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I generally despise government subsidies, but when you compare Amtrak to the nation's interstate highways you find that the railroad generates a far better return on each dollar spent than the highways do (about $0.70 for the rails, compared to $0.30 for the highways, if I remember correctly). It's time we started looking at things on a level playing field when we decide how operating expenses for these things are to be paid.

We pay a gas tax for roads. Roads are less costly unless you say the gasoline tax is not a use tax and is part of the general revenue. Once the right-of-way is established and paid for, trains should pay their own way with no government funding.

I generally despise government subsidies, but when you compare Amtrak to the nation's interstate highways you find that the railroad generates a far better return on each dollar spent than the highways do (about $0.70 for the rails, compared to $0.30 for the highways, if I remember correctly). It's time we started looking at things on a level playing field when we decide how operating expenses for these things are to be paid.

That's correct. Amtrak has been making about 70-80% of its costs since 1990, while highways consistnently make 10-30% of their costs from the gas tax revenue derived from vehicle miles traveled upon them. Highways are paid for by your property taxes, which pay for municipal and county roads, which produce most of the vehicle mile consumption of gasoline to produce gas tax revenue to pay for expressways.

Gas taxes are about $0.40 per gallon, and fleet economy is around 20 mpg. A 6 lane highway stuffed to the gills with 180,000 cars per mile per day (like say, Boston's Central Artery) is producing just $3600 in daily revenue per mile, or $1,314,000 per year per mile. Yet the costs of building such a freeway along are upwards of $25 million to well over $100 million per mile depending on location (the Central Artery is coming in at over $1 billion per mile - similar costs are about to be experienced for the new Woodrow Wilson Bridge and approaches over the Potomac on the Beltway), and annual maintenance and police costs are 2 to 5% of construction cost, to say nothing of interest on bonds, forgone property tax revenue, etc. Obviously, massive tolls or enormous increases in gas taxes would be needed to balance the books.

If you examine the cost of projects to build new highways or reconstruct existing ones, you can come up with figures like: (a) a car trip from NYC to Florida is subsidzed about $200 each way by property taxes, (b) the average 15 miles each way daily expressway commute represents a subsidy of well over $1000 per commuter, (c) the average cost of a rebuilt complex highway interchange could be paid for by levying a $0.25 toll on every vehicle traversing it every day.

Looked at in that light, the starvation level Amtrak system is a bargain. To say nothing of its potential were it actually capitalized to expand and increase its variable profits from actually operating trains against its high fixed costs. Similarly, the 5:15 commuter train with 500 people on board paying $5 each is netting over $2000 vs. the very minimal actual costs of operation for 1 hour in crew salary, depreciation, fuel, etc.

Yet somehow, the impression is out there that trains can't make money, while highways pay their own way.