The following was published today (9/12/16) in the weekly National Corridors Initiative.... Reference: http://www.delawareonline.com/story...orial-s-bad-business-prop-up-amtrak/89433630/ I am writing to respond to your recent editorial on Amtrak, which suggests private carriers should operate the Northeast Corridor. Amtrak exists because the private sector walked away from intercity passenger rail service, which couldn’t compete with modes that benefited from Federal investment. This is not unusual; no passenger system in the world operates without public support. But the federal government spent $65 billion to bail out the Highway Trust Fund since 2008, more than it has spent on Amtrak in the last 45 years. Aviation receives tens of billions of dollars in federal, state and local investment annually, as well as spending on the TSA and FAA (which employs five out of every six people in the US DOT). It’s hard to imagine anyone entering such a market without government support. In Britain, government spending escalated dramatically after privatization; today, annual fiscal support to the rail system is, almost twice what it was under nationalization. Ironically, we are having this discussion because of Amtrak’s success. Amtrak’s fiscal house is in order, and the upgraded Acela service will generate sufficient revenues to repay a $2.4 billion investment loan – a down payment of the future of a region where our service supports $50 million in annual productivity. That’s a great investment, the product of a lot of hard work by Amtrak’s people. Originally appearing at: http://www.delawareonline.com/story...ters-editor-amtrak-great-investment/89909808/
Cruise ships operate without public support. Many of the railroads that joined Amtrak only did because the ICC was forcing them to operate unpopular routes--routes which Amtrak itself dropped. If the federal government had been willing to let the railroads drop trains that the federal government was unwilling to run, the whole boondoggle might not have been necessary. Maybe I'm old fashioned, but I think we'd be better off to give capitalism a chance, and see what happens.
That's not particularly old fashioned since in fact government subsidy has been a part of the railroad industry since practically its inception. However, that line of conversation could get political fast. Cruise ships absolutely do operate with public support. Those cruise ship docks are usually not wholly private, and they certainly benefit from public investment in waterways and the US Army Corp of Engineers. And of course, Cruise ships are dead and buried as a transportation medium. They are a tourism activity. Which is not strictly comparable.
