Here’s a finding which is consistent with my general observations in riding Amtrak trains. This is from the Cato Institute, which has a reputation as a free-market think-tank, which relied on data from the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Nationwide Personal Transportation Survey and Amtrak itself:
The poor are not especially heavy users of Amtrak. Three-fourths of Amtrak passengers have incomes above the national average. Travel on Amtrak by persons with incomes above $40,000 is the highest of any mode—3.5 times higher than on buses and nearly 1.5 times higher than on airlines. Nearly one-third of Amtrak passengers have household incomes of $75,000 or more, and 20 percent have incomes of $100,000 or more. Amtrak’s clientele is much more skewed toward higher incomes than the general population.
A 1997 study? A conservative think tank trying the “class warfare” model they ususlly accuse the liberal of using? That’s a good one [:D]
To lump all Amtrak riders into the same pot is silly. There was no effort to break out who is riding which trains. Half of Amtrak’s riders are in the NEC where a good chunk of the benefit is elimination of greater public expense to expand highway and airport capacity. Even the most ardent anti-Amtrakers will concede the NEC is a good investment. I’ll bet you that 90% of the NEC riders are over the nat’l income avg.
So, that leaves the other half, half of whom would be under the nat’l income avg. Gee, that wouldn’t be a good chunk of the coach riders, would it? So, just maybe, a large majority of the coach riders on the non-NEC trains are under the nat’l avg.
So using the “class warfare” logic of the report, that EXACTLY where the subsidy should go.
Wow, a nine year old report telling us that most of Amtrak’s passengers are commuting to work to jobs that pay over $40K a year. In these cases, subsidizing Amtrak as a commuter service is a lot cheaper than the cost of upgrading roads and parking (if you can even FIND the land to do it where needed) if all those commuters drove to work.
I don’t think so. According to his bio: Joseph Vranich worked to create Amtrak in 1970-71. He later served as an Amtrak press spokesman, President of the High Speed Rail Association, and a U.S. Senate appointee to Amtrak Reform Council. Could you cite your sources?
I don’t. The last time I did was 1992. The crew was surly. The equipment was dirty and the rest room door wouldn’t stay shut. The crew hearded everybody getting off between DC and Chicago into one coach so they wouldn’t have as much work. Every time the train stopped they woke everybody up. I’d rather put up with airline security and Southworst for a couple of hours instead of a whole night of abuse.
I ride Amtrak. I like trains and support them to the best of my ability.
The Cato Institute is a conservative think tank which means it has a conservative bias. Generally all think tanks (conservative and liberal) are bias to a particular philosphy or set of beliefs. So I personally take the ALL think tank studies with a grain of salt.
OK You guys’I ride Amtrak twice a year from LA to Portland .It’s better then flying,you don’t see any sceanery up there do you?If you think flying is better then taking the train,that’s because your probably in a hurry,right.When your up there your probably taking that nap and you don’t see the world anyway.
Now even when the train is late I see the sceanery that I never saw.There are
some who don’t care to take the train and then again there are some who
don’t care to fly.No matter how we go,I think we all make that choice and
we all enjoy it. Dave Br
That’s true here in Milwaukee, if you want a seat on the morning or afternoon Hiawatha, you better show up early to the station. I ride that train, along with many many other University Of Wisconsin-Milwaukee students, at least twice a month to get down to Chicago.
It may be a commuter line, but for those of us who are urban citizens without cars, we depend on it.
As for the report, well it’s the Cato Institiute, enough said. They would be against anything that’s not in line with a free-market style of Lassé-fare economic theory, let alone a government subsidized system of passenger rail travel.
The Cato Institute may be a sacred cow for Libertarians and supply-side Republicans, but I’ll tell you as a Canadian, a little government help isn’t always a bad thing, within reason. Amtrak has some lines it could drop, that’s true. However nixing the whole system is counterproductive to the national economy. With gas prices at $3 a gallon and everyone saying it’s only going to get higher, trains look pretty good. Last time I checked, a job paying over 40 grand a year was what made someone middle class in America (depending on where one lives it could still be quite poor actually) and what’s wrong with Uncle Sam helping out the average working American? Trust me with things like health care costs, gas prices and all the other financial matters, the working guy could use a hand every now and then, especially when it’s such a small fraction of the federal budget.
That’s a big reason I’m behind Amtrak, it’s the big powerful federal government bending over a little bit to help the everyman. I think it should be fit and trim of course, so I’d love to see politicians stop using Amtrak as a political football and apply some of that which I think is far too lacking in the capitol these days: common sense.
When I’ve ridden Amtrak the other riders tend to be predominantly city dwellers who have no compelling reason to own a car. Or they are people visiting relatives in a city and have no compelling reason to bring their car. The distances traveled tend to be between two and six hours, somewhat impractical for a flight.
I travel predominantly on the Northeast Corridor or south of DC. It may be different on other lines.
I ride the NEC every couple months usually, and the trains are always crowded, with very few exceptions. (thank god for the quiet car!!) [8D] Generally the cars have always been pretty clean, crew is nice and friendly, and no complaints. They do tend to ask people to come to the front of the train at aberdeen, where I often stop, but it’s just because it’s such a small station. Amtrak beats the bus any day of the week, and I hate flying, and never would if I didn’t have to every once in a while…
I ride the Capitol Corridor several times a year to visit friends. I have been doing this since 2000, and the crew members have always been nice and answered any questions I’ve had, except for one conductor who was a grouch, but that was a few years ago. Whenever the train stops to wait for a sister train or UP they usualy let you know. The California Cars are always pretty clean. Even though it is a 3 1/2 hour ride to Sacramento from San Jose (1 hour by car if there is no traffic) it still beats driving. Plus the parts of the trip where you go along the San Pablo bay and through the Suisun and Alviso wetlands helps make it a worthy ride. If I had any complaints at all it would be sometimes the cars can get really cold inside.
Rather than serving those with few travel options, Amtrak tends to serve middle- and upper-middle-class passengers, those who can afford options
Buses and even the airlines are the more preferred of travel for low-income travellers
Impugning the source’s motives or political agenda, as some here have, does not refute the arguments, only other facts and arguments can.
Apparently, no one here seems especially bothered that the taxes a poor African-American who lives in a Bronx tenement or a Hispanic living in the L.A. barrio, neither of whom would seem to use Amtrak frequently, would in part subsidize my business and recreational travels.
An entirely reasonable idea to consider. Apparently, you’re one of the few people to have read the article or are at least familiar with the author’s ideas, which
“argues Amtrak’s end needn’t mean the end of passenger train service. In fact, 40 million passengers already ride trains in the United States operated by private companies in partnership with public agencies in Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami, San Jose and Dallas-Fort Worth. And the book outlines how 55 nations are doing away with their versions of Amtrak by privatizing, franchising, regionalizing and devolving train services to competitive, private operators. Stunning traffic growth has resulted in Great Britain, where privatized railways last year carried more than 1.1 billion passengers – the most in almost 60 years. The United States successfully privatized and devolved federally owned railroads, Conrail and the Alaska Railroad. Those experiences can be replicated with Amtrak.”