SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Joe Manchin, the senior Senator from West Virginia, has inserted language in the FY19 Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies appropriations bill that will force Amtrak to employ at least one ticketing agent in every state that it serves.
His reasoning? "Amtrak has told me that most of their sales are now online, but West Virginians buy far more tickets at the Charleston station than most places around the country. That's not surprising, as nearly 30% of West Virginia is without internet access, and mobile broadband access is also difficult in my state's rugged, mountainous terrain, making online ticket sales difficult."
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
Senator Makes Amtrak Hire Ticket Agents Because 30% of West Virginia Lacks Internet
|
Log In/Create an Account
| Top
| 30 comments
| Search Discussion
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
All of life is a blur of Republicans and meat!
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 10 2018, @03:06PM (1 child)
It really depends where you're going. The biggest problems with Amtrak are that it's underfunded and has to lease tracks from the freight companies. For shorter trips, it's not so bad, but I took it one time from Seattle to the midwest and we were nearly a day late by the time we got there because Amtrak doesn't have spare train engines that they can take out of service for things like winterizing. We got stuck in Havre more or less all night due to freezing conditions.
Other countries, are set up differently, I know that in China specifically, train travel is still a normal way of traveling between cities and the government spends a lot of time and money keeping it that way.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 11 2018, @09:32AM
Keeping it that way? You say it like the Chinese Government is trying to force people to use trains.
The fact is there are no better options for China. So it's better to spend time and money improving the best option. Go see how many people in China travel for the Lunar New Year and then try to think of alternative travel methods that will be better for the longer distance routes.
More people using the roads for long distances is not a good idea in China: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_National_Highway_110_traffic_jam [wikipedia.org]
And they're among the worst drivers in the world.