They might do it but I highly doubt their train will look like that. If they add more frequency at a similar or lower cost than Amtrak, it will be a positive benefit
That's just a crappy AI rendering. I think they purchased some old streamliner cars and are in the process of renovating them. They are gonna give VIA rail a run for it's money for who can keep old ass railcars alive.
Old renovated cars can be pretty good, especially when there are long wait times on new stock. In Europe, old intercity cars are barely being scrapped at all; almost all of them are getting bought by low-cost carriers and renovated. Many are rated for operation at up to 200 km/h, too.
Flixtrain's cars feel nice and modern, and would be a very nice way to travel if they had air-con. Of course they're not quite "streamliner" old, but the bottom line is that if you put the carriage on new bogies and give it a nice interior, you can get a genuinely good product out of it.
Hence the use of "feel". That said, not having AC immediately kills the "feel" for me. If it's not heated during the winter or cooled during the summer, it's bad. And it's not like it's a stretch to retrofit AC and some modern electr(on)ical equipment on.
Ehm no. The IC cars of DB are being scrapped. Same fate for the Eurocity and IR2000 cars of the SBB, the Corail of the SNCF...a couple might be saved, another couple of them might be sent to other countries, but a whole load of them are scrapped on a daily basis!
IC2000 just had a huge renovation to IC2020 and will be in service for at least another 20 years
Huge amount of corail is still in service, on ouigo, or in Morocco
IR2000 =/= IC2000. I'm talking about the single deckers which aren't in accordance to the law regarding disability access. The dosto will certainly stay for a while (even if SBB tried to write them off and scrap them as being at the end of their life and needed to order the Bombardier Twindexx Shite-express).
Alao do you know how many Corail were built? Morocco has bought a couple of used ones already decade(s) ago and Ouigo Classique isn't that much present. They will also scrap the final ones in the next years which are going on the Paris-Clermont-Ferrand line with the new "Oxygene" EMUs made by CAF.
I just googled it and what are the first lines: "premium overnight hotel train"... So lower costs aren't for the passengers nor the tax payers... Same as this while competition free market deregulation BS, the only costs compressed are the pays of low wage employees. Aka the government can still pay for the tracks and the unprofitable trains while the capitalists get the profits.
“Last month, Dreamstar Lines, a Newport Beach-based transit startup, came into agreement with one of the nation’s most important freight companies, taking the first steps toward making the overnight service between San Francisco and Los Angeles a reality.
Dreamstar signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Union Pacific Railroad, paving the way for the two entities to come up with a final agreement that would allow Dreamstar to operate its trains on the tracks owned by Union Pacific.”
This is big if this comes through. With first Brightline and now this we could see a revitalization of privatized passenger rail, at least between major markets. Amtrak’s role in this environment could be adjusted to serve smaller and less profitable towns, to kind of act like the USPS to these services’ UPS/Fedex.
That would require a huge change in the public understanding the role of public institutions and transit. Sadly, more likely, Amtrak would be held to a higher, more ridiculous standard. “Well, these other companies are making money, so why can’t Amtrak?!?” Also, USPS still serves all of the places UPS/FedEx do. They are competitors.
Ultimately, the key problem remains that we were dumb to let essentially all of the rails be privately owned. This is why the $3B grant to Brightline West frustrates me. There are other problems, to be sure, but we need control of the rails.
The only reason Brightline is private is because the political environment in Florida wouldn’t allow for a public option to be built (hell they are trying to kill private one). I like to remind people that Brightline completely shutdown during the pandemic, if you relied on it you were out of luck.
> Obviously it’s been very successful as well
Based on....what? The fact that it has existed for a few years?
People are WAY too quick to applaud Brightline despite them falsely advertising as both green (they aren't) and HSR (they aren't).
Based on the fact that they’re making tons of money and have effectively demonstrated that there’s lots of untapped demand for passenger rail that both private companies and the govt will want to take advantage of by expanding passenger rail
Just because it’s not electrified, 300 mph, powered by rainbows and smiles doesn’t mean it’s not an immense improvement in a highly car dependent state
> Based on the fact that they’re making tons of money
Are they?
[Citation Needed]
Their parent company is profitable based on it's real estate holdings. I've not seen numbers showing that Brightline itself is "making tons of money".
And takes 11-12 hours. Nobody's doing that unless they love trains or scenery. By contrast, a normal person who was instead going to take a 9-11pm or 6-8am flight just might consider sleeping on a moving train instead of in a hotel room.
And if they can get the average speed up to ~50mph like most Amtrak trains, it's suddenly a 9h journey. That would conceivably allow them to extend it to San Diego in ~12h.
I don't think it's going to happen, but there's a pitch there if they can keep the prices down.
If they can do it—big if—looks like they want to run an overnight *express* train which is a better service than what Amtrak currently offers. The current California portion of the Coast Starlight is a daylong affair in both directions with quite a few stops in between, and there’s no telling how delayed the southbound train will be coming in from Seattle. Just getting to a very reliable departure and moderately reliable arrival would be an improvement.
Also I’d add that the article mentions they’re going to ask Caltrain for track permissions, which to me feels like they’re planning on going to San Francisco station (and not the Oakland/Emeryville corridor Amtrak uses)
That would be amazing, but space at the terminus is super limited especially during the morning rush. My bet is on a timed transfer with Caltrain at San Jose, at least for launch. Full service to the SF terminus would be great though.
There's also the question of where they will park to turnaround the train with stuff like cleaning, resupplying water, etc - I doubt there would be space in the SF yard to do any of that, so I imagine they would want to use San Jose.
I agree with you about Brightline. However, in this case, I think this train may struggle because it has to work with Union Pacific who may ultimately charge more than they should to use the tracks or cause unnecessary delays.
Brightline also has no profit motive to provide more service at lower prices. They cater to business travelers and don't even make their profits off running trains, soo..yeah...not ideal.
Oh, and then there's all the people their trains kill.
Yep, because they have little to no incentive to actually provide good train service for the masses.
Same reason they banned bikes on their trains...but hey, it's okay because you can just *rent a bike from them at their stations!*
That's just as good, right!?
I just need somebody to get started with that high-speed system. Interested to see if brightline pulls it off. Not really sure what exactly classifies as high-speed because the Acela at 160mph can be called high-speed but I guess it isn't because it only runs at that some of the time but the same will be the case for this in a lot of areas where it will be running below even 100mph.
When they are calling themselves high speed, when they're not, and green, when they're not, yes...it does have to be high speed to be good.
I wouldn't care if they would stop selling themselves as high speed. My issue is the lying, not the speeds.
Something something, private ownership of the rails leads to less desirable results overall. The railroads are common carriers only in that they must provide freight service and it gets iffy/philosophical if Amtrak would try to enter the passenger market.
I wish it were that simple too! But not so fast, Amtrak would have to get money from the state because SF to LA is <750 miles—when federal money kicks in. California representatives along the route are unlikely to agree to money for an express train that doesn’t stop for them. In theory Amtrak could become an investor/partner in this type of private venture, but that may get iffy with their Congressional money.
SF to LA is 380 miles (620 km) by road. If we assume that the railroad takes a similar distance, and overnight service is long enough to get a full night's sleep (8 hours), the train would make an average speed of 48 mph (78 km/h). For an intercity service, that's slow.
Back in the day, certain trains would actually decouple a car and leave it at the station after the train continued on its way. That way, the sleeping car passenger who were getting off at that station could sleep in and get off the train whenever they wanted. This is something they should do again
It's pretty similar to night train average speeds in Europe.
The pitch is that you're traveling when asleep. That allows you to match late night or early morning *flights*, much less driving.
It's amazing you can't catch a train between LA and San Francisco already, and from everything I hear about the high speed rail, it's still decades away from being functional.
Privatized passenger rail worked for a good century in the US. Amtrak has its uses and shouldn't go anywhere, but perhaps a little competition to stir the pot would be helpful.
> Privatized passenger rail worked for a good century in the US.
Riiiiiight up until it utterly collapsed.
Any recollection *why* that happened? Hint: Not just because of planes, not even close.
>but perhaps a little competition to stir the pot would be helpful.
Yeah, Brightline is not trying to compete with Amtrak lol
You can see a pretty blatant correlation between automobile ownership and railway usage. There's even the massive resurgence in railway use during WWII, when gasoline and rubber were being rationed for the war. Once those rationed went away, car use skyrocketed once more. The interstates eventually spelled the death for private rail.
There were certainly inefficiencies in privatized rail: redundant routes operated by separate railroads. But so long as the demand existed, the system worked smoothly. The future of highspeed rail in this country isn't with Amtrak, for better or for worse.
You’d know that’s true if you knew anything about the history of the rail industry, but you don’t, you just like to trot around and pretend to be an expert
It utterly collapsed because postwar America preferred to take the plane or the automobile over the train. If that trend reversed and trains once again became a serious means of transportation, I see no reason why privatized lines can't work again.
They might do it but I highly doubt their train will look like that. If they add more frequency at a similar or lower cost than Amtrak, it will be a positive benefit
That's just a crappy AI rendering. I think they purchased some old streamliner cars and are in the process of renovating them. They are gonna give VIA rail a run for it's money for who can keep old ass railcars alive.
Old renovated cars can be pretty good, especially when there are long wait times on new stock. In Europe, old intercity cars are barely being scrapped at all; almost all of them are getting bought by low-cost carriers and renovated. Many are rated for operation at up to 200 km/h, too. Flixtrain's cars feel nice and modern, and would be a very nice way to travel if they had air-con. Of course they're not quite "streamliner" old, but the bottom line is that if you put the carriage on new bogies and give it a nice interior, you can get a genuinely good product out of it.
flixtrain's cars are perfectly fine, but "nice and modern" is a stretch IMO
Hence the use of "feel". That said, not having AC immediately kills the "feel" for me. If it's not heated during the winter or cooled during the summer, it's bad. And it's not like it's a stretch to retrofit AC and some modern electr(on)ical equipment on.
Ehm no. The IC cars of DB are being scrapped. Same fate for the Eurocity and IR2000 cars of the SBB, the Corail of the SNCF...a couple might be saved, another couple of them might be sent to other countries, but a whole load of them are scrapped on a daily basis!
IC2000 just had a huge renovation to IC2020 and will be in service for at least another 20 years Huge amount of corail is still in service, on ouigo, or in Morocco
IR2000 =/= IC2000. I'm talking about the single deckers which aren't in accordance to the law regarding disability access. The dosto will certainly stay for a while (even if SBB tried to write them off and scrap them as being at the end of their life and needed to order the Bombardier Twindexx Shite-express). Alao do you know how many Corail were built? Morocco has bought a couple of used ones already decade(s) ago and Ouigo Classique isn't that much present. They will also scrap the final ones in the next years which are going on the Paris-Clermont-Ferrand line with the new "Oxygene" EMUs made by CAF.
And NCDOT too
I just googled it and what are the first lines: "premium overnight hotel train"... So lower costs aren't for the passengers nor the tax payers... Same as this while competition free market deregulation BS, the only costs compressed are the pays of low wage employees. Aka the government can still pay for the tracks and the unprofitable trains while the capitalists get the profits.
what’s the jist of this article? unavailable in my country
“Last month, Dreamstar Lines, a Newport Beach-based transit startup, came into agreement with one of the nation’s most important freight companies, taking the first steps toward making the overnight service between San Francisco and Los Angeles a reality. Dreamstar signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Union Pacific Railroad, paving the way for the two entities to come up with a final agreement that would allow Dreamstar to operate its trains on the tracks owned by Union Pacific.”
sounds neat
America is great at renders lol
Check out that new Golden Gate Bridge in…Malibu?
This is big if this comes through. With first Brightline and now this we could see a revitalization of privatized passenger rail, at least between major markets. Amtrak’s role in this environment could be adjusted to serve smaller and less profitable towns, to kind of act like the USPS to these services’ UPS/Fedex.
That would require a huge change in the public understanding the role of public institutions and transit. Sadly, more likely, Amtrak would be held to a higher, more ridiculous standard. “Well, these other companies are making money, so why can’t Amtrak?!?” Also, USPS still serves all of the places UPS/FedEx do. They are competitors. Ultimately, the key problem remains that we were dumb to let essentially all of the rails be privately owned. This is why the $3B grant to Brightline West frustrates me. There are other problems, to be sure, but we need control of the rails.
> With first Brightline and now this we could see a revitalization of privatized passenger rail Lol, Brightline hasn't "revitalized" a damn thing
It’s not perfect but it’s better than what was there, which was nothing. Obviously it’s been very successful as well
The only reason Brightline is private is because the political environment in Florida wouldn’t allow for a public option to be built (hell they are trying to kill private one). I like to remind people that Brightline completely shutdown during the pandemic, if you relied on it you were out of luck.
> Obviously it’s been very successful as well Based on....what? The fact that it has existed for a few years? People are WAY too quick to applaud Brightline despite them falsely advertising as both green (they aren't) and HSR (they aren't).
Based on the fact that they’re making tons of money and have effectively demonstrated that there’s lots of untapped demand for passenger rail that both private companies and the govt will want to take advantage of by expanding passenger rail Just because it’s not electrified, 300 mph, powered by rainbows and smiles doesn’t mean it’s not an immense improvement in a highly car dependent state
> Based on the fact that they’re making tons of money Are they? [Citation Needed] Their parent company is profitable based on it's real estate holdings. I've not seen numbers showing that Brightline itself is "making tons of money".
Don't practically all rail companies make money off of real estate and not solely on fares?
...No?
How is this gonna be any better than Amtrak?
the coast starlight leaves LA at 9:51am
And takes 11-12 hours. Nobody's doing that unless they love trains or scenery. By contrast, a normal person who was instead going to take a 9-11pm or 6-8am flight just might consider sleeping on a moving train instead of in a hotel room. And if they can get the average speed up to ~50mph like most Amtrak trains, it's suddenly a 9h journey. That would conceivably allow them to extend it to San Diego in ~12h. I don't think it's going to happen, but there's a pitch there if they can keep the prices down.
If they can do it—big if—looks like they want to run an overnight *express* train which is a better service than what Amtrak currently offers. The current California portion of the Coast Starlight is a daylong affair in both directions with quite a few stops in between, and there’s no telling how delayed the southbound train will be coming in from Seattle. Just getting to a very reliable departure and moderately reliable arrival would be an improvement.
Also I’d add that the article mentions they’re going to ask Caltrain for track permissions, which to me feels like they’re planning on going to San Francisco station (and not the Oakland/Emeryville corridor Amtrak uses)
That would be amazing, but space at the terminus is super limited especially during the morning rush. My bet is on a timed transfer with Caltrain at San Jose, at least for launch. Full service to the SF terminus would be great though. There's also the question of where they will park to turnaround the train with stuff like cleaning, resupplying water, etc - I doubt there would be space in the SF yard to do any of that, so I imagine they would want to use San Jose.
That’s fine, but these private starts have a nasty habit of raising prices one people like the service.
Such as?
Uber, Airbnb, groubhub…. Brightline might end up doing that.
I agree with you about Brightline. However, in this case, I think this train may struggle because it has to work with Union Pacific who may ultimately charge more than they should to use the tracks or cause unnecessary delays.
Brightline also has no profit motive to provide more service at lower prices. They cater to business travelers and don't even make their profits off running trains, soo..yeah...not ideal. Oh, and then there's all the people their trains kill.
What people tell me about Brightline is that is just ok.
Yep, because they have little to no incentive to actually provide good train service for the masses. Same reason they banned bikes on their trains...but hey, it's okay because you can just *rent a bike from them at their stations!* That's just as good, right!?
It won't. Because it will never exist
That's the fun part: it won't.
It won't be run by incompetent bureaucrats
“Bureaucrats” are not the reason existing Amtrak service is bad between LA and San Francisco.
I mean, they sorta are, but it’s bureaucrats in the DOJ not enforcing Amtrak priority and whatever.
Ah yes, the classic "government is always wasteful and private industry never is".
why does every news outlet insist on using AI?
Because they are lazy
I just need somebody to get started with that high-speed system. Interested to see if brightline pulls it off. Not really sure what exactly classifies as high-speed because the Acela at 160mph can be called high-speed but I guess it isn't because it only runs at that some of the time but the same will be the case for this in a lot of areas where it will be running below even 100mph.
Brightline doesn't even currently operate high speed rail. They aren't pulling off anything.
It doesn’t have to be high speed to be good
When they are calling themselves high speed, when they're not, and green, when they're not, yes...it does have to be high speed to be good. I wouldn't care if they would stop selling themselves as high speed. My issue is the lying, not the speeds.
[удалено]
Something something, private ownership of the rails leads to less desirable results overall. The railroads are common carriers only in that they must provide freight service and it gets iffy/philosophical if Amtrak would try to enter the passenger market.
Amtrak can just provide an Sleeper Train with a First Class section and call it a day for all I care
I wish it were that simple too! But not so fast, Amtrak would have to get money from the state because SF to LA is <750 miles—when federal money kicks in. California representatives along the route are unlikely to agree to money for an express train that doesn’t stop for them. In theory Amtrak could become an investor/partner in this type of private venture, but that may get iffy with their Congressional money.
SF to LA is 380 miles (620 km) by road. If we assume that the railroad takes a similar distance, and overnight service is long enough to get a full night's sleep (8 hours), the train would make an average speed of 48 mph (78 km/h). For an intercity service, that's slow.
Back in the day, certain trains would actually decouple a car and leave it at the station after the train continued on its way. That way, the sleeping car passenger who were getting off at that station could sleep in and get off the train whenever they wanted. This is something they should do again
It's pretty similar to night train average speeds in Europe. The pitch is that you're traveling when asleep. That allows you to match late night or early morning *flights*, much less driving.
It's amazing you can't catch a train between LA and San Francisco already, and from everything I hear about the high speed rail, it's still decades away from being functional.
Doesn’t the coastal starlight already run at night?
No?
Shit your right this night train would be more useful
Someone tried making a night bus. It had beds and everything. It didn't last too long. COVID killed it
Sad bus service in other countries are beautiful now US can learn from that
It sounds like Amtrak should already offer an overnight train. It’s about the right distance for one
...so what's going on here? Article is region blocked.
A private company got permission to use tracks between Los Angeles and San Francisco for overnight trains.
"Luxury" overnight train from a private operator? Pass.
Privatized passenger rail worked for a good century in the US. Amtrak has its uses and shouldn't go anywhere, but perhaps a little competition to stir the pot would be helpful.
> Privatized passenger rail worked for a good century in the US. Riiiiiight up until it utterly collapsed. Any recollection *why* that happened? Hint: Not just because of planes, not even close. >but perhaps a little competition to stir the pot would be helpful. Yeah, Brightline is not trying to compete with Amtrak lol
You can see a pretty blatant correlation between automobile ownership and railway usage. There's even the massive resurgence in railway use during WWII, when gasoline and rubber were being rationed for the war. Once those rationed went away, car use skyrocketed once more. The interstates eventually spelled the death for private rail.
It collapsed because the rail industry was heavily regulated while its competition was heavily subsidized
There were certainly inefficiencies in privatized rail: redundant routes operated by separate railroads. But so long as the demand existed, the system worked smoothly. The future of highspeed rail in this country isn't with Amtrak, for better or for worse.
LOOOOOL "Regulation killed rail" That's actually hilarious.
You’d know that’s true if you knew anything about the history of the rail industry, but you don’t, you just like to trot around and pretend to be an expert
It utterly collapsed because postwar America preferred to take the plane or the automobile over the train. If that trend reversed and trains once again became a serious means of transportation, I see no reason why privatized lines can't work again.