| Waiting on a Train: The Embattled Future of Passenger Rail Service--A Year Spent Riding across America |  | Author: James McCommons
Creator: James Kunstler
Publisher: Chelsea Green Publishing
Category: Book
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Rating:  40 reviews
Sales Rank: 197,470
Media: Paperback
Pages: 304
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 8.9 x 5.9 x 0.9
ISBN: 1603580646
Dewey Decimal Number: 385.220973
EAN: 9781603580649
ASIN: 1603580646
Publication Date: November 6, 2009
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Product Description
During the tumultuous year of 2008when gas prices reached $4 a gallon, Amtrak set ridership records, and a commuter train collided with a freight train in Californiajournalist James McCommons spent a year on Americas trains, talking to the people who ride and work the rails throughout much of the Amtrak system. Organized around these rail journeys, Waiting on a Train is equal parts travel narrative, personal memoir, and investigative journalism.Readers meet the historians, railroad executives, transportation officials, politicians, government regulators, railroad lobbyists, and passenger-rail advocates who are rallying around a simple question: Why has the greatest railroad nation in the world turned its back on the very form of transportation that made modern life and mobility possible?Distrust of railroads in the nineteenth century, overregulation in the twentieth, and heavy government subsidies for airports and roads have left the country with a skeletal intercity passenger-rail system. Amtrak has endured for decades, and yet failed to prosper owing to a lack of political and financial support and an uneasy relationship with the big, remaining railroads.While riding the rails, McCommons explores how the country may move passenger rail forward in Americaand what role government should play in creating and funding mass-transportation systems. Against the backdrop of the nations stimulus program, he explores what it will take to build high-speed trains and transportation networks, and when the promise of rail will be realized in America.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 40
 Rail Overview July 23, 2010
P. Thomas (Fredonia, WI USA)
Great book on the state of railroads in the US. The author takes the different trains around the country. I found it unbiased in how it was written.
The author talks with transportation authorities around the country during a time of oil concerns. It highlighted strong and weak points for rail expansion. It did a nice job highlighting the politics.
Enjoyable documentary style book.
 All Along the Water Tank.... July 12, 2010
Mcgivern Owen L (NY, NY USA)
"Waiting on a Train" gets off to a great start: You have to love that cover shot from an open vestibule door. Try finding one on Amtrak these days! And that title must be borrowed from the classic tune by Jimmy Rodgers, the original "Singing Brakeman" from Meridian, Mississippi.
Author McCommons spent 2008 traveling about the country via by train, interviewing railroad executives, passengers, crew members, politicians plus state and local officials. He does a fine job of combining these talks into a cohesive and smooth flowing narrative. Chapters are short and focused. Nice descriptions of the passing scenery are provided. Author McCommons has done his homework and expended some shoe leather. A good reviewer should keep politics out of his/her comments but such is not possible when the subject is Amtrak or public transportation. This reviewer enjoyed the solid skewering given the Bush brothers, W and Jeb, who were rabidly against any government involvement in rail public transportation. Did that attitude derive from their old man, who arrantly proposed $0 budgets for Amtrak?
The only caveat to WT is the author's attitude. His tone is slightly superior and a tad wonky. This reviewer has taken several long distance Amtrak trips and the passenger's advance frame of mind toward the journey is critical. And most emphatically, folks who like riding and reading about trains are railfans (!), not "buffs" and assuredly not "foamers"! This posture warrants the subtraction of a star from the rating above.
Yet overall, "Waiting On a Train" is a solid piece of reporting which gives an accurate picture of the current state of passenger railroading in the United States. On an optimistic note, we RAILFANS can take heart that there are a lot of smart, dedicated folks out there right now trying to provide this country with the cohesive, connected rail service it so urgently needs.
The future of American intercity travel June 25, 2010
S. Cichanowicz (Milwaukee, WI)
James McCommons has written a very unique perspective on the transportation debate in America after treking over the country in 2008 while usually originating in Milwaukee from bus from the Upper Pennisula. A unique history of the railroads in America, and how the unwinding of the industry and near death of trains in the late-1960's led to the creation of AMTRAK, which was "set up to fail". Living in an area of the country, Wisconsin, that has been a relative interurban success story with the Chicago to Milwaukee Hiawatha line, along with having several major AMTRAK proponents in government such as Governor Tommy Thompson and DOT secretary Frank Bussalacchi, Wisconsin, along with California, North Carolina, Washington, and more recently Illinois are states that are migrating toward intercity trains making 500 mile connections or less as the future of regional transportation. Other states such as Texas and Florida are caught in the political turmoil of high speed rail, tax payers and political mitigation of proposing and killing major bullet train initiatives. Wisconsin currently finds itself in this same conundrum as it is an election year and a high speed rail line linking Chicago Madison, through Milwaukee, with eventual completion to Minneapolis-St. Paul is currently an approved rail project that has been swayed into a political football. As high gas prices, and interconnectivity between regions become major issues, this book offers a perspective of what a future with connected regional cities may look like compared to what we currently have. Train transportation has a home in the US, but the DOT only funded or cared about highways and airports until very recently due to the private industry that makes up railroads with passenger and freight trains sharing the same right of ways, as the freight railways own the track. Very good reading, and should be required reading for all the politicians bashing rail as a viable transportation option.
Before Proposing Ideas, Read this Book June 18, 2010
Joseph Hildenbrand (Philadelphia PA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I agree with some of the detrimental comments other reviewers posted. The author could have gone deeper in some cases and present a little more comprehensive and detailed proposal without getting too technical and boring; main reason why I give the book four stars not five. But it gets four because it is an excellent read and every one who wants to, or is already involved, with an interest in passenger railroading has to read this book as a primer. If you have no idea how a freight railroad runs, what are the main blockades other than money that face passenger rail expansion, or in general, how a railroad can contribute to American transportation infrastructure now and in the future, this book is is a great introduction. The author keeps it simple, to expand on his work, volumes have to be written but would be laden with technical and economic details that would put off a common reader who wants to get the "gist" of the current and future American passenger railroad operations.
Rail fans need to read this book to help quell the outrages propositions (Like coast to coast bullet trains) commonly found on forums, news groups, magazines, conventions, and even passenger rail advocacy groups. I see some of these proposals as detrimental to the cause because the grand and sometimes outrages scope they posses have the propensity to be instantly ignored by those who make the decisions. In result, ignoring the more sensible proposed solutions that need to be implemented.
Sometimes it is the transit companies themselves whose grandiose plans get shot down because they cannot see the big picture. As an example of this, research SEPTA's Schuylkill Valley Metro (SVM) project in Philadelphia Pennsylvania. They wanted a to build a system that connected two main cities; Reading and Philadelphia with a huge and overbuilt rail system that was a clear overshot of what is needed with price tag of over $2 billion. I should mention that there was an existing service between these cities as recent as 1983. Instead of working with what they had and negotiating with the host railroad (Norfolk Southern), SEPTA wanted a unique, separate system designed to support frequent head-ways that most likely will not be needed and never reach capacity goals. Because of this grandiose plan, the project was nixed by the feds as too expensive for what is needed. I honestly believe that if the planners of the SVM knew and UNDERSTOOD what was in this book, trains would be running between Philadelphia and Reading today. Now, it may be at least 10 more years.
In conclusion, if you want to know what is wrong with this country in regards to the problems plaguing American transportation and how the railroads can help, read this book immediately. It will get your foot in the door so you can understand not only what it takes to get a passenger rail project moving, but what obstacles it will face. You will have a better understanding in reading rail proposals and the political underlinings involved. Again, a great foundation for more advanced research if so inclined, but enough for a casual reader to get what is going on and what is needed.
Entertaining and enlightening June 1, 2010
Anonymous (Burlington, VT USA)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I have read many books about Amtrak. Most of them at some point will digress into trip-from-hell, can you top this stories or just sink into a boring depression about the current state of Amtrak. This book does not fall into those traps. The book is just as enjoyable to read when the author is having a superb trip or a less than stellar trip. Chapters are short and fast paced.
It is also accurate, informative and very up to date. I couldn't find any factual errors.
For anyone who enjoyed Stilgoe's Train Time, this book will be an ideal complement.
High marks all around. I hope that his suggestions are implemented and America regains its vision for rail transportation. We are going to need it.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 40
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