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Mica again pushes Amtrak privatization
Mica already has said these things before, why not be positive and focus on FEC’s All Aboard Florida! plans for intercity service from Miami to Orlando, and maybe then onto Tampa using the same highway right-of-way that the failed Tampa-Orlando High-Speed service will use.
Why not talk about something new!
Why is the same comment allowed to be repeated 9 times.
Three paragraphs is sadly inadequate to draw any conclusions regarding either the Mica proposal or what would happen if the Amtrak monopoly were ended. I guess we need to wait for the next issue of Trains to get an article of more depth?
The only soviet style government, is the one mica and fellow bagger/repubs are pushing.
The day Amtrak will begin to attract private investors will be the day their ridership records begin to turn their empty wallets into fat pockets!
Mica, like others of his party, unrealitically believe that mass transportation can be run at a profit, without government subsidies. The rest of the world know better.
Gov. Bob McDonnell of Virginia, who is of the same party as Rep. Mica, has been a strong proponent of passenger rail in VA.
Under his administration new Amtrak service has been added to Lynchburg, Norfolk and is planned for Roanoke. So, not everyone in Mica’s party is against public funding of passenger rail.
What part of why Amtrak was created keeps getting overlooked? Is it truly that difficult to understand, I guess for an idiot like Mica it is. Words cannot summarize his stupidity!
For Representative Mica to be a member of the House Transportation Committee and the senior member on its rail subcommittee is like a fox guarding the hen house. He does not have appreciation and adequate knowledge of passenger trains to make positive contributions on the Committee and its rail subcommittee. Mr. Mica has the mindset of the 1950’s and 1960’s when highways and airlines were exclusive recipients of government support.
As a Republican, I find Mica an embarrasment.
For one thing, you certainly can’t expect passenger rail to make a profit while other modes are still subsidized. But to say Amtrak isn’t socialist misses something important. It’s publicly funded above and beyond (considerably) its revenue. Saying the private sector would only be willing to contribute a small percentage misses something also. For the most part, only the private sector contributes the entire subsidy: either directly through private/public partnerships or through taxes. Until Amtrak makes a profit, there will be a subsidy. I’m not saying that’s necessarily a bad thing: the constitution allows for construction of “post roads” with government funds. Since railroads were not in existence in 1776, one would have to wonder to what extent post roads would include railroads had they existed then. To the extent trains carried mail? Or perhaps to the extent that trains relieve congestion and wear and tear on roads and are therefore less expensive to build/maintain/operate than a parallel road? Unfortunately, in a subsidized world where a little extra money (or a lot of extra money for that matter) can cover up big mistakes, there’s an incentive for less accountability. With a specific limited budget tied to the benefit of the service provided, there is more accountability and less waste. These are simple facts tied to human nature. So I think Mica is on to something here, but unfortunately makes statements that drive people like on this forum nuts, like saying amtrak is a costly monopoly. Expensive, perhaps, but not nearly as bad as it could be. Many people in amtrak, and I know some of them and have met many more on many train trips, work hard to provide good service. I just wish those in congress that control the purse strings would allow and encourage Amtrak to make good decisions, rather than try to micromanage.
Nobody in the private sector will touch Amtrak with a 10 foot pole. Too many strings attached in the way of hidden government mandates. The real question everybody should be asking is “Why do we even need Amtrak?” It’s not doing the job it was supposed to do, which is at minimum, cover all its costs. It has plenty of competition is the way of private sector airlines, motor coaches, and the private automobile. The only way Amtrak will ever work is to turn the country into the Soviet Union, which His Oneness is trying very hard to do, eliminate the competition by bringing it under full government control like Amtrak already is, and then cook the books.
Anybody who calls Mica the Soviet is nothing but a mindless drone unable to identify a communist. Anybody who hates capitalists deserves to starve once all the capitalists are gone, because they will be getting exactly what they want.
Mica continues unwilling to learn about passenger railroading. How many more times are we going to see this headline where Mica questions Amtrak?
As there is a cost, I wonder how much of the American taxpayer’s money has been wasted each time Representative Mica holds a hearing or files legislation relative to Amtrak? I’ll bet its a tidy sum. Apparently, wasting money this way is of no concern to him.
As there is a cost, I wonder how much of the American taxpayer’s money has been wasted each time Representative Mica holds a hearing or files legislation relative to Amtrak? I’ll bet its a tidy sum. Apparently, wasting money this way is of no concern to him.
The financial impact of property taxes on railroads. Amtrak saves $ on property taxes.
Much depends on what Mica is referring to. If he just means selling Amtrak back to the freight roads, or putting the government’s stake up on the stock market, and ending subsidies, then yeah, he’s an irresponsible idiot who will cause government spending to go up even higher as passenger rail disappears in most cases, leaving people to use even more expensive, and even more subsidized, forms of transportation.
He might, however, be looking at the British model of letting private companies bid on Amtrak franchises, with the company that requires the smallest subsidy (or bids the highest payment) gets the franchise. While unpopular in the UK, on an objective level, the British rail system is in better shape than it’s been before, in large part because companies that used to demand the network be shut down are now part of the network and demanding it be expanded. That is to say, if it happened here in the same way, you can imagine Delta, USAir, and Grayhound running franchises and demanding the network receive more money.
The problem? Several:
- The UK network is relatively well organized and wasn’t run down (as much) as the US network.
- The UK rail infrastructure was split from the passenger and freight businesses. Outside of the NEC, this is impractical in the US - CSX would never allow itself to be split into track and freight businesses.
- Amtrak runs what are ultimately heritage services disguised as useful trains. The Silver Service, for example, simply recreates (badly) the old long distance trains of the ACL and Seaboard. There are portions in Florida where this train stops every 5-10 miles. It takes 30 hours, typically, to travel a little over a thousand miles. A franchised system would entrench, rather than allow innovation in, existing routes and trains, subjecting them to even more bureaucratic hurdles.
I’m interested in what Mica proposes, but I think he’s approaching this from the wrong direction. Amtrak needs less regulati
Maybe it’s time the private sector got back into passenger rail. Unlike Soviet style enterprises of all stripes, the private sector will not do so unless a profit can be made. If not, expect no long lines of companies eager to get into the the business of transporting passengers by rail.
Mr. Mica still fails to realize that if private investment was there for passenger rail, Amtrak would not have been created in the first place. If it there were private investors that wanted to compete with Amtrak, we would know about them. Show me the investors and I’ll support the privatization. But if not, get the heck off this commitee and put someone there that had vision to move things forward and not tunnel vision to keep trying to muck up Amtrak much more than it already is thanks in part to you!!!