Amtrak: 35 and still . . . failing

[Save Our Trains Michigan]

Story

Friday, May 12, 2006

Amtrak, the government's excuse for a passenger rail system, rattled past the 35th anniversary of its creation May 1, testament to two American truths: The federal government can't run a railroad, and Americans refuse to let it quit trying.

Amtrak was a creation of the Richard Nixon administration, a patchwork of 184 trains serving 314 stations. Its federal creators, convinced that passenger rail service had no future, thought it would die out in three years. They underestimated the affection of the American public for a ground-based transportation system more comfortable than either the airplane or the bus, and the ability of that public to persuade its congressional representatives to keep those trains creaking on.

So now Amtrak, more than $3 billion in debt, services 500 stations in 46 states, and Congress hasn't the slightest idea what do with it - except keep it alive, barely, despite President Bush's determination to do away with its federal funding.

Keith Ashdown of Taxpayers for Common Sense said it well when he told the Associated Press that Congress has never given the rail service a clear consensus opinion on how they want it to change, "except saying they have to be more fiscally responsible."

That plays into the fiction Congress has promulgated ever since it birthed Amtrak - that it could, indeed, make a profit without some form of federal subsidy. That's a feat the passenger airline industry never has been able to accomplish. It's equally impossible for passenger rail.

 

[Amtrak OBS Gone Freight]

included in the story is this..........

"But the big problem is, in those 35 years, too many people have come to think of the name "Amtrak" as encompassing all possible passenger rail. It does not.

Amtrak, as an entity, is a failed business model; passenger rail, as a transportation mode, is successful the world around - but generally moreso under private ownership.

Both Britain and Japan depend heavily on passenger rail service. Both have privatized portions of their operations while subsidizing portions of the infrastructure and found, to their surprise, that the routes can be profitable. Strange that a Congress controlled by Republicans, heirs of a party that once encouraged private enterprise, cannot come to that long-elusive consensus about the future of passenger rail, for which there is a demand, and Amtrak, for which there is not."

Hmmmm, I kinda thought this is sorta the goal all along!!!! Now "profitable" I am not sure about, but "privatization?" Am I missing something here? It seems that has been made clear to me! We'll see. OBS....