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Hearing Thursday on Amtrak long distance service
Sounds like Mica is calling in favors.
When Airplanes get 15 Billion a year and Highways 44 Billion a year and they give Amtrak peanuts like 1.4 billion dollars. Congress needs to get off they high horse give Amtrak more Money.
You know, I wouldn’t mind a government “hearing” if I thought that any of the suits at the table were actually listening, and actually were intelligent enough to understand what was said, assuming that they listened…
Just another hatchet job by Mica. Guy has no clue about what a real transportation system needs to look like.
“Mica, however, does not mention highway subsidies, which are not subject to loss measurement.”
How can you have any honest transportation debate when keys facts like highway and airway subsidies are never included?
Even worse, the passenger rail advocates seem to shy from the comparison as well.
No one seems to mention spending on river and waterway transport eather
So these comments get approved but my comment wondering if he’d even be present during most of this hearing that he’s instigating, referencing a statement published in this very magazine a while back about him leaving the chamber after making his opening statement instead of staying and actually listening to the witnesses, wasn’t approved?
Makes sense…
It seems to me that Repuyblicans hate passenger rail. Perhaps that the Repubs are beholden to “Big Oil”, there’s no wonder!
How senseless it wqas for Governor Scott to return the funding for a high-speed rail project here in Florida. We can thank him for the traffic nightmares caused in Tampa Bay by the recent GOP convention.
We had seven bidders anxious to build railhere in Florida, and now it looks like a private enterprise, the FEC, is going to build their own hgih-speed line between Orlando and Miami soon.
When former governor Jeb Bush tried to privatize the Everglades Parkway between Pemboke Pines and Naples (I-75), we did not even get a bidder! The minimum bid was then lowered, and the two bids offered were the next closest thing to mercy bids.
A lot of the stuff that the Cato Institute, the Reason Foundation, and other libertarin think are realeasing is a bunch of garbage to protect the egomaniac interests of those who want to have agovenment ruled by wealthy dictatorship. If they like that kind of government, they can move to Somalia for all I care.
What’s to hear here? Mica has his mind made up before the hearing starts. This man has to go far, far away. And O’Toole sounds like another real winner. It’s like a throwback to the '50s and McCarthyism.
What’s to hear here? Mica has his mind made up before the hearing starts. This man has to go far, far away. And O’Toole sounds like another real winner. It’s like a throwback to the '50s and McCarthyism.
If anybody would bother to read the Constitution, roads are listed in Article 1, Section 8. Government operated bus companies are not. Amtrak is nothing more than a government operated, taxpayer subsidized bus company that just happens to use rails. The same can be said when comparing Amtrak to airlines. Amtrak is nothing more than an airline that happens to have no wings and steel flanged wheels for its planes.
Now if government were to build an actual railroad track and let everybody operate on it, the Amtrak people might have something to stand on, provided they let the private sector own and operate Amtrak. I don’t expect the money losing taxpayer stealing passenger rail people to understand any of this, because in my opinion, they don’t want to.
Wonder if he will even attend. I believe I read in this publication that he was largely absent from the hearings for his last failed witch hunt.
How about a hearing examining Mica’s taxpayer paid salary?
I’m a Republican. Republicans, shut up about Amtrak! Either charge airplanes to use airports and airways (not talking landing fees here - I’m a pilot too so the argument don’t fly) and cars and trucks to use interstates or quit whining about spending money on Amtrak. Make improvements! In the aviation industry, we are cut throat on costs and do anything we can that’s safe to save money. Amtrak needs COMPETITION! I will start a Chicago to Miami Autotrain passenger service, 4 trains a day in each direction. No Government funding. Trains will have a motive unit, coach/lounge/diner, coach, sleeper, and auto transport. Anyone else want to jump in? CSX and FEC all the way.
Mr. Crosmer apparenty dislikes Florida as much as he dislikes Massachusetts. He seems to think the anarchy in Somalia is better. Is here replacing Jeffery Guse on this board.
I see that many hearings are not a sincere effort to learn facts but are a forum for politicians to speak or to parade carefully screened witnesses to support the politicians’ positions.
What “Thursday” is this hearing?
It would have been good to include the actual date in the News Release.
A railroaders book here from New England is called “High Green and Bark Peelers” by RM Neal. It is about the Boston and Maine railroad and was written in 1950 based upon multiple trips done by the author with the aid of the workers on the B+M. On page 160 the author points out that it costs the railroad $1.40 for every $1.00 of passenger revenue. The costs was made up with head end freight by the good old REA green and red delivery vehicles. The other paying customers was the mail and the milk contracts. The killer was once the railroads lost the mail contracts they lost the break even point. That happened in the 1950’s at the same time the milk movement switched to trucks. To bad Chairman Mica knows nothing of history.