I like riding Amtrak and watching its trains go by. However, the arguements for Amtrak are a perfect example of why we pay so much in taxes each year and the Federal Gov’t gets larger each year. Everyone wants their favorite program to get funding because another similar or competing program is getting its funding. Multiply this by the 100’s to 1,000’s other similar funding proposals the federal gov’t faces, and pretty soon you have a budget deficit.
Amtrak carrys, at the most, 1% of intercity travelers in the US. Would it be missed if its federal subsidy was cut? Yes, to those 1% of travelers and the 0.0009% of the general population that are railfans and the even smaller percent of the general population who work for Amtrak. But, in nearly all cases, no. The highways and airlines could easily absorb these travelers without a problem. Where a problem with this absorption exists, i.e. commuter operations, the local and state govenments should fund these operations with a small amount of federal money for infrastructure.
Some say save Amtrak for times of crisis such as post 9/11 or a fuel crisis. But Amtrak does not have the ability to quickly be a viable option in either case. The equipment, employees, capacity on contracting railroads, and other infrastructure is not there and would take years to acquire. Building and storing equipment for these emergencies is possible but prohibitively expensive and does nothing to address the capacity and staffing issues.
Keep Amtrak for my riding and viewing pleasure? I would like to say yes, however under current realities I would say no. The federal gov’t needs to get smaller and focus on its true Constitional duties. I don’t believe hauling people from point A to point B is one of these duties.
I don’t see much evil in the reform council. It was chocked full of pro-passenger rail folk - Carmicheal, Weyrich, Coston,…and the NARP guy, whose name I forget.
I thought some of their proposals, like privatizing some operations, were not a very good idea, but I thought it could be used as a framework to actually get rail passenger investment going. Apparently, nobody in Congress is interested - they’d rather keep shelling out $1-2B a year for the status quo.
OK, helicopters only last so long - then they need to be replaced.
But, it’s arguments like the one above that convince me that there is no argument for continuing Federal operating subsidies for Amtrak.
“Well he’s gettin’ new helicopers” is like a child whining for his parents to be “fair” with some candy.
Amtrak funding has nothing to do with these helicopters, with the war in Iraq, with our rate of taxation, or with “How Much the Airplanes Get”. It’s got to do with wether such expenditurs are: 1) constitutional and, 2) worthwhile.
I don’t see them as either. Let’s leave the constitutional issue aside. Just what is the case for subsidizing Amtrak’s operating expenses? I’ve never seen anyone make such a case. I’m waiting.
So if the administration differentiates between infrastructure and operating subsidies, here is a proposal: $zero for Amtrak ops and a fund, say $15 billion, for infrastructure improvements. Under this proposal, the govt. would build and maintain new track to 110 mph standards on any route a private railroad would be willing to provide passenger service. Said railroad would also be free to operate freight traffic on a not-to-interfere basis on the new rails. I chose $15 billion because, if memory serves me, that is about the amount spent digging a hole in the ground to benefit one part of one city (Boston) and also is proposed for the enhancement of one airport - Chicago’s O’Hare. I think it is also about half our annual expenditure on highways.
Does anybody think CSX would be able to profit on New York - Chicago service on a new line that costs them nothing to build or maintain? Would it it offer their freight operations enough to be an attractive idea? Can you think of any route on which such a plan might succeed? Would any railroad be willing even to operate on the NEC if all they had to do was to provide the trains and run them (and of course provide support like ticketing and baggage handling etc. same as the airlines)?
I have an idea: Since these conservatives are all in favor of privatization, let’s have them put the money where the mouth is. I suggest we privatize every last inch of the Interstates & Federal highways - every last inch!! Get rid of the Gas Tax, and get rid of the Highway trust fund. All users would have to do is pay a toll (or, if you like, pay “rent,” or a “one time user fee”) to use the stretch of highway in question. Every inch of the highway would be required to turn a profit, or else be turned into nature preserve. The tolls would be paid for on an out-of-pocket basis. Would any members of the forum care to guess as to how much the tolls would be? After all, you can bet that the road owners would want to charge as much as the market will bear, and not just cover their costs.
Same with the airlines. If someone in your city wants air service, then let him or her build their own airport, and charge a user fee. Each airline would have to purchase ownership of a particular airport if the airline wanted to fly there. All airports will be private airports - no municipal ownership of airports allowed! Get rid of the Airline trust fund, and completely privatize every single last inch of the Air Traffic Control system. Same with the TSA nonsense - let the users pay the fully allocated cost of operation. Guess how much it would cost to fly around then? I’d be willing to bet that a train trip would look like a bargain in comparison.
As long as we are talking of having all forms of transport be self-sufficient, I say we get serious and eliminate the policies and practices that have stacked the deck against rail and towards other modes of transport. After all, the Federal government’s role is merely to regulate interstate commerce, not rig the system in favor of certain modes over others.
Oh, yeah. While I’m on the topic, let’s make certain that all barges must pay the full cost of those locks, dams and the dredging of the navigable waterways. That
I certainly have no basic disagreement with your concepts. Privatize airports and air traffic control, make the interstate system toll roads – good ideas.
But I will quible about the cost. I think net transport costs would go down, not up, under such concepts.
…Looks like we have many on both sides of the fence…Amtrak has been struggling to maintain service since it was concieved 30 plus years ago and many billions of dollars have gone to try to present a system of ground transportation in this country…I for one think we have the resourses to do a better job than has been done and think that better job shoud be done and provide that good service…Better service and more will come…We seem to spend money like water in other parts of the world trying to “make their lives better”…so what’s the big issue in not doing some of this for ourselves.
I feel that they should be able to stand up on their own feet and walk by now. And before you bring up the airlines I think the same thing about them. We all use the roads. We don’t all use Amtrack
They do seem to have some skewed priorities, don’t they?
But then, look beneath the surface… By Spending that wadd in Iraq, what they are (in concept) doing, is to invest money into an industry that is very profitable (oil)… And you can “tra-la-la-la-laa” all day about the hype and propaganda claimed by the administration of “The importance of installing freedom for the iraqi people”,…it’s all just bunk trying to invoke a ‘cause celebre’ when in fact this entire fiasco is little more than service to big oil, and the companies that will rebuild and refinance the “new Iraq”
Whereas, and this will no doubt be unpopular here,…the decision to pull the plug on Amtrak is probably the (fiscally and physically) wise one…
Amtrak is nice if you happen to either live as close to a Passenger station as you do to an airport, or if you happen to be a transportation nostalgist…but the fact of the matter is, most Americans are neither.
I like trains… i’d like to think that “there will always be passenger rail as an option”, but that desire is based as much by my passion for the hobby, as it is on anything else, and there simply is a time where you have to look at sacred cows with a fresh eye.
Passenger rail would never have caught on in the firstplace, had it not been profitable. Why expect the system to carry the burden, on behalf of a minority of nostalgists? If passenger rail can’t carry it’s own weight, that tells you something significant, no matter how painful that may be to face.
Too bad the “abandonment” and “farming out to short line” craze has not stimulated entreprenurial imagination in the “passenger rail” venue. It is remotely possible that the continued existance of Amtrak has served as an inhibitor to that incen
There is a lot of misinformation about Federal Transportation spending, the quote below is from the following document. While out of date (1998) the charts in the document are interesting. Especially the chart showing where the money comes from.
"What Is the Highway Trust Fund? The Highway Trust Fund (HTF) was created by the Highway Revenue Act of 1956 (Pub. L. 84-627), primarily to ensure a dependable source of financing for the National System of Interstate and Defense Highways and also as the source of funding for the remainder of the Federal-aid Highway Program. Prior to the creation of the HTF, federal financial assistance to support highway programs came from the General Fund of the U.S. Treasury. While federal motor fuel and motor vehicle taxes did exist before the creation of the HTF, the receipts were directed to the General Fund, and there was no relationship between the receipts from these taxes and federal funding for highways. The Highway Revenue Act authorized that revenues from certain highway-user taxes could be credited to the HTF to finance a greatly expanded highway program enacted in the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956. In the original Highway Revenue Act of 1956, the crediting of user taxes to the HTF was set to expire at the end of fiscal year 1972, but since then, legislation has been passed to extend the imposition of the taxes and their transfer to the HTF through September 30, 2005.
Like other federal trust funds, the HTF is a financing mechanism established by law to account for tax receipts that are collected by the federal government and are dedicated or “earmarked” for expenditure on special purposes. Originally, the HTF focused solely on highways, but later Congress determined that a portion of the revenues from highway-user taxes dedicated to the HTF should be used to fund transit needs, resulting in a 5 cent increase in the gas tax (to 9 cents), of which 1 cent would go towards transit, to h