I’ am sure that making massive cuts in rail AND transit will make this country " better ". Thier plenty of waste in the federal budget to support infrastructure improvements and rail iniatives including long distance passenger trains.
Put the mail back on the trains. It’s what really used to pay the bills before. (Truck drivers already in short demand and their taxpayer subsidized use could move other things, hopefully with a little more realistic user fee attached.)… In some corridors, the mail might get there faster.
MC:
I would support that if it meant my issue of Trains didn’t have to spend two days swimming across Lake Michigan. I always seem to get it about four days later than those on the west coast. [;)]
Except that USPS is supposedly a ‘stand alone’ organization that is being financially slughtered by UPS, FedEx and internet communications.
Balt:
USPS is a government corporation no matter which way you slice it and has a ton of deadwoood/fat in it’s organazition. That’s typical of anything run by the feds. Try to fire a postal employee and see how far that goes. You and I are aware of that. You’ve dealt with FRA and I’ve put up with the FAA. They are not for profit organizations but in some cases simply leeches feeding off the blood of others. FAA people can be real a**holes. Most, if not all, federal agencies/administrations could stand a good house cleaning. Getting rid of the dead wood ( those who collect a paycheck just for showing up at work and the same applies to the state I live in) could improve things immensly.
Just my two cents worth.
FedEx moves quite a bit of mail across the country that is picked up and delivered by the post office. The USPS is also the only entity legally allowed to handle first-class mail, hence using the parcel carriers as intermediaries. Despite losing money it is an essential service that benefits everyone for relatively little cost nationally. Discretionary spending is not the driver of our current budget issues. Social Security and Medicare soak up a horrendous amount each year and those costs cannot be altered without a literal act of Congress.
If the government would leave SS alone (ie, stop stealing from it), it wouldn’t be a drain. I draw SS - it’s my money that I’ve already paid in (as did my employers). So you can’t complain about how much it soaks up. It’s not an “entitlement,” unless you want to consider that I’m entitled to it because it’s my money.
I’m pretty sure I paid money into Medicare, too.
Corporate Welfare is the real entitlement program - and we will only see more of it going forward.
The last BA-6 I recieved from RRB said I had paid in excess of 85K on credited earnings of 2.6M over my 50 year career. The carriers also contributed, but their contributions aren’t shown to employees. SSA & RRB are not entitlements, except to those who want to steal them for themselves (Paul Ryan etc.)
Sadly, the money you’ve paid in throughout your career is long gone. The folks paying your benefits these days are just starting out and with the growing number of retirees the problem is only getting worse. It was never intended for someone to live on SS for 30+ years. Adjustments need to be made for the future to ensure it is still around, including pushing back retirement ages and helping people establish their own retirement portfolios in the absence of company pensions that were the norm when SS was passed into law. For too many people it is their sole source of income. Social security alone in 2016 accounted for 24% of the federal budget totaling $891B. Medicare was another $536B. Some other figures to consider, of $920B (2016) in revenue $891B (2016) was paid out to beneficiaries. Hardly stealing. That’ll pay for Amtrak for a darn long time.
How dare those retirees continue to live year after year. Do away with Hea
Soylent Green anyone? Call in the scoops!
The stealing part refers to the fact that the federal government has been using SS income and writing IOUs to the trust fund. The trust fund, insufficient as it is anyhow, consists of very little cash and a lot of securities.
There is no question that the “security” part of Social Security has changed character. It was, as you note, intended to ensure that, combined with a pension and/or personal savings, a retiree had some level of income that they could live on. The $1100 or so I get each month is hardly a “living wage,” although all too many people try to survive on it.
Fortunately, I get an annuity from my former employer as well.
Nonetheless, the agreement was that I pay in, and when I’m eligible, they pay out.
SS is part of my own families lifeblood also. My husband was disabled due to a very severe car accident about 17 years ago before I even met him. Without what he recieves for how hard he did work for as long as he did work we could not survive on my salary alone let alone afford his healthcare he does recieve medicare due to his conditions. Yes he will take out way more than he ever paid in however he gets less than a quarter of what he used to earn as a productive member of the workforce and everyday I can tell it hurts him. He went from earning 60K+ to getting 15K a year from the government. There are days he tells me he wishes he had never come home the weekend he got rearended.
Yes the Federal Budget and there are several agencies that I deal with on a weekly basis on both a state and federal level that could use about a 20% manpower and budget cut to start. I can name about 10 FMCSA regulators that all need to see walking papers off the top of my head. I can think of about 50 EPA regulators that all should be dragged out of their offices and shoved into the real world. Let alone the morons of the CARB that came up with some of the stupidist things to ever come out of Sacramento CA. The IRS has quite a few people that need to either learn the tax code or find a new freaking job. I’ve about lost my patience with NYS and between their Turnpike auth and Dept of Revenue trying to double bill us for HUT for miles on the turnpike we are exempt from paying that when we are on the tollway. They seem to think they can double bill us for those miles.
I’m so not looking forward to work on Monday why time for my quarterly brawl with Mass and how badly they screwed up our IFTA for last quarter. They say we owe them 22 Grand in fuel taxes and we only ran 2K miles for the quarter in that state for all trucks combined. So unless we get charged 71 bucks per gallon fuel tax when the rate there
On Amtrak funding…
The number one thing thus far glossed over in this thread is how Amtrak is funded. Amtrak recovers the vast majority of its costs (around 75% IIRC), so it’s just the remainder which needs to be subsidized.
You can break down Amtrak service into three categories: The Northeast Corridor, the State-Sponsored Routes, and the Long-Distance Trains.
The distinction is important, because operationally, the NEC trains, being the NE Regionals and Acela, make an operating profit. It is nowhere near enough to cover capital costs like the new locomotives or the track infrastructure, but at least the trains pay for themselves. What’s more, the service works, providing a lot of people service in an area and in a capacity where there is gobs of demand. The airlines and roadways could take these people, too, but Amtrak and their regional partners on the NEC prove that short-distance urban and inter-urban transit is worthwhile subsidizing.
The State-Sponsored routes, which is everything outside the NEC which covers a distance of less than 750 miles, is completely outside the realm of Amtrak’s subsidy because they don’t recieve any federal subsidy. According to the law, the states cover all losses from operating these trains. Thus, if Amtrak’s operating subsidy were to dissappear, the State-Supported trains shouldn’t be effected, unless States decide to pull their support as well. So while these services lose $0.00 to $0.10 per passenger mile, they’re not costing Amtrak anything really.
Meanwhile, the long-distance trains are huge capital drains sucking benjamins by the customer. Why? Because these trains lose $0.10 to $0.30 per passenger mile. That means the Federal Subsidy (since this is the Federal realm) for a passenger to ride the Empire Builder from Chicago to Seattle is a whopping $400. It would literally be cheaper to buy CHI-SEA passengers an airplane ticket and give it to them for free. The cheapest such A
It is unknown if I’m thinking of something else or not, but it seems the last time funding for Amtrak was attacked the attackers discovered it would cost a whopping amount of money in severance pay just to shut down Amtrak. Is that the way it is now or am I thinking of something else?
No it is still that way.
Amtraks problem is lack of a perm funding source and it lives year to year off the general revenue fund and an up or down vote by Congress. So compared to other more perm programs with established year to year budgets… it is much easier to cut.
I very much doubt anyone would be able to reduce Amtrak to just the NEC as that would take serveral acts of Congress and the Senate not just one. The biggest possibility is they cut 2 maybe 3 Long Distance trains…at the most.
This rovision can be repealed at any time, and it should be as part of elimination of ATK beyond the NEC.
You sound like Mr. Potter.
This isn’t a Union featherbedding issue as many presume… in this case they are correct as this is simple supply and demand on the labor markets and it had to be done to attract good quality employees.
Think about it for a moment because the provisions were put in there for a reason. Your eliminating a large section of Amtrak and at the same time eliminating a provision that works across all of Amtrak (not just the LD Trains) which guarantees payments and job security provisions in case Congress eliminates your job on a whim.
How do you attract future quality Amtrak employees to what remains in the area of Amtrak salaried positions if you just…#1 Cut the Amtrak system dramatically and then #2 Eliminated all the future job security provisions. Thats a pretty big sign to future job applicants they have no future if they sign on with Amtrak and that they could be on the street at any moment no matter how they perform.
Good Luck with employee retention or even attracting employees with non-criminal backgrounds in that type of environment. I predict a massive staffing problem on the NEC if you attempt that.
So no you can’t eliminate that provision. It’s pretty much pay-up or don’t cut. Or cut and decimate Amtrak and fight it out in the court system for years.
“In that way Amtrak loses around $150 Million per year running long distance trains,…”
In 2016 the long distance trains lost $492.4 million before capital charges (depreciation, interest, etc.). The loss per passenger mile before capital charges was 19 cents. They carried approximately 4.7 million passengers, which was approximately 14.8 percent of Amtrak’s total.
In 2010 the long distance trains lost $575.6 million before capital charges. The loss per passenger mile was 21 cents. They carried approximately 4.5 million passengers, which was approximately 15.6 percent of Amtrak’s total.
Amtrak does not allocate its capital charges by type of service, but they could increase the losses on the long distance trains by another 10 to 15 percent.