No surprises from the leadership of this FORMER railroad town.

[Dog Walker]

From the City Notes in today's Daily Record:

Mayor John Peyton doesn’t plan to attend but was invited by Amtrak to take a May 1 inspection trip over the Florida East Coast Railway between Miami and Jacksonville. Amtrak President and CEO Joseph Boardman said the idea is to bring public officials onboard to discuss development of intercity passenger rail as a way to “address highway and aviation congestion, protect the environment and enhance economic development.”

Mr. Boardman, apologies for our mayor, but there are a lot of us here that would really appreciate being invited along.

[Captain Zissou]

HAHAHAHAHA!!!! This is an opportunity handed to him on a silver spoon.  So typical.

[JeffreyS]

I want to like our Mayor but I just do not think it will ever happen. He tries now and then but Failures with the Law school, art school, Med school, Landing Parking, no bid deals, delay the courthouse to save money, no support for mass transit, ill concieved new fees, delays on the Kuhn projects, and general sprawl support.

[mtraininjax]

His legacy will be his ineffectiveness as Mayor. He truly has wasted the last 8 years of Jacksonville's existence. I think he knows less about Jacksonville now, than he did when he started as Mayor.

[LPBrennan]

Nothing new, alas. Many years ago, when Amtrak began running the Palmetto New York to Savannah, with an early morning departure and same-day late evening arrival in both directions, a number of us noted that it could easily be extended to Jacksonville to provide daytime service north to Georgia and Carolina points. I called the Mayor's office (Godbold, I think) to ask him to support it, and I was invited to come down and meet with one of his aides. I met with an older, heavy-set gentleman who didn't seem very interested in what I had to say, and informed me at first that there was no more passenger service to Jacksonville anyway as Amtrak had left the Terminal station a few years previously. He was not aware that there was a new station out at Clifford Lane (lots of people still don't know that). I made the case, but I could tell this was going nowhere and the Mayor's office had no interest in railroad passenger service anywhere.

Several years later, of course, Austin Coates made a good case for the extension, as it would save Amtrak money in crew costs just running the train empty to a Jacksonville terminus! The Palmetto became a well-patronized train. The late Joe Miller, Amtrak conductor extraordinaire, told me the train was known as the Chicken Bone Express because of the number of passengers carrying a box lunch with them. I had friends who took a group of co-workers to Savannah for a St. Patrick's Day excursion, and the group loved it. But Amtrak, in typical clumsiness and ineptitude, decided the coach-only, lounge-equipped Palmetto could be extended to Miami via Tampa, with sleepers and the whole works. It was a miserable failure, with a drastically altered schedule destroying its utility as a convenient train from Jacksonville north. But rather than reverting to its former status and schedule, the train was discontinued altogether. Sigh. Amtrak...

I often wonder (in my cynical old age) about the truth of Amtrak's having been founded to run the trains so badly they could be totally abandoned.

[Ocklawaha]

I often wonder (in my cynical old age) about the truth of Amtrak's having been founded to run the trains so badly they could be totally abandoned.

LP I know something about this first hand.  YOU ARE DEAD ON CORRECT - THAT IS WHY IT WAS FORMED.  Originally the railroads did not like the idea, they balked at a federal take over and asked only to be relieved of the deficit.  Tricky Dicky and his, well, what-ever-you-want-to-call-them, had other idea's borne of the PENN CENTRAL fiasco. (One that makes the recent investment house collapse look like child's play)

On A-Track-RAILPAX-National Railroad Passenger Corporation day, at PENN CENTRAL GROUND ZERO!  A VP came bursting through the doors screaming, "WAHOO! WE'VE DONE IT! WE'VE SHOT THE PASSENGER TRAIN!!" The whole floor erupted into a wild frenzy of high fives and hand shakes.  I kept thinking, this can't be true! Someone wake me the hell up because this is a nightmare!  AMTRAK has proven it's lack of effort to run a well connected, intercity, passenger rail network.  It should have NEVER been formed in the first place, never allowed to happen! But then under the same leader, we had Kent State, and Jackson State, and Chicago, and later Watergate.  The amazing thing is that we allowed such an albatross to survive without immediately rethinking the idea after Watergate and returning to something like we had before... But we were past the point of no return and the Oil Crisis threw a monkey wrench in their plans for total destruction. Many of these players were the same officers, with new faces, from the great streetcar conspiracy... GM, GREYHOUND, STANDARD OIL, MACK TRUCK, PHILLIPS, GOODYEAR, WHITE, and SOUTHWEST AIRLINES... 

Today, we have the only game in town, us with the FEC Ry, and the Sunset Limited, which will probably be restored alright, but as a daily Los Angeles - CHICAGO train via San Antonio (another abandonment of the Southeast).  When Amtrak pulls off this newest "improvement" the south, EVERYTHING south of the Ohio River and East of the Mississippi, will be served by 4 daily long distance trains, Florida by 2 of them. (not counting the Palmetto, Carolinian or Piedmont due to short routes.

SAD to say, they are also under new orders that NO IMPROVEMENTS will be made without state funding. This will virtually kill any chance of new Long Distance trains, LA-JAX, CHI-JAX-MIA, STL-JAX-MIA/TPA, CIN-ATL-JAX etc... To further deter the states, they are quoting startup prices in what is being investigated as hundreds of millions ABOVE the true cost. So y'all tell me, are they good guys or more of the same. The Penn Central Exec's would be proud of them.

OCKLAWAHA