Regular Passenger Service From San Jose to Sacramento?

On Sun, 21 Nov 2004 14:03:25 -0800, "CHANGE USERNAME TO westes"
wrote:

Is there any small airline that is running regular passenger service between
San Jose and Sacramento? What about any city in the Bay Area and
Sacramento? There was an outfit out of Mather that was supposed to be
doing this with a Cessna Caravan, but their web site appears mostly
abandoned and no one answers their phone, so I guess they folded.

I just can't believe that no one can make the economics of this work at
$150/passenger using something economical to fly like a Caravan.

The airline is called Amtrak. There are 12 flights a day each way
between San Jose and Sacto. The flight lasts 3:15 and costs $51 round
trip. You can carry a machete and don't have to take off your shoes
unless you want to.

Don

Even using your figure of 3:15, that isn't as fast as 1:30, and I'm just
surprised that no small commuter airline cannot find enough passengers to
make it work.

--
Will
westes AT earthbroadcast.com


"Don Tuite" wrote in message
...
On Sun, 21 Nov 2004 14:03:25 -0800, "CHANGE USERNAME TO westes"
wrote:

Is there any small airline that is running regular passenger service
between
San Jose and Sacramento? What about any city in the Bay Area and
Sacramento? There was an outfit out of Mather that was supposed to be
doing this with a Cessna Caravan, but their web site appears mostly
abandoned and no one answers their phone, so I guess they folded.

I just can't believe that no one can make the economics of this work at
$150/passenger using something economical to fly like a Caravan.

The airline is called Amtrak. There are 12 flights a day each way
between San Jose and Sacto. The flight lasts 3:15 and costs $51 round
trip. You can carry a machete and don't have to take off your shoes
unless you want to.

Don

Even using your figure of 3:15, that isn't as fast as 1:30, and I'm just
surprised that no small commuter airline cannot find enough passengers to
make it work.
The airline is called Amtrak. There are 12 flights a day each way
between San Jose and Sacto. The flight lasts 3:15 and costs $51 round
trip. You can carry a machete and don't have to take off your shoes
unless you want to.

Speaking of useless projects and bullet trains...well, we are now.

You wanna see why our country is so @#$@!! up? Here's why. Nothing
to do with Red or Blue states.

As one responder mentioned, Amtrak provides a great service between
the Bay Area (San Jose/Oakland/Berkeley) and Sacramento. A guy that
works for me commutes twice a week from the Berkeley station to
downtown Sacto. But, it is somewhat slow as another responder
mentioned. Also it is unreliable, because about once a month
something happens to make my guy come in an hour or two late. The
problem is Amtrak "rents" the tracks from Union Pacific or whoever,
which runs freight and doesn't give a damn about Amtrak service.

So it's an ideal route to run some kind of high-speed, dedicated track
passenger service, i.e. bullet train. The demand is clearly there and
the alternate transpo is basically a car, which as yet other
responders pointed out is very problematical.

So what train service is being promoted for California, with no
discussion whatsoever? A friggin' bullet train between North and
South California! Where did this come from??? I haven't seen any kind
of cost comparison between this proposed boondoggle and other forms of
transpo improvement, like adding another lane to I5 (mostly two lanes
now), or upgrading Hwy. 99, or improving airports in the North and
South, or anything else. In fact nobody's said why transpo between
the two regions is so desparately bad that it needs a $20-$30 Billion
Dollar project like this! The transpo that is screwed up just about
everywhere in California is local, not regional. And the two regions
that can really use an improvement, Bay Area/Sacto, are not getting
it.

On 21 Nov 2004 20:57:09 -0800, Bob Fry
wrote:


Speaking of useless projects and bullet trains...well, we are now.

Last June, I tooks the Amtrak whatchamacallit from Penn Sta in NYC to
the Rte 128 stop near Boston. About the same time as the EWR/BOS
shuttle and half the cost. Some tracks were leased, some were
Amtrak's. Travel on the leased tracks was sucky, but it looked like
we were doing 90 on the Amtrak tracks. I think Amtrak is acquiring
more right-of -way along the corridor.

I'll leave it to somebody else to tell me whether Amtrak or the
airlines are more heavily subsidized. I will acknowledge that the US
government has filled the pockets of thieves with more money than
Midas dreamed of since the days of Crockett, Stanford, Gould, etc.

The SF/LA bullet is stupid because LA isn't a place with a center.
It's bigger than half the countries in Europe. And there isn't
anyplace in the Central Valley that isn't served better by the Hound.

To stay somewhat on-topic, Southwest provides fast, cheap, regular,
reliable service between SF and the LA satellite airports, including
Phoenix and San Diego.

Don (Also pleased with SW on the Oakland/MIdway hop last week.)

"Don Tuite" wrote in message
...
On 21 Nov 2004 20:57:09 -0800, Bob Fry
wrote:


Speaking of useless projects and bullet trains...well, we are now.

Last June, I tooks the Amtrak whatchamacallit from Penn Sta in NYC to
the Rte 128 stop near Boston. About the same time as the EWR/BOS
shuttle and half the cost.

I live in BOS and it's gotten to the point that I wouldn't take the shuttle
unless I had to, which you still do if you need to make a 9am meeting in
Manhattan. It's simply more comfortable.

That being said, I can hardly praise Amtrak for it all. They spent 8 billion
IIRC to electrify all the rails and to build the new trains. In the end
though they can't actually run them at top speed except for twenty or thirty
miles of the route because the tracks are too close together most of the way
to allow trains to pass safely at higher speeds. And they didn't realize
this until *after* spending all the money. So, how come the "Acela Express"
is faster than the old Metroliner? Simple: it makes fewer stops. And it
still makes too many- at least three between Boston and New York. They could
easily make the trip in under three hours if they offered a true "express"
service. ANd they could have done it ten years ago with the equipment they
owned then.

Of course, another big problem with Amtrak is that while everyone in
Washington loves to grandstand and cut its operating subsidies, but then
anytime Amtrak tries to cut service on a line through Senator Pothole's
district, he makes sure it doesn't happen. The result is that there are
bridges up and down the Northeast corridor, which is viable and useful,
which are way behind in maintenance because Amtrak is running lines in
between Wisconsin and New Orleans and god knows where else that lose $100
for every passenger that gets on. This makes no sense. Oh wait, it's
Washington DC- makes perfect sense.

-cwk.