Canada sounds like it followed the american transportation model, build the airports and the highway system and let passenger services share the rail way with freight trains. I took a train from NYC to Chicago and back. We were 3 hours late both ways. We had to wait for a boat at a drawbridge. A man stepped onto the tracks and died because tracks are not separated from people like freeways.They still have at grade street crossings. Most of the delays were waiting for clearance from the owners to use the tracks, freight has priority. I am told there are not delays on the Boston to Washington route where amtrak owns it's own lines. How can you expect a system to survive when you don't even build the infrastructure. Amtrak has a mandate to provide a public service of serving underpopulated rural regions for political reasons, yet is given a billion dollars a year, Bush wants it to be 500 million next year. The airlines and automobiles are swimming in mega billions of dollars in subsidies. The fact is, politically Amtrak is a dead duck. The airlines and auto related industry , and oil companies pump big bucks into campaigns. Trains unfortunately are much more efficient in fossil fuel use than cars or planes. Amtrak as a government agency can't give big bucks to politicians campaigns. That is why roads and airports are provided for by government while trains are supposed to be self sufficient. If we spend 1 year of airline money on our train systems,over 100 billion dollars, we would have a state of the art train system. We subsidize our highways even more than that.
Bucky alum - You live in Newark, I was working there before 9-11. You have one of the best and fastest lrt systems, the newark city subway. It comes about once every minute all day. I agree about commuter systems, they suck. Very expensive and they run at terrible frequencies. Unlike lrt , I've never seen one help build a downtown. The new lrt , the Hudson-Bergen LRT works very well except in Jersey city, thanks to interference from the mayor Brett Shundler.Through Bayonne and lower JC it runs quickly, but then takes a slow curvey route through areas the city wants to redevelope. People groan through the needless curves as it moves at 2 miles an hour. Once the train goes past the Newport center mall, it speeds up and rises above ground. The new line from Hoboken north will not have any of these problems. I advise you to take the newark LRT, they just added 2 stops. Up to 2 years ago I rode pcc cars on the line. They now have new articulated cars which are also on the Hudson Bergen line.