New Departures

by Perl, Anthony

• ISBN13: 9780813122113
• ISBN10: 0813122112
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2002-02-08
• Publisher: Univ Pr of Kentucky

Summary

" North America faces a transportation crisis. Gas-guzzling SUVs clog the highways and air travelers face delays, cancellations, and uncertainty in the wake of unprecedented terrorist attacks. New Departures closely examines the options for improving intercity passenger trains' capacity to move North Americans where they want to go. While Amtrak and VIA Rail Canada face intense pressure to transform themselves into successful commercial enterprises, Anthony Perl demonstrates how public policy changes lie behind the triumphs of European and Japanese high-speed rail passenger innovations. Perl goes beyond merely describing these achievements, translating their implications into a North American institutional and political context and diagnosing the obstacles that have made renewing passenger trains so much more difficult in North America than elsewhere. New Departures links the lessons behind rail passenger revitalization abroad with the opportunity to recast the policies that constrain Amtrak and VIA Rail from providing efficient and effective intercity transportation.

Author Biography

Anthony Perl is associate professor of political science at the University of Calgary

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	vi
Public Policy: The Key to Rail Passenger Renewal	1	(41)
Building on Achievement: A ``New Model Railroad'' for the Twenty-First Century	42	(34)
Sidetrack: How North American Rail Passenger Renewal Got Delayed by the Stalemate Over Public Enterprise Legitimacy	76	(58)
False Starts with High Speed: State and Provincial Efforts to Leapfrog Amtrak's and VIA's Perennial Problems	134	(54)
Reinventing Amtrak: The Drive for Commercial Self-Sufficiency by 2003	188	(39)
Setting Up the New Model Railroad in North America: Bringing Passenger Trains into a Transportation Policy for the Twenty-First Century	227	(35)
Afterword	262	(5)
Notes	267	(29)
Bibliography	296	(20)
Index	316