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Derailed: What Went Wrong and What to Do About America's Passenger Trains
America needs train service. It suffers from crowded highways and airports, making travel nearly intolerable. Amtrak's future is bleak, and Congress is demanding that Amtrak be profitable by the turn of the century or shut down. Joseph Vranich, who worked to create Amtrak, now nearly three decades later declares it a "failed experiment." Free of his ties to the rail industry today, he candidly reviews Amtrak's troubled history, its loss of market share, and its ability to provide better and faster service. Vranich reveals how Amtrak trains on most routes are not only slower than American trains were fifty years ago but are also slower than some trains found today in the Third World. Vranich argues for passenger trains where and when they are needed. He praises innovative commuter rail agencies, high-speed train planners, and long-distance "land-cruise" trains run by independent organizations. He also offers insights from other countries, pointing the way to a successful rail system in the United States. This is a blueprint to defederalize and liquidate Amtrak-- a bold and convincing call to kill a wasteful government system. Vranich shows how to smartly dissolve Amtrak while keeping vital trains running in the twenty-first century.
258 pages, Hardcover
First published October 15, 1997
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
May 22, 2025
The core thesis of this book is to put together a litany of complaints about Amtrak and use those to argue that Amtrak should be broken up, with some regional service going to the states and other parts being sold off to private businesses.
The complaints are valid and the author does put together basically a private accountability report highlighting a number of serious challenges. However, their argument that Amtrak just needs to be broken up does not necessarily follow.
This book was written around 1995. Thirty years later, Amtrak does have the Acela running high-speed along the NEC. New lines like the Borealis are doing very well. It is also true that Brightline is doing well in building high-speed rail in underserved areas.
The author never fully grasps with the historical context of why Amtrak came to be. Passenger rail was in a death spiral and Amtrak was formed to save something. How many people are actually taking a multiday train from Chicago to Seattle? I did. But I imagine more people are using Amtrak to do intercity rail at shorter points along the line. It is a bit out of scale, like using a jet engine for a lawnmower. But if these routes stopped, nobody would take their place. It just wouldn't happen. And would that actually be better for serving the public?
The author waxes a lot on businesses like the American Orient Express, which is now bankrupt. He talks a lot about maglev trains, which never came to fruition. Thirty years later, we still struggle with public transit. Often that is due to intentional limitations in state capacity. But I don't see how throwing in the towel will provide better service. Rather, it seems like we'd have private lines that we end up needing to nationalize once again.
The complaints are valid and the author does put together basically a private accountability report highlighting a number of serious challenges. However, their argument that Amtrak just needs to be broken up does not necessarily follow.
This book was written around 1995. Thirty years later, Amtrak does have the Acela running high-speed along the NEC. New lines like the Borealis are doing very well. It is also true that Brightline is doing well in building high-speed rail in underserved areas.
The author never fully grasps with the historical context of why Amtrak came to be. Passenger rail was in a death spiral and Amtrak was formed to save something. How many people are actually taking a multiday train from Chicago to Seattle? I did. But I imagine more people are using Amtrak to do intercity rail at shorter points along the line. It is a bit out of scale, like using a jet engine for a lawnmower. But if these routes stopped, nobody would take their place. It just wouldn't happen. And would that actually be better for serving the public?
The author waxes a lot on businesses like the American Orient Express, which is now bankrupt. He talks a lot about maglev trains, which never came to fruition. Thirty years later, we still struggle with public transit. Often that is due to intentional limitations in state capacity. But I don't see how throwing in the towel will provide better service. Rather, it seems like we'd have private lines that we end up needing to nationalize once again.
October 5, 2023
The more things change, the more they stay the same. This book was published in 1997, when Amtrak was 26 years old. Now Amtrak is 52 and plagued with the same problems. The author makes some good arguments for allowing it to fail, picking up the useful pieces and privatizing them, but let's be honest, the government is going to continue to kick the can down the road for the next 52 years as well.
November 4, 2023
Written by a former Amtrak employee, this is a 250 page rant about how the railroad sucks, why it sucks, how it could be improved and why it can't (or doesn't want to). The scariest thing is that this book came out 25 years ago and very little has changed in 2023, and the United States is still so far behind most other countries when it comes to rail infrastructure!
June 20, 2007
A little too critical, but a good look at what America should be doing to promote rail travel.
August 20, 2008
I love trains. Guess that's why Amtrak is great, even at its lowest moments --it's all why have in the USA
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews