2015-05-16 – David Levinson, Transportist

In light of Amtrak 188, this seems appropriate from England in 2007

We were returning from Harrogate to London last night on the Great North Eastern Railway (GNER) after attending the well-run and interesting UTSG conference.
The trip from Harrogate to Leeds was uneventful. On the trip from Leeds to Kings Cross in London, we were interrupted by what I believe the announcer said was a Code 3 on Coach M. (We were on a different coach so at the time didn’t know what that was), though we did not stop there.
Later the announcer told us that there had been vandalism, a rock through a window, which needed to be repaired before we proceeded.
The coach was held at Peterborough for about 15 minutes while repairs were made to the broken window, and we arrived 15 minutes late. When we arrived, I could not locate the vandalism, so it must have been cleaned up fairly well.
Three observations spring to…

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With the recent Amtrak crash, media has once again taken interest in the sorry state of passenger rail in the US.

I get quoted in an article by Alan Neuhauser for US News and World Report: With Amtrak, Smaller May Be Better: Slashing the rail service’s budget may be just the thing Amtrak needs. We talked for 17 minutes. My soundbite:

“Getting rejected by Congress might be the best thing for rail in the Northeast,” says David Levinson, a transportation engineering professor at the University of Minnesota. “It would have a short-term disruptive effect unless something else is put in place,” he allows, but “for real change, you have to change the governance: who’s getting the money, who’s spending the money, how much they’re getting.”