Drew Dowdell

me too.... but should have the name Colony Park.... ya know.. to fit in the the Taurus and Escort naming scheme.

Lexus ES tall wagon

keep nudging towards superchief styling ford.... you'll get there eventually

AWD MKX is ~$4,000 cheaper than AWD SRX sticker for sticker.

but but..... globalization is great.... right?

That's what the rest of us call a Saab 9-3

because they're concepts.

Build'em and Sell'em GM. Scion what?

lieutenant commander

The cost effectiveness isn't there because the airlines are getting government subsidy that Amtrak doesn't get. They make the cost of flying artificially low.

Why doesn't Saturn do more advertising featuring Jill Lajdziak with the Sky?

My friend who had that 1998 Riviera was constantly rotating and re-balancing his tires. It got to the point where he got the tires done at walmart just to get the lifetime free rotate/rebalance.

It's good to be the king.

Not a flame... but the Buick is definitely more cohesive of the three...

it's a subi engine.... I'm sure it's a flat 6

a pea green new DTS hearse. a white MKZ with blue cloth top.

First, the inequities against Amtrak via other methods of travel: 1. The airlines don't have to pay for the airports. They don't pay for them to be built and they don't pay for the maintenance. Generally, the local county or city government covers all of these expenses. The airports simply lease gates from the government authority, generally at a substantially sub-market rate. <i.e the square footage cost compared to a retail shop.> Airports are kept solvent by the retail shops inside the airport. 2. Congress and the President consistently complain about spending $1.5 billon on Amtrak while thinking nothing of spending $800 billion on a national highway bill. Those tractor trailers that ship you your goods are basically getting a free ride courtesy of Uncle Sam. Sure, there is a gas tax, but that hardly makes up for the highway mantainence costs. 3. The freight railroads own and maintain all their own track <with exceptions in the north east and west coast>. As such, they have a say over who runs on their rails. They make much more profit running their own frieght over their lines at 45mph than they do allowing an Amtrak train 60, 90, or 100mph access over the same line. 4. Amtrak owns and maintains all of it's own stations and much of the passenger track in the northeast. This is the biggest source of inequity. If the airlines had to pay for and maintain the airports they use, you'd see air travel in this country change dramatically. Air travel would suddenly become a huge luxury rather than a necessity. Additionally, all the track that runs from DC to Boston and west to Harrisburg is electrified. This is very expensive to maintain, but allows for very fast, clean transportation. My Solutions: Amtrak needs to be broken up into two pieces. The first piece is the infrastructure. A Federal government agency, advised by Amtrak and some of the freight carriers, that owns and maintains all of the passenger rail infrastructure. This agency would also be responsible for expanding the passenger-only rail network much in the same way the Federal Highway Administration does with highways today. The other piece is a privatized passenger rail entity... the Amtrak that you know today but only the trains themselves. They own/lease the actual equipment such as engines and cars. Their job is to run trains and nothing else. They lease station space from the Federal Rail Infrastructure agency. The 3rd thing that needs to happen is that an incentive needs to be offered to the freight lines to expedite passenger trains using their rails. Some current freight lines can't handle high speed trains, but even cruising along at 70mph is still better than being stuck behind a coal train barely pushing 35mph. 4th, offer incentives of some sort for the freight rail companies to begin offering Passenger service again to spur some competition. They can lease station space from the Federal Rail Infrastructure Agency just as Amtrak can. The side effect of this, if effective, is that the freight lines will begin to upgrade some of their track on their own. We will never see rail travel like they have in Europe, but we can substantially improve what we currently have.

There is only one gauge of track in the U.S. for any sort of main line travel. 4' 8.5" The problem with passenger rail travel in the U.S. is that the passenger trains have to share the tracks with the freight trains <with exceptions in the north east and very west coast>. Amtrak does not control the line, they have to request permission to run on Norfolk Southern's, CSX's, Union Pacific's, and Burlington Northern/Santa Fe <BNSF>'s lines. The freight railroads have an amazingly efficient operation going and Amtrak slows their more profitable freight operations down. I can rant for days on what is wrong with Amtrak and what needs to happen to fix it, but I won't bore you with that.

It's fastest for land based rail travel. Mag Lev costs nearly $1 million per mile of track and as such is not cost effective.

it gets a solid "eh" from me. It's no longer unique.... not even in a bad way. Now I could mistake it for being a crossover from any asian company

in no particular order CTS-v GTO Aurora v.1 Impala SS Z06 Avalanche Grand National Escalade Sky I'm not sure there is a 10th.....

with a mustash imprint....

It'll come out just in time for the Saturn Astra and MCEed Cobalt to pwn it.

*ahem* the line is "Don't you think I look cute in this hat?"