tells me that there is a real level of concern here despite whatever bravado he is showing.

    It’s ALWAYS other people’s money with this jerk.  Always.

    All the more reason for the J6 Committee to step up investigation into his post-insurrection fundraising and where that $$$ went …

  162. 162.

    kalakal

    I’ve always loved travelling by train, it’s a great way to see a country.

    The best train journey I ever took was when my gf and I went from Belgrade to Sarajevo in the days of the former Yugoslavia in the early 80s. We got into a compartment and there 3 guys already there. We got talking using a mixture of French/ German, & Latin. Turned out they were oil field workers coming back from the middle east and they were each carrying their own bodyweight in duty free cigarettes and booze. About 10 minutes into the journey a lady pushing a supermarket trolley full of cartons of fruit juice* appeared “Mixers!” yelled our new friends delightedly. “Drink!” they cried pulling out bottles of vodka, whisky, brandy etc. “Cigarettes? Have a packet! Have 2!”

    The lady & the trolley never got past our compartment, nor did the ticket collector. As the noise got louder people from the rest of the carriage turned up and it turned into a general party. When we all rolled off the train at Sarajevo there were about 30 happy drunks all going over the top in a suitably Balkan manner. It was an absolute blast

    * It was a government health programme, free fruit juice with every ticket

  164. 164.

    Dan B

    @Nicole: I was treated to an overnight sleeper train from Cologne to Munchen (Munich) and then the Pendolino from Munchen to Rome.  The Appenine stretch was amazing.  It’s incredibly smooth and windy so the Appenines seemed to be tilting from side to side at what looked like 30°.  And Quiet!!  OMG!!

  170. 170.

    cain

    @Baud: and we kept the house for all the 80s till Gingrich  – that was when the downfall started happening. Fuck him and his contract with America.

  171. 171.

    Barbara

    @Sure Lurkalot: ​
    We took Renfe from Madrid to Barcelona, and then from Cordoba to Madrid. It was just so nice, so convenient. We also took intercity rail between Salamanca and Madrid, and it was not quite as fast but so much faster and more modern than the trains we had taken in the early 1990s. We also went from Barcelona to Montepelier, and that is more old style, with a bonus changing of the rail stock when you cross the border. Still, just a gorgeous trip along the coast of Spain and France.

  172. 172.

    trollhattan

    @cain: I swear Newt broke the House and it has never recovered. “Bipartison” now means Democrats agreeing to whatever it is Republicans want. “Joe Biden must reach across the aisle to get his agenda passed” infects every op-ed staff everywhere.

  173. 173.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Dan B: I’ve taken the overnight trains in Ukraine a lot. They run everywhere and everyone takes them, but you won’t easily confuse them with the Western European trains.

  175. 175.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @trollhattan: ​One of my measures of a city’s maturity is the ability to take rail transit to the airport. They’ve been faffing over that here for twenty years.

    FWIW my friends in Prague and I have been wondering which Metro connection will be finished first – extension of theirs to Ruzyně/Vaclav Havel or ours to Dulles. Word is the target date for opening the DC Silver Line in its entirety is next month, whereas the Czechs haven’t even bought the land for the line to the projected Dlouhá Míle terminal at Ruzyně and their target date for completion is 2029. OTOH it looks as if getting downtown in Prague (bus 119 to Nádraží Veleslavín Metro station, Metro line A [green] 6 stops to Můstek or 7 stops to Muzeum at the main downtown transfer points) is still likely to be at least as fast as the Silver Line to Falls Church, thence Orange Line to downtown).

  176. 176.

    Matt McIrvin

    I see a few commenters over at LGM arguing that the deal is actually crap, the workers should reject it and strike and screw the Democrats for selling them out if it hurts them.

    But even Loomis thinks it’s probably the best they could get.

  177. 177.

    El Muneco

    @prostratedragon: I used to work at a French-owned company. Our office manager was Mexican. Every year she took great pleasure in good-naturedly reminding the French expats that Cinco de Mayo isn’t Mexican Independence Day, but a celebration of beating the French in battle.

  179. 179.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Baud: Yeah, seems to be coming from mystery drive-bys who might be agents provocateurs.

    It honestly doesn’t seem to be a great situation for railroad workers either way. But you get what you can.

  180. 180.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Geminid: It’s unlikely a Great Society DC Metro could have happened, though–back then, the paradigm was still that the interstate highways were the wave of the future, and there were monstrous plans for building a freeway network around and through DC that dwarfed what we actually got.

  181. 181.

    Baud

    @Matt McIrvin:

    When I visited Germany a long time ago, a local tour guide was explaining that, when they built the local highway, it was built with the idea that it should be able to accommodate XXX number of cars well into the future, but that the estimate was way too low by several magnitudes.

  182. 182.

    Roger Moore

    @Matt McIrvin:

    It honestly doesn’t seem to be a great situation for railroad workers either way. But you get what you can.

    It sounds like the underlying problem is the law is written in a way that undercuts the union’s ability to exercise their one big power- a strike- without undercutting the many ways the railroads can exercise their power.  It’s fairly typical of American labor law since WWII: constantly weakening labor.  People keep asking why American labor is so weak, and that’s why.  If you want labor to have real power again, repeal Taft-Hartley.

  183. 183.

    Dan B

    @Ruckus: We took the train from Vancouver to Jasper Park, bus to Banff and then to Winnipeg and on to Chicago.  The Fraser was in a dull endless valley at night.  Banff to Winnipeg was on slippery seats on a rocking train, no sleep for days.  Get a sleeper and hope the line and train have improved.

  184. 184.

    Geminid

    @Matt McIrvin: Yeah, It would have been very unlikely. Aside from national conditions, local real estate developers had a lot of clout and were planning on an automile using populace. “F”LBJ would have had to really like subways, and also gotten the US military out of South Vietnam by 1965.

  187. 187.

    Barbara

    @Matt McIrvin: ​ Although there has been some rebuilding to make it a little more streamlined, you can tell exactly where the city was finally able to halt the outrageous efforts to carve it up with elevated, divided highways. I remember driving through DC in 1969 with my parents and them getting hopelessly lost in Southeast DC because the freeway just ran out. When I moved there nearly 20 years later, it was still the same, with that little dogleg U-turn you had to make in order to get from the SE Freeway to 295 North. Now, that’s gone, but 395 and the SE freeway still carve up D.C. in ways that clearly segregated certain neighborhoods from being accessible to the downtown area.

  188. 188.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @Gin & Tonic: My visit to Ukraine in 2013 involved no less than four overnight trains: Praha to Košice in eastern Slovakia, next day overnight to L’viv; after 3 days there, overnight to Kyiv in a 4-place couchette; 4 days there, then overnight to Warszawa and rush to get a ticket to a day-long rail ride back to Praha. (Which last I managed only because the Polish train, which originated in Warszawa, was a half-hour late getting underway. There are times one does not want the trains to run on time!)

    One thing that ticked me off was that I asked for a lower berth between L’viv and Kyiv and was told none were available (and proceded to bash my head climbing into my upper) when one of the two lower berths in my compartment was vacant for the entire trip. It didn’t seem particularly considerate way to treat a customer in his middle 60s, even if he was a foreigner. I suppose someone had already reserved it but never showed.

    Happily the friendliness of the Ukrainian people in all other respects more than made up for that. (On that note – I earnestly hope the young English-speaking lady from Kherson I met in Kyiv’s main station, who kindly took time to help me get a ticket for Warszawa, is OK, along with her sportsman husband. Slava Ukraini!)

  189. 189.

    Barbara

    @Soprano2: ​ Now that snowstorms seem to be less frequent and you can’t depend on weather porn for ratings, you have to hope for different kinds of disasters. I mean, it’s a fine line you walk as a journalist (or a lawyer or a doctor), when calamity tends to be professionally helpful, but still, they seem to have gotten a little to obvious in actually hoping for bad things to happen.

  190. 190.

    Baud

    @Roger Moore: I believe the Railway Law is pre-WWII

    ETA: Yes.

    The Railway Labor Act is a United States federal law on US labor law that governs labor relations in the railroad and airline industries. The Act, enacted in 1926 and amended in 1934 and 1936, seeks to substitute bargaining, arbitration and mediation for strikes to resolve labor disputes. Its provisions were originally enforced under the Board of Mediation, but they were later enforced under a National Mediation Board.

    Railway Labor Act – Wikipedia

  191. 191.

    ian

    @cain:

    She’s not gonna get that SCOTUS position or anything higher. She’s kissed her career goodbye.

    If being an unqualified illiterate hack was an obstacle to getting a court position, we wouldn’t be here in the first place.  Can you imagine a single GOP senator saying he/she wouldn’t vote for Cannon for a higher position because of this?

  192. 192.

    kalakal

    @Baud: The M25 ring road around London followed the same route (ahem). One report summed it up as  

    it “had taken 70 years to plan [the motorway], 12 to build it and just one to find it was inadequate”. 

    Traffic levels quickly exceeded the maximum design capacity. Two months before it opened, the government admitted that the three-lane section between Junctions 11 and 13 was inadequate and that it would have to be widened to four. By 1993 the motorway, designed for a maximum of 88,000 vehicles per day, was carrying 200,000.

    It’s the butt of a million jokes “The UKs largest car park, the world’s biggest mobile office” etc

    It was even the inspiration for a top 10 song, Chris Rea’s The road to hell.

  193. 193.

    sdhays

    @MattF: The real “aha” part is that it’s his PAC paying the fees, not Trump himself. It’s not really his money, but it is because PAC’s have almost no regulation.

  194. 194.

    p.a.

    Did the Crescent NY to New Orleans twice, 1991 & ’95, and just in that time frame I noticed the effects of budget constraints in ’95.  Still a good experience, but ’91 was really fun, and the food was good!  Cheap ClubCar drinks!  Still take Amtrak for any travel between Boston & DC; it’s the only way to fly😉 in the I-95 hellscape.

    When you note the train is slower than flying, don’t forget to adjust for the fact that passenger service generally brings you right into your target city center, not some suburban airport where you still have to get downtown (if, of course, that’s your destination.)

  195. 195.

    Geminid

    @Dan B: Well, I am all for reducing air travel and have been doing my part for 45 years. I don’t think air travel will ever be displaced by high speed rail in this country, though, except maybe between large cities like Dallas and Houston. It just costs too much and our population is too widely dispersed. It is true that “carbon neutral” fuels produce carbon dioxide when burned. The rationale behind their use is that an equivalent amount of CO2 is removed from the atmosphere in producing them. They may serve as a bridge to carbon free power, and they may reduce air travel because they will cost more.

    I thought that CO2 emitted at high altitude equalized its concentration with that of air at lower altitudes. Something to research, I guess. But as far as water vapor goes, I’m not going to worry about the water vapor emitted by hydrogen powered airplanes 30 years from now. Maybe I should, but I think air travel is here to stay. It certainly wouldn’t hurt to limit air travel through extra cost, because demand is elastic. And it certainly wouldn’t hurt people if they slowed down and used trains more to get around, or just traveled  less.

  196. 196.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Roger Moore: A secondary problem is that a lot of the people the unions represent are political reactionaries for other reasons, but I think that is changing a bit. It’s easier for them if Democratic politicians don’t actually have their back, which, until recently, they often didn’t. Biden is more pro-labor than basically any President since FDR and maybe further back.

    I’m also seeing some speculation that the workers might reject the deal simply because many are Republicans and resent Biden’s involvement. But that’s spitballing from non-experts.

  197. 197.

    Baud

    @Matt McIrvin:

    I’m also seeing some speculation that the workers might reject the deal simply because many are Republicans and resent Biden’s involvement.

    So more of a general strike like lefties are always dreaming about

    ETA:  I’m not going to assume problems before they happen, but weren’t the Republicans threatening a bill to strip the workers of their rights if the strike happened?

  198. 198.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Dan B: Water vapor emission is a non-problem. Yes, water vapor is a greenhouse gas–in fact it’s most of the reason that the Earth is as warm as it is.

    But the Earth’s rapid water cycle means that water vapor levels equilibrate to a level that mostly depends on temperature. The trouble with carbon dioxide is that the carbon cycle is slow so it has a much longer dwell time.

    So water vapor functions as a positive feedback (“positive” = bad here), not as a forcing that depends directly on water vapor emissions. To control the effect of water vapor we need to limit CO2 emissions (and methane etc.), not water vapor emissions.

  199. 199.

    Dan B

    @Ruckus: Also, Calgary to Winnipeg is nearly featureless, uninhabited, and flat. I seem to recall stopping at stations where no lights were visible outside of the station.  Winnipeg to Chicago is much more interesting by comparison.

  201. 201.

    StringOnAStick

    @Grumpy Old Railroader: You do have some eclectic people in the railroad business.  I had a (dental hygiene) patient that had left the main industry and did a lot of projects procuring and moving historic steam engines from various places in central and south America for museums in the US.  He had some incredible stories!  He’s also a cat rescuer in a small plains town.  One of the most “character” characters I’ve ever met, and that includes from my old field geologist days.

  202. 202.

    Tazj

    I heard in NPR this morning that this was a pretty good deal for both sides. Maybe, unsurprising for NPR, but this man was their labor reporter and he said of course labor wanted more with regards to days off but this was a definite improvement.

    He said that there were big layoffs 6 years ago in order to increase profits and look better for Wall Street and shareholders and it had come back to bite them, in this labor market. Fewer and fewer people want to work under these kind of conditions.

  203. 203.

    LiminalOwl

    @evodevo: Also for TSA workers (at least, this was so in the past; the one I know retired some time back). Or, IIRC, they would simply deny the sick leave due to “operational necessity.”

  204. 204.

    Dan B

    @Geminid: As I recall CO2 reflects infrared wavelengths that heat the air they pass through so CO2 at altitude of 30,000’+ heats 30,000’+ air on its way to the surface.  CO2 emitted at ground level mixes up to 5,000′ pretty quickly so only 1/6 th the warming of air.  So, the sun’s rays hit the ground, they are radiated back with a mix of different wavelengths, then are reflected back to 5,000′ or 30,000’+ and reflected / radiated back towards the earth in even more wavelengths that heat the atmosphere more efficiently.  Granted that we’re through half the atmosphere at about 15,000′ so it’s reduced exponentially.

    Usual caveats:  IANAAS* and IANAL so please don’t sue me.

    *Atmospheric Scientist

  205. 205.

    Marc

    My parents took us on a trip to California in 1969, the highlight for me was riding the Super Chief from LA to Chicago on the way back. As with @rikyrah, several of the staff quietly let us know how happy they were to see a black family on that train, they took very good care of us.  I was also a space freak at the time, and was unhappy that the first moon landing would happen in the middle of the trip.  Dad arranged for me to spend that night in the crew car where they had a radio, one black kid and an almost entirely black crew cheering as Armstrong announced that “the Eagle had landed”.

    As an adult, I took another memorable train ride on the Kyle of Lochalsh Line from Inverness, Scotland on my way to the Isle of Skye, it was incredibly beautiful, a no-miss trip if one is in the north of Scotland.

    My own family has made a number of trips to Japan, usually with a RailPass to get around.  One trip we took a beautiful ride on a diesel train the long way around from Sapporo to Hakodate, then the Shinkansen to Tokyo (where our daughter was doing an internship), continued on Shinkansen to Fukuoka for a few days, then back up to Osaka to visit some friends.  The neatest thing, though, is the smaller local trains, like Sendai to Yamagata ( a beautiful little known city up in the mountains), and Nagoya to Gujo Hachiman or Takayama.

  206. 206.

    StringOnAStick

    @NotMax: The Italian trains were better by the mid-1990’s; I spent 2 months there without any transportation but trains, from local to express, and only found one train rather lacking.  The foam in the seat cushions had totally broken down so it was like sitting directly on metal for 3 hours.  We took trains to other cities every weekend and I loved it, what a great way to get around and see the countryside.  Never had a breakdown or service that was greatly delayed in any way.  I loved all the veggie plots people had built along the train way, almost like the British allotment system for garden spaces.

  207. 207.

    Dan B

    @Dan B: Airplanes use a lot of fuel at takeoff and climbing to altitude, not much at cruising altitude so I don’t know how much CO2 is emitted at low altitude or at cruising altitude so it’s  gonna be 6 times as much air, minus thinner upper atmosphere, and fuel burnt at takeoff.  I recall the difference in increased impact of high altitude emissions by air flight was less than double.

  209. 209.

    Martin

    @Grumpy Old Railroader: I would like to see Congress backdoor this whole thing, pass legislation that would apply not just to rail workers, but also airline and some other industries that would guarantee a certain number of scheduled unpaid days off out of a given period – 4 unpaid days every 2 weeks, etc.

  210. 210.

    misterpuff

    The GOP was tryin’ to stuff the Dems in a burlap sack

    He said, “If you don’t give me the deed to your ranch

    I’m gonna throw you on the railroad tracks!”

    And then he grabbed her (and then)

    He tied her up (and then)

    He threw her on the railroad tracks (and then)

    A train started comin’ (and then, and then!)
    And then along came Joe

    Tall thin Joe

    Slow-walkin’ Joe

    Slow-talkin’ Joe

    Along came aviator Joe

  211. 211.

    Martin

    The fundamental problem with the railroad situation is that it’s a natural monopoly enabled by land grants that the railroads are now rent seeking on, and railroads are empowered to lie to the feds constantly.

    Railroads have held passenger rail hostage by a range of means. Amtrak can’t run to SoCal because UP refuses to bring the line through Tehachapi up to standards for passenger rail. So long as they keep the line degraded, they don’t need to worry about the mandate that they give Amtrak access, so there’s been no passenger rail from the north to the largest US city for 40 years. This is why CA high speed rail has as a core requirement that all right of way they operate on be publicly controlled, so the state is buying up right of way, sometimes 30 feet next to the BNSF lines, because BNSF cannot be trusted. And in almost all of these cases, the state is buying for top dollar land that either the feds gifted to BNSF (under one of the pre-merger railroads) and that the state is buying from BNSF or that BNSF previously sold and the state now needs to buy back.

    And the railroads could be a huge asset to the nation, but they are so poorly run that they can only be relied on to transport bulk non-perishable commodities, and they aren’t interested in doing anything more than that. Once their coal and oil markets dry up, there’s not going to be all that much for them to do – but boy howdy are they going to make sure nobody else can do anything useful.

  212. 212.

    Ruckus

    @Roger Moore:

    There was also the fact that after WWII LA grew exponentially and not in any sort of centralized way. I grew up in Monrovia and about half of that didn’t exist housing wise till 1948 and beyond. Much of SoCal grew, and exponentially after then. I moved into a brand new house, when they brought me home from the hospital. School friends of mine lived across the street from miles and miles of orange groves. So much of Los Angeles county was not populated at the end of WWII but sure is now. LA County population in 1940 was 2,785,643, 1950 was 4,151,687, 1980 was 8,863,052, 2020 is 10,014,009, and it still has a larger population than 40 states.

  213. 213.

    Martin

    I’ll add a lot of the politicians around rail are equally useless. We have a bunch of Dems here in CA that are refusing to release HSR funds demanding that we build battery trains instead of overhead catenary, which is so fucking stupid I don’t even know where to begin. Battery trains don’t even exist, let alone operate at 220 MPH for 350 miles which is a critical requirement for HSR which has a requirement under the ballot initiative to get from LA to SF in 2:45. That’s just not going to be possible, and it’s not like a battery train would be any cheaper to build than overhead catenary which is standard literally everywhere on earth.

  216. 216.

    Marc

    @Martin: so there’s been no passenger rail from the north to the largest US city for 40 years.

    Actually, the Coast Starlight still runs from Seattle to LA Union Station.  The Oakland to LA segment takes about 12 hours via the creaky old coastal route, and is inconveniently timed for those of us in the Bay Area.  There has been talk of restoring overnight trains (the old Southern Pacific Daylight)  between San Francisco and LA via the same route, but it has been just talk for a couple of decades.

  219. 219.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Geminid: They’ve heard of battery cars and battery buses and figure batteries are magic, I guess. But even if you could do it it’d be a bad application of the technology. If you have a fixed railroad it’s just about an ideal situation for putting in a fixed power delivery system. Charging up some colossal battery to run the train just so you don’t have to run a wire is ridiculously inefficient.

  220. 220.

    Roger Moore

    @Ruckus:

    There was also the fact that after WWII LA grew exponentially and not in any sort of centralized way. I grew up in Monrovia and about half of that didn’t exist housing wise till 1948 and beyond.

    Two points:

    1. Most of the cities that existed before WWII were connected by the Red Cars.  For example Monrovia was on a line that ran right down the middle of Huntington Drive.  That could have been maintained and improved for far less than the cost of building the 210.
    2. The cheapest time to build a rail network (or a freeway, for that matter) is when you’re building the whole area from the ground up.  That’s how the Red Cars were built.  If LA had shown foresight and built rail out to the post-War neighborhoods when they were being built, it would have been much easier and cheaper than coming back a generation or two later and trying to shoehorn them into a fully developed area.

    That’s not to say the Red Car system was perfect.  It was built as cheaply as possible, and one of the shortcuts they used was to build lines primarily as a hub and spoke system, with DTLA as the hub.  For example, the Red Car went to both Glendora and Covina, but the lines were completely separate; if you wanted to take a Red Car between them, you’d have to go almost all the way to downtown and then back.

    That was one of the things the freeway system got right.  The freeways were built all over the place and only required people to go through downtown when that was gen. A lot of the cities outside LA- and even the people living in the outlying areas of LA, like The Valley- thought sending everything through downtown enhanced the political power of the movers and shakers concentrated there.

  223. 223.

    J R in WV

    @tokyocali (formerly tokyo ex-pat):

    I wish the US had invested more in rail travel rather than going all in on car culture. It makes you wonder how the country would look today.

    West Virginia used to have rail travel between rural towns, into the “big cities” all over. Because coal was hauled over every little RR from remote coal mines. I remember as a little guy, 5 or 6, my grandma, mom and aunts took everyone on a train trip from the small coal town where grandma lived to a larger coal town and back.

    We went through tunnels, where it got dark and smelly, because there was no A/C , and the windows were open in summer time. My little brother was still a babe in arms… cousins and all were on the trip because it was just before the Rail passenger service was ended forever.

    In France we visited a tiny rural community, and the hotel was just across the street from the RR station. They were sorry they said for the noise of the trains, which was a bell ringing at the crossroad. We could have had those trains right here, to take rural folks into town, but no, no, not enough money to be made! Coal hauling makes more money… Sad.

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