Amtrak

This article, published by the Idaho Business Review, quotes Discovery Institute Fellow Bruce Agnew: “We have to come to this with some imagination,” Cascadia Center Policy Director Bruce Agnew said at the PNWER conference. He suggested partnerships could be forged with groups like Tourism Idaho and commuter rail systems along the line in Denver and Seattle. The rest of the Read More ›

This article, published by The Seattle Times, mentions Discovery Institute Fellow Bruce Agnew: Bruce Agnew, policy director at the Discovery Institute’s Cascadia Center, a think tank that studies transportation issues, said the fee has been waived by the Canadian government. He said that Canadian officials are viewing the second daily route as a pilot project that Public Safety Canada will Read More ›

This article, published by The Seattle Times, quotes Discovery Institute Fellow Bruce Agnew: “Look ahead, and maybe we will see the opportunity for Canadian trains to come to Seattle,” Agnew said, “like the Whistler Mountaineer or the Canadian Rocky Mountain passenger train.” The rest of the article can be found here.

This article, published by The Washington Post, quotes Tom Till of Discovery Institute: “This is exactly the right move to make,” said Tom Till, a senior fellow at Discovery Institute in Seattle who in 1999 led the Amtrak Reform Council, a group created by Congress to study the railroad’s problems. “The kind of funding needed to make the corridor work Read More ›

The Amtrak Reform Council today urged Congress and the Bush administration to adopt a series of proposals it first made three years ago to try to stabilize the cash-strapped passenger rail service. The group of a dozen transportation, labor and finance experts from both the government and the private sectorsuggested making Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor — the system’s largest and most Read More ›

If WorldCom goes bankrupt, will we have enough telephone companies? Do we have the right number of supermarkets, fast food restaurants and hotels? Neither you, nor I, nor anyone else knows, but the private enterprise market system sorts it out and gives us approximately what we need, where we need it. For each type of business, there is an optimum Read More ›

OLYMPIA — Increasingly popular passenger trains rumble between Portland and Seattle four times a day as the upgraded Amtrak Cascades service continues to attract business travelers, sightseers and Mariners fans seeking an alternative to airports and Interstate 5. Ridership has risen sixfold in the past eight years, turning the 466-mile Eugene-to-Vancouver, B.C., corridor into one of Amtrak’s fastest-growing services. Rider Read More ›

SEATTLE — There’s an unusual coalition of train lovers here determined to ensure at least some passenger rail survives along the American West Coast even if Amtrak dies. What is interesting for British Columbians is that some of the strongest proponents of passenger rail on the U.S. West Coast are trying to “internationalize” the rail corridor. They want fast, efficient Read More ›

The quick, pragmatic answer is the national passenger snail service known as Amtrak cannot be allowed to collapse. That means the railway should receive the short-term financing needed to keep it alive through October and into next year. Clearly, however, the three-decades-old Amtrak is a failure as it is now configured. Last week, the Bush administration proposed shifting more of Read More ›