Friday Humor: How to get more people to take mass transit - offer free booze
News from Amtrak has us thinking that offering $100 in free alcohol to passengers taking an overnight train ride could not only entice more people to take mass transit but could also get some drunk drivers off the road and on the rail. Well, maybe not... but more people on the train is good news, right? Think of it this way: if the Amtrak train is going to be going somewhere, it is best to fill it up with passengers, right?
Now, it might say something about our social lifestyle if the best way that Amtrak can figure out how to fill their seats is by making them drunk, but that is not for this website to ponder. I wish that Amtrak could put some of their money towards making faster, more efficient trains.
Is this anything like the Coors Light train from the commercials?
[Source: CNN]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
jg3 1:37PM (8/10/2007)
I'd love to see Amtrak upgrade & succeed in getting more passengers, but because of my experience with Russian trains and too many drunks on board, I see this as simply foolish. Further, they'll need to offer the same amount of non-alcoholic beverages to the non-drinking crowd to avoid alienated a part of their customer base. This could backfire. Seriously, ever tried to pass a drunk in those narrow aisles and hallways?
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greatslack 4:52PM (8/10/2007)
I was going to take an Amtrak train on vacation, but from North Carolina, the trains only run north-south, and a round-trip ticket to Charleston, SC from Raleigh, NC costs over $100 per person. It would cost maybe $80 in gas for me and three friends to drive there and back, compared to over $400 by train. I could It simply costs too much to travel by train. The government basically runs Amtrak, why not subsidize the costs a little?
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