Your daily source of fresh takes on news affecting America's passengers. See also the weekly NARP Hotline.
April 4, 2014
Written By Henry Scherck Photo from Inhabit.com With new equipment and hundreds of miles of dedicated right of way, Chinese high-speed rail has begun to cut into airline profits. Earlier this year, China’s Xinzheng International Airport became the site of a massive riot. Angry airline customers swarmed the airport, removing machines and strewing them about the concourse. Police struggled to...
April 3, 2014
Written By Sean Jeans Gail Representative Paul Ryan’s plan to eliminate all funding for Amtrak operations earlier this week (part of a larger budget proposal) is, sadly, part of an all too predictable trend: a leading House Republican argues to eliminate funding to Amtrak because it doesn’t make money—all while failing to apply that same standard to roads and highways. It’s certain that...
April 2, 2014
Written By Jim Loomis Originally published on Travel and Trains and Other Things by Jim Loomis The people who fuss and fume because passenger rail in the U.S. is subsidized will acknowledge (if pressed) that all public transportation is subsidized. And they will also concede, albeit grudgingly, that the roughly $1.5 billion that Amtrak gets every year from the federal government is a tiny fracti...
April 1, 2014
Written By Sean Jeans Gail NARP is pleased to welcome Union College student Henry Scherck onboard as a policy intern. Henry is a lifelong passenger train advocate, and will be helping us carry out our mission to build a modern U.S. passenger train network this spring and summer. Hello! My name is Henry Scherck and I am going to be a policy intern here at NARP this spring! I have long been inte...
March 31, 2014
Written By Colin Leach Coming soon to Nashville? "The Simpsons" promotional card licensed via Wikimedia Foundation. Fans of the long-running FOX series The Simpsons might remember a 1993 episode where the citizens of Springfield, swayed by a clever salesman’s presentation, invest the town’s treasury in a monorail service with hilariously disastrous results. While we at NARP don’t pretend...