Long distance rail simply cannot compete with planes anymore which is why Amtrak only does well in the NE corridor and a few areas in the midwest centered around Chicago. If they actually want to get good ridership in areas like the southeastern US then they should focus on making commuter rail systems akin to the tri-rail. Miami, Orlando, Atlanta, Houston, Nashville, Memphis, and Jacksonville have really well placed freight rail right of ways with room for dual tracking so it'd be incredibly cheap to do and would allow for decent speeds between 60-80 mph to be reached. Do a little bit of land acquisition and you could quad track some areas for the sake of future intercity services like Brightline.
A twofold major problem in the southwest commuter service is the train cars and locomotives. (also the rails but that's a topic for another day)
Starting with the train cars.
The surfliner competes and for parts of the year is the busiest commuter rail service amtrak runs in the nation only outcompeted by the Ne corridor. It runs between San Diego at the south end up to San Luis Obispo at the north end. It is a little over 300 mile one way route.
Surfliner two level cars. Notice the doors are low to the ground, this will come up later.
Surfliner cars were made in late 90s/early 2000s and are completely falling apart. The doors get stuck constantly; the air conditioner are finnicky and often not fully working, panels falling off the wall etc. Amtrak also has also run out of these and there are no backup surfliner cars so when we need a rescue train set (in the case of a breakdown for example) all Amtrak has is a single, single level set with cars made in the fucking 60s! Now these have been refurbished over the years but they have high platform doors with trap doors and steps for low level platforms. There are no lower level platforms on the entire surfliner route so you can see how this would be a problem. The comet cars have manual doors that slow down every station boarding and exiting on a commuter train that has one to two minutes designated to each stop. They are also an ADA nightmare and many of our passengers are seniors that have difficulty going up the stairs.
Amtrak's 8th St yard is notorious nationwide for how shitty the mechanical department is. They don't do basic maintenance well if at all. Many of the issues we have could be solved by them just doing regular proper maintenance but it just doesn't get done. This really compounds the issues we have with the aged equipment that really could us refurbishment. But they can't pull any cars out for refurbishment because they have no back up equipment and no concrete plans on new replacement equipment other than hand me downs from the San Juaquin's california cars.
Shitty comet cars, notice the height of the doors.
An easy to see difference in height for low level and high level platforms.
I'll make another rant post about the locomotives amtrak and the state of California chose for this in a bit. Also need to rant about LOSSAN some as well.
