Saw this comment on a local news post about the mayor’s state of the city address and the mayor mentioned some of the new public transportation initiatives including adding another line to the train, I was under the impression that Amtrak was a success until the rails became denationalized and corporate greed limited the railways and pushed passenger trains to the sides
Dear Friends, Thanks for reporting about transportation, a favorite of mine. So, as with previous editions at the mayor’s spot, what is the cost of a bus ride? train ride? Bullet Train ride? and how much of the cost will the passenger pay, and how much of it will the taxpayers pay? Dejavu all over again, Yogi. When is socialism a better transportation solution than the private sector? Why don’t our leaders follow their own experts’ advice about transport funding? They concluded “user fees” is best; but we reject that advice, and add a 1/4 cent here, and a 1/2 cent there, here, there, and everywhere, and what do we get in the end? Lousy public sector transit, where only the public sector union employees win, while the rest of us pay higher, higher, and higher gas taxes, and other taxes. Why don’t we cut spending instead of raising taxes, fees, fines, assessments, mandates, etc.? Why did we denationalize the railroads after they were nationalized during the Wilson Administration? Why did Lincoln say “no” to Gen. Granville Dodge, at the White House in 1864, when Dodge, who was later UPRR top civil engineer, told the President that the transcontinental railroad should be owned by the government. Dodge recites his interview with Lincoln in his seminal “How We Built the Transcontinental Railroad.” During the debate in 1970 on creation of the National Railroad Passenger Act (a/k/a Amtrak), advocates promised that it would be “self-sufficient in three years.” How’d that work out? By 9/11/01, taxpayers’ subsidies to Amtrak, in hundred dollar bill stacked together, reached higher than the World Trade Centers had stood. We had Amtrak, but our airport security didn’t serve us well. In 2009 Mark Derry published a letter in which I predicted that the price of a gallon of gas would rise to $10.00 to fund the bankrupt-from-conception Bullet Train. Looks like I was too optimistic. Today, I’d venture to say it will be closer to $20/gallon. History teaches us that public sector “services” come with a fatal price tag. Today’s leaders have us on the Road to Serfdom, same route taken by the USSR.
Amtrak was historically a lifeboat. By 1971, passenger rail service was haemmoraging money. This was the year the Penn Central formally went insolvent (an all-but-foregone conclusion from its inception, but still, at the time it was the biggest bankruptcy in history at the time).
The government promised the freight railways they’d take the burden off their hands, and they mostly all lined up and said “sure, take our ancient coaches and obsolete E8s!” They never controlled the rails outside the Northeast Corridor and a few other corner-cases. Perhaps there was a bit more good-faith cooperation earlier on with the freight carriers, but it was never a big priority for them.
I find any claim of short-term viability questionable: it would take them years just to refurbish and retire obsolete equipment. The only possible angle for savings would be by combining redundant routes from different private operators. However, they probably had to quote optimistic situations to paper over the legitimate real reasons we need passenger rail. (among other things, it’s scalable to rural communities in a way air isn’t)