Well, okay. But I checked today and yesterday and all 10 trains I looked at were within 10 minutes of being "on-time" which is pretty decent. Nothing is perfect, especially railroads that don't own their own tracks. I don't know how often you've taken that route (is that delay outside Lancaster built-in? Or was it anomolous?), but "on-time" is still 50+mph.
> I do not quite understand your argument about competition with
> airlines. Would not that mean that NEC prices should be
> lower rather than higher than on other rail lines?
I think it should be clear that Amtrak doesn't charge enough to cover it's expenses, and on the routes where it does the worst, the prices are even lower: they are in that zone where raising fares gets them fewer customers. On the NEC, because the airlines are able to command higher per-mile fares, Amtrak can do likewise. The Acela problems this year show that if the riders can't get Acela, they'll fly: so there's not much point in pricing Acela more cheaply than flying.
> Methinks that the main factor is not
> competition but whatever the market can bear.
That's called "competition" :-)
> not long ago I was on a Greyhound bus heading for Harrisburg ...
[ ... ]
> if I had a choice between the stinking $18
> Greyhound service and, say, $40 Amtrak service I would not
> mind shelling $40 ...
It looks to me like PHL-HAR is about $20 on Amtrak. Since the whole trip BAL-HAR is $65, the (shorter) BAL-PHL segment is the killer; that's the NEC for you :)
> If breaking up would entail ownership by publicly owned
> regional services (e.g. by regional transportation authorities)
> rather than the federal entity in Washington that would make more
> sense.
I think there are "two Amtraks" and I think the current regional routes would work well in that way, but the long-distance routes should be scrapped. If they could find a way to sell them to a private concern (like I said, Disney or Carnival), I'm all for that. Now that the national railroads have all largely combined, they might be able to cut a deal. But freight is a money-maker and they might want to focus on that for a while ... and of course they have their own problems.
> I also think that this whole reorganization issue is a canard to
> cover up the fact that the real reason of Amtrak ailments is gross
> underinvestment in infrastructure (tracks) due to political
> maneuvering of competing interests (short distance airlines and
> auto mfg).
Well, Amtrak isn't blameless, but perhaps about the same amount of blame deserving of the Legacy airline managers. Speaking of, that industry is splitting apart due to it's own mismanagement -- this might help rail in general.
/jordan