by lordsigma12345
For the last couple years Amtrak’s CEO has been hinting at his vision of the long distance trains. He does not buy into the notion of the long distance trains as essential transportation and instead sees value in a few of them as more a rolling museum and land cruise than essential transportation and would like to trim down to a couple of the most scenic routes where they could concentrate on making those couple routes a premium experiential product likely similar to what’s offered on the Canadian and focus the rest of the network on corridor services. His feeling seems to be that the justification for running these should not be that they are essential but more for the same reasons that we fund the Smithsonian - for historic and cultural reasons. Just assuming that his vision were to go forward (and not getting into the debate on the long distance vs corridors as there are several other threads for that), just curious what people’s thoughts are on what the best route or routes to use if Amtrak were to go forward with a premium enhanced service class. It appears Anderson has selected the Coast Starlight, Empire Builder, and California Zephyr but would you agree or disagree with his choices and if not which route or routes do you think would work best for this and what are people’s thoughts on how they should model this service concept? It is on Amtrak’s five year plan to start developing this in the current fiscal year.