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Well for those of us in the small government camp, its at least nice to see someone proposing to "zero out" something.  Kudos to the President although I find it unlikely that he will get what he is proposing.

It looks to me like congressional Democrats are probably going to get behind the so-called "status quo" bill at first. It will almost certainly not pass, if it even gets to the floor. H.R. 1713, however, might get enough support from northeastern Republicans (if there are any of us left) to reach the floor, and maybe that bill could be passed.

Small government or not, Amtrak does make money and provides an important service in the Northeast Corridor. Even if it is privatized or partially privatized, which I have little problem with, it ought not be completely zeroed out in such short form.

I too think this is a political play for the Club for Growth crowd. Bush is a pretty big-government conservative, and while none of those states up there most affected by this Amtrak shutdown voted for him, I don't think he's the kind of person or politician who would exact some sort of punishment or revenge on states that didn't vote for him.

Sen. Lautenberg of New Jersey has suggested, regarding the BRAC report, that Bush intentionally had "blue state" military bases shut down more than "red state" military bases as some sort of political punishment for not having voted for him in 2004. I think that's baloney, especially since, even in those so-called blue states, I bet these military bases are voting well into supermajorities for Republican candidates for office. If you wanted to make a political move, you'd relocate red state bases to blue states!

Should the federal government be spending billions of dollars to subsidize inter-city highway traffic, barge traffic, and civil aviation?

Just asking.

Amtrack consistently is picked on because it is seen as a some special entity that is not part of the nation's overall transportation policy.  Maybe if the government ran it like they run the rest of the transportation infrastructure (build the tracks and other infrastructure, let private industry run the rolling stock) then we would see it differently.  The problem is the government, with Amtrack, is in exactly the opposite situation, government rolling stock on privately owned infrastructure.

I give the President credit for at least making a statement on cutting it.

I think the key word re: Amtrak should be "privatization", which of couse produces audible gasps from its defenders.

I think "privatization" should come to the Postal Service too, but good luck with that - Ben Franklin started it in 1775.  The best we're likely to get is "postal reform", whatever that is.

Whatever they do, they do need to change something.

Amtrak is awful.  Putting in security would be a good first step towards shutting it down altogether.  Make it as frustrating as air travel.  Maybe they could move all the passenger stations out to the country, about 50miles from downtown?  I certainly hope the TSA does something to stop some terrorist from hijacking a train!  Of course it would still take hours to get anywhere even with a gun to the engineer's head-- summer speed restrictions, flooding when it rains, snow on the track, dead dog on the tacks, sheesh.  They might as well highjack a horse and carriage.

While auto, ship and air traffic are great drivers in our economy (or maybe just their absence would be a huge brake?  we know without air tavel business almost stops) Passenger trains contribute nothing that cannot be better done by car or plane.  Freight traffic is already restricted through the Wash-Balt corridor because Amtrak wastes so much trackage.  Close Amtrak.

If Maryland, Delaware, NJ, NY, and the rest want to fund rail service out of their state budgets, let 'em.  Let 'em charge a real fare too instead of undercutting the airfares at taxpayer expense.

I now make a disclosure: I am a registered Democrat, and hoave voted that way all of my life.  Howerver, I really wish I could have belonged to Eisenhower's GOP.  I love the concept of a small government, a non-intrusive government. I like the idea of low taxes with moderate regulation.

Amtrak is an excellent example of this.  It is a government subsidized program gone drunk on the status quo.  For what possible reason wold anybody need a route across the Rockies?  Who would take a train from Seattle to Minneapolis.  I checked the fare, it's $158 each way.  I would guesss that you could buy a plane ticket cheaper than that.  The plane would also take about 3 hours as opposed to the train's 36 hour voyage.

The only possible reason is for some sense of nostalgia  or beauty.  Well, frankly, I don't need my tax dollars going there.  If somebody wants to run such a train line, they can do it privately.  Amtrak should be sticking to the short haul routes which are practical (i.e. the Northeast) and routes in cities and suburbs.  Passenger trains are just not necessary for the 5 day cross country trips anymore.

I laud President Bush for the Amtrak move.  Hopefullly it will create conversation.  That being said, the modern day GOP, that which has somehow been hijacked by social conservatives, I cannot support.  Where did all the fiscal conservatives go?  Why can't we balance a budget if the GOP, the party of conservatism, controls the government?

Ah, where's Barry Goldwater when you need him?  That's the conservatism that I long for. A conservative that understands what conservative means: a small government that does not pry into the personal lives of its citizens.

And I am even more angry as a legislator who must endure the threats of every religious group who thinks it has some God-granted right to control my vote on every roll call in the Senate. I am warning them today: I will fight them every step of the way if they try to dictate their moral convictions to all Americans in the name of 'conservatism.'

-- Sen. Barry Goldwater (R)

Are there any of these Republicans left?  If so, let me know, and I will get behind them here and now.

there are towns between Seattle and Minneapolis that people want to visit and that are poorly served by the airlines and are very expensive to fly to.  Say you wanted to go from Bismarck, ND to Helena, MT, (I just picked those two destinations out of thin air because they looked like they might be on the Seattle to Minneapolis Train route, they might not be) a distance of 659 miles.  I just checked and a flight will set you back $640.  If you want to get there in less than 12 hours that will set you back $840 (via Denver and Salt Lake) for a seven hour journey.

of people want to do this.  This is exactly why we have buslines.  They are more efficient and more practical.

The Seattle to Minneapolis route goes across extreme northern North Dakota and Montana, so it serves communities that are 100 miles + from the nearest interstate.

But isn't the Post Office, already, a private organization?

to fill in the voids where private industry is unwilling or unable to compete.  We have interstate highways that run across those same stretches of North and South Dakota and Montana.  Private industry would never build those roads, it just wouldn't make economic sense.  Are you arguing that we should only build roads that can turn a profit or is there a higher national purpose that is served by having the government build these money losing roads?

Civil Aviation is another example.  Civil Aviation would not exist without the massive direct and indirect subsidies of the federal government (indeed governments all over the world) from the support of the manufacturers to the airlines themselves.  After 70 years, commercial aviation it still hasn't managed to survive on its own two feet.

The aviation industry receives billions in subsidies each year by virtue of the fact that the federal government operates the airways system, the network of control towers, air traffic control centers, navigation beacons, etc.

Water-borne operators receive subsidies in the form of the network of navigational beacons, buoys, lights, radio aids, the Coast Guard, channel dredging, etc. But even that is basically for freight. Aside from a few riverboats on the Mississippi river system the passenger business has been essentially abandoned to foreign flags.

Trucking receives billions in subsidies in the form of the network of federally funded highways, state funded commercial carrier enforcement, weigh stations, etc., only slightly offset by fuel taxes.

Rail freight receives no subsidies, they got theirs a century ago with right of way grants, on which they have to pay state and local property taxes. The must maintain their own track, signaling systems, communications, etc.

Aside from local and state government commuter rail operators the only passenger operations in the country are Amtrak, and certainly the only long haul alternative to air and car.

Just as with energy we do not have a cohesive national policy. Rail does not form a part of our national transportation policy for some reason. The only time anyone thinks about rail is when the security types decide that if air passengers are inconvenienced by searches then we can't let rail passengers get by without the same inconvenience --- despite the fact that there is no recorded incident in the past 100 years of a train being hijacked and crashed into a tall building.

It is "private" in name only.  It has a legal monopoly.  It is subsidized by the government.  No one is allowed to deliver post except for USPS.  They are required to charge all letters the same price whether they travel across the street or across the country.  It is government controlled and financed.  So private is really a stretch.

That means all of the efficiencies of government with none of the management responsibility :-)

Cool!

But that begs the question: who are the Democrats that you have been voting for?

No offense, but this is why you are a leftist.  Since there is not demand for a road or highway across this part of the country, taxpayers should build one anyway.  That is pure left-economic theory.  The people don't know how to spend their money, so government will do the enlightened thing.  Amtrak can respond to the market if we let it.

...Let 'em charge a real fare too instead of undercutting the airfares at taxpayer expense. ...

Actually a lower fare makes sense if you view it in terms of a premium for speed. The faster you get where you are going the more you should pay. The European rail system operates a number of very high speed trains at fares higher than the 'standard' express and local trains.

was dreamed up by that uber-leftist communist Eisenhower.  And he demanded that 1 in every 10 miles be straight so the Russians could land their planes  more easily when they invaded.  He was a sneaky one,  he was. He even had the gall to officially title it the National System of Interstate and Defense Highways.  Oh, the perfidy!

. . . if I lived in the Blue-state northeast corridor. The trains are <<relatively>> clean and efficient & they run on time. This is because they run on dedicated tracks.

In flyover country, you run at 70 mph for 10 minutes, then spend the next 20 minutes on a siding watching a freight train pass. You're likely to get to your destination at 3 am, smelling of deisel fuel.

In competition with Southwest Airlines, Greyhound, and driving, Amtrak is usually choice #4.

Having travelled throughout Europe and having grown up in Montana, the problem with rail in the USA is apparent.  The density of people, the distance to be travelled and the cost per mile of rail construction and maintenance just doesn't make sense here - especially in the western states.

In other words, in Europe, rail can take you anywhere you want to go, and there are so many people also wanting to go to the same places that it makes sense to have a hard-rail system to transport everyone around.  Rail in Europe is somewhat like the subway system in NYC or DC.

In the western USA, there are pockets of 50 people here, 500 there, 3,000 there, and they're separated by 1 hour commutes (or more).  Building a widespread network of rail to connect all of those communities simply doesn't make sense from an economic-engineering perspective.   Perhaps on the eastern seaboard of the US the idea makes more sense.

But geographically, our nation is best served by automobile and air-travel.  The distances are too great and the population too low to make rail service ubiquitous.   I do concede that in certain areas rail can make sense (large urban areas).  But in the areas where it makes sense, either local subsidies, or simply high-density of passenger travel makes the venture more cost-effective.

Trying to get UPS or FedEx to deliver an envelope anywhere in the country for 37 cents.  

And I'm sure they, like the airlines and Amtrak of old, would still be reimbursed with piles of federal money to remain "competitive".

The Post Office is much more efficient than private delivery businesses in at least one way-- just compare how much the Postmaster General makes vs. the CEO of FedEx.

Substantially correct, however if I am not mistaken the P.O. is required to be self-sustaining financially.

It does have a legal monopoly.  And, for the record, it is one of the precious few services specifically enumerated in the Constitution as being within the purview of the government to provide, please see Article I, section 8, clause 7.

Cheers -

For what possible reason wold anybody need a route across the Rockies?

To really get into this, I suspect we need better numbers. My gut tells me that the incremental cost of running one more train over a trackbed that is already paid for by freight operations is quite low.

This might not be true in the Northeast Corridor, where there are probably opportunity costs associated with putting another train on the tracks. But I doubt the marginal cost is very high over some of these cross-country routes.

What I don't know is what kind of games are being played by the feds and the railroads to subsidize the freight. It's been stated that freight operations pay their own way, but I don't think we know that.

Rotwang's observation that Amtrak is all backwards from the way we do other transportation technolgies — usually the gov't builds the infrastructure (roads, canals, ATC) and private companies run the vehicles — got me to thinking. Is Amtrak a device through which the gov't pays for the tracks, by overpaying for the right to run the occasional passenger train over it?

I don't know. I've never been ambitious enough to go poring through what must be some mind-numbing contracts between the feds and the railroads that outline who pays how much for what.

If this is what's going on — if there is political will to throw some dough at the railroads for "fairness" reasons, on the grounds that the truckers and air freight guys get a bunch of federal money — then perhaps Amtrak's passenger operations per se aren't financial debacles after all. It just looks that way because the politicians don't want to explain why they are throwing money at the railroads.

I don't even know where we would get one of these contracts to look at. Maybe they are public documents; don't know. We would also need a railroad guru to tell us what's a "reasonable" fee for running one more train over a track that has excess capacity.

Without knowing all that stuff, I don't think we can say for sure whether Amtrak is a bad deal, or whether there is some political chicanery going on here that would just go on some other way if Amtrak disappeared.

about population are just as true for automobile and air travel as they are for rail.  It is just a question of which mode of transportation the government chooses to subsidize.  Rail in Europe is heavily subsidized, that is why it is so efficient, extensive, fast, and popular.  England's experience with privatization has been a disaster.

I actually ride the train a lot.  I hate flying, most of where I need to go I can get to in a day or less by rail.  That rules it out for cases where I have to be 500 or 1000 miles away today, but fortunately for me those cases are vanishly rare.

Rail travel is downtown to downtown.  When I arrive, I walk upstairs and I'm there.  Unlike planes or buses, on the train I can comfortably walk around and get a reasonably decent meal.  Also unlike planes or buses, I can get a day's work done while enroute.

I find it agreeable, YMMV.

The US spends a lot -- a lot -- of money on transportation.  Most recent figures by mode (in millions), including own money expenditures and grants, include:

Air  $30,264

Highway  $141,287

Light rail and urban transit  $41,053

Intercity rail  $780

As you can see, the money spent on Amtrak is more or less noise.  These figures come from here.  And, if you will allow a semi-snarky aside, I will point out that these very informative tables are brought to you by yet another wasteful government bureaucracy, squandering your hard-earned dollars on useful public information.

And, in case it's of interest, if you check out this table in particular you'll also find that intercity rail is, by far, the most energy efficient of the various major transportation modes.  Motorcycles are slightly -- slightly -- more efficient in energy impact per passenger mile.

Regarding the population density issue, I note that if our rail quality was sufficiently good to allow for high speed intercity trains (say, 150+ mph), intercity rail within distances of about 500 miles would be a practical and attractive alternative to air.  You might find it an interesting exercise to see how many cities are within 500 miles of "hub" cities like NYC, Chicago, Memphis, LA, Denver, San Francicso, and Atlanta.  Rail will probably never be a time-effective mode for very long haul (multi-time-zone) travel.  For the rest of the country, particularly for regional travel, it's very very feasible.

I'm a dyed in the wool blue stater.  I therefore have no aversion to spending public money on useful infrastructure like highways, bridges, airports, and rail.  Dyed in the wool small-government red staters will obviously disagree, but I encourage those folks to consider what the state of our economy would be without existing government subsidies for air and highway travel.  Think of the FAA and the interstate highway system, then think of them gone.

Cheers -

You could be correct about paying for the upkeep of the railroads by overpaying for Amtrak.  But honestly, why can't we just acknowledge that?  Well, I suppose that will never happen in today's climate.  Ah, you could just bathe in the cynicysm couldn't you?

I don't think the government should be subsidizing Amtrak.  Let it privatize, and the profitable routes will remain profitable, and the less ones may go away, but those were probably not well traveled anyway.

I am not a fan of the "it is just a small line item in the budget anyway" since I know from doing family budgets it is almost always the elimination of those small items that add up.

As I recall, the only track that Amtrak actually owns and maintains is in the DC-NY corridor. Everywhere else they pay a usage charge to the railroad that owns the track.

I have long been a beleiver that if we supported rail to the degree we subsidize air and highway we could have a very good rail system, especially in the under-500 mile arena. A 150 MPH train can cover the city center to city center market in less time than air for the dsame journey. But a 150MPH system would require better track than exists in most of the country --- i.e. a dedicated passenger rail right of way and that's expensive with one exception.

We've already paid for the interstate highway system right of way. In many cases a high speed rail line could run in the median quite nicely. It could be designed from the ground up for high speed passenger rail. Here in Florida we approved and then repealed a high speed rail system between Miami, Tampa and Orlando. Part of the reason was the cost of acquiring right of way despite the fact that the state owns the turnpike and I-95/I-75/I-4 rights of way, which coincidently runs between {drum roll here} Miami, Tampa and Orlando.

But transportation planners always get fixated on new right of way.

For BUILDING the rails, sure.  Highways aren't cheap.  But automobiles have the advantage that each one can go to a different destination on a whim at any time.  Trains have big engines, lots of cars, and so forth.  So they are relatively bound to follow a relatively inflexible schedule unless there are lots of trains doing lots of trips (as in Europe or major urban centers).   There simply aren't enough people going from any given city in the rockies/west/southwest to any other given city to warrant a train engine and several cars once per hour between every city imaginable.   The trains in Montana for example would have 3 people travelling from Two-dot to Eureka at peak rush hour.

Sure, rail could be subsidized to the point where it worked, but it would wind up costing more than building roads and letting people buy their own cars.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all in favor of mass transit.  I just realize in sparsely populated areas its not economically feasible, and therefore either ridiculously inconvenient (one train per day), or actually worse on the environment if too many trips are made with only a few passengers aboard.

Actually, there are many more than you think.  The problem is that most of us aren't the Senators, Representatives, and various other political talking heads you see on TV every day.

That's why places like RedState exist--so that we can voice and discuss our opinions and in some small way, possibly, affect the decisions our elected leaders make.

meant to make this a reply to thread #25.  Sorry if its context doesn't make sense without knowing that.

It's not a sound argument to compare highways to passenger rail in terms of financial viability.  To me, each serves a different purpose, or rather, passenger rail serves a more specific purpose.

I support the President's decision to zero out Amtrak's budget simply because in spite of its making money, it loses far too much more.  The system doesn't need to be abolished, just streamlined.  My recent trip from Washington, DC to New York put $76 into Amtrak's coffers, but the cost to Amtrak of running a train from, say, Kansas City to Sacramento (actually, not even sure if there is such a route) on the same day probably lost that same $76 by the system's very inefficiency.

I have long liked the idea of private regional consortiums to run the essential services, like the Northeast Corridor, or a West Coast line, all supported by federal funding which would link the systems (security, rail beds, etc.).  It's not a crime for the government to fund public transportation (I would be horrified to fly if there was no central control of ATC, security, and the like), but it is a crime if said mode of transportation is left unchanged as it hemorrhages money.

Amtrak has generally served me well living in the Northeast, but if the door could be opened for some system to get me efficiently to places like Chicago, New Orleans, or Los Angeles, I might be more inclined to use rail transportation more frequently.

I freely admit I don't know enough about Amtrak and its economics to debate intelligently, but I think this is one instance where we shouldn't allow privatization to be a four-letter word.

Acela (Amtrak)is faster, and Metroliners are about as fast, from K Street NW via Union Station - Penn Station to Wall Street than the Shuttles via National and LaGuardia because of the 1960's airways system (the Electras flew faster than the Mach .75 Boeings are allowed to fly because of the speed restrictions we have (had?)for inbound LaGuardia traffic), and the security hang-ups take up a lot of time on the ground.

The airlines pay heavily for the airways system and they don't get a good deal.  It needs a lot of change given modern instrumentation.

I haven't flown to NY in several years, so maybe there isn't a 250-210kts speed limit over NJ anymore any time it is cloudy in NY, but 'twas that way during the 1990's.

Which means it is one of the few federal agencies that is within its constitutional bounds.  That being said, it is not required to be run by the government; it is merely allowed to be run by the government.

They aren't allowed to deliver mail.  That'd be too free market.  Can't have that in a capitalist society.

It'll be a tough sell if you want to make that legal.  No amount of government subsidy will force FedEx to lower their prices to the point that USPS is now.  And if you live out in the country expect all sorts of additional fees for service.  This is a case where privatization would almost certainly raise the cost for average Americans.

If the rail system were treated like the rest of the transportation infrastructure Amtrak wouldn't need constant bailouts.

As noted elsewhere, we subsidize air traffic. We subsidize highways to the tune of bazillions. We subsidize inland waterways and ports. And not a peep.

Rail is not the answer to every transportation problem.  The point I was trying to make is that all forms of transportation in this country are subsidized (with the possible exception of the Amish Buggy Makers) and to single out Amtrak as some terrible waste of taxpayer dollars when, at less than $1 billion it is a drop in the transportation bucket and is vital to many of the communities it serves, is absurd.

This country needs an integrated transportation and energy policy that includes modern rail service, not puts the last nail in its coffin.  One of the many lessons we should have learned from 9/11 that depending on commercial aviation almost exclusively for our intercity mass transportation is a very bad idea.  Four days of no commercial airline traffic created havoc in this country.  If we had a robust intercity rail system the impact would have been attenuated considerably.  With the price of oil looking ever more uncertain, the advantages of rail over air and automobiles may once again become apparent.

and I'm a die-hard railfan and frequent user of the Northeast Corridor.

Part of the problem, as I understand it, is that the real money-hemorrhaging routes are usually protected by the local Congressman. Putting subsidy and operation in the hands of local consortia would hopefully strip some of the political cover from the hopeless cases.

I still think some subsidy of rail is perfectly worthwhile, and there's certainly plenty of wrecked and abandoned infrastructure in the Northeast that could be usefully maintained privately if the Feds got it back up and running again.

Re H.R. 1713, breaking up Amtrak into two successor corporations, one to run the trains and one to keep the tracks from falling apart....

This is what the Conservatives did in Britain under John Major. Now, even they admit this was a terrrible way to privatize the railways. By separating the track from the trains, each side just blames each other for delays, and in the worst scenarios, for the accidents due to poor maintenance.

Good railways that run on time, are hassle free, have operating companies that can control the entire operation and most importantly, deliver you directly to the centre of a city, and not an airport an hours drive away will make money - they do in England.

a terrrible way to privatize the railways

I thought so too... it's a recipe for endless finger-pointing.

On my last Amtrak experience (Silver Meteor from Orlando to DC) all problems were caused by poor maintenance of the trains themselves, not the tracks. An air hose broke, the computer in the locomotive failed, and the heat in our car went out. The first two caused us to have to sit stopped on the mains for about a half-hour each. I'm sure that was a thrill for the dispatchers who were trying to keep the freight moving.