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Amtrak wins first round of AAR court case, judge rules Amtrak is a ‘governmental entity’
THIS COURT RULED CORRECTLY. IT IS TIME FOR THE FREIGHT RAILROADS TO REALIZE THAT AMTRAK IS HERE TO STAY AND THEY NEED TO STOP TRYING TO DOWNGRADE AMTRAK. IT’S ALMOST LIKE THE EARLY 1970’S WHEN THE RAILROADS WERE TRYING TO MAKE PASSENGER SERVICE SO BAD THAT PEOPLE WOULD NOT RIDE THE TRAINS. PASSENGER SERVICE HAS NEVER BEEN NEEDED MORE NOW THAN EVER. JUST AN OLD MAN’ THOUGHTS.
Big Brother continues to look over your shoulder (and in your wallet).
It’s about time that the freight railroads do the right thing with Amtrak!
Let’s see now…Amtrak is a government authority that can now write rules that the owners of the track that it uses must now comply with. That is like a person renting a room in your house now having the ability to force you to paint the house the color they want. It certainly does open up some new issues that many railroads will want to avoid, possibly reducing the ability to add new routes. Remember, initially the railroads were the stockholders of Amtrak, along with the government, and had some control over it.
This will be used as an excuse to cut back on unit train coal shipments to power plants. Then, The Regime will dictate that the railroads need to be nationalized along with the power plants. That is, unless enough people wake up by November.
Amtrak is a government entity stealing resources from the railroads. If anything, Amtrak should be paying the railroads for track occupancy and wear, not the other way around.
Some great comments from Steve from Colorado, Jim from New Jersey and Dale from Georgia. All your comments touch on what made this Correct decision. And rather or not these exact railroad companies were around when Amtrak was created should not remove them from running their trains on time.(because all of these companies have predecessors).
Guse, turn off Rush, Fox News, and get a life.
Messrs. Patterson and Harrison are so right! The young(or old) Republicans writing in must have forgotten(or never knew) why Amtrak came to be 40 years ago!
The taxpayers have voted in favor of Amtrak with steadily increasing ridership! The passenger train should not be required to show a profit any more than a highway can show a profit!
Sadly, today private railroad management conveniently forget
that their forebearers took great pride in providing the citizens
of this country with great service. Only the profit motive counts…people are no longer important.
The judge says it is a government entity, so I guess it must be.
This decision vindicates Joe Boardman’s not rushing to heel to UP last fall.
The chickens are coming home to roost. It is fully time for the remaining freight RRs to remember they OWE an obligation to operate Amtrak trains (regularly-scheduled or extras) in exchange for them getting out of the passenger business in 1971. The problem is Officials of the major RRs today were not around in 1971, and handily and seemingly forget that Gov’t-mandated obligation.
There are two sides of the story here, one is that railroads build maintain and use there rails and allow Amtrak to use them however having the government tell a private business what they should or should not do even if it cuts into the profits of again a private company is not right. And then we have Amtrak which I do like but it does not generate a profit and seems to be driven only by the government. I want to know when they are going to ask us taxpayers what we think?
One more step on the way to the insideous intrusion of the government under the present administration into private business. The AAR had it right and the judge got it wrong. Say your prayers that this travesty of legalease will be over and a new administration will be in the White House. Enough is enough!!!
When our freeways are priavtized into toll roads, they will become “greedways” for profit and our transportationsystem will grind to a halt after they take the money, run, and declare bankruptcy.
David Haddix from Arizona, why am not surprised?! a republican president named Richard Milhaus Nixon signed the National Passenger Railroad Act in 1970. And although Railpax, Amtrak’s first name, was designed to fail, it has not. If Amtrak were to fail, our airports,highways and buses could not handle this load!
The freight railroads fail to understand that Amtrak is one of their customers and pays for a service. If they treated other customers as badly as they treat Amtrak they would be shunned. It’s not unreasonable for customers to expect certainperformance standards.
The freight railroads fail to understand that Amtrak is one of their customers and pays for a service. If they treated other customers as badly as they treat Amtrak they would be shunned. It’s not unreasonable for customers to expect certainperformance standards.