privatization of Amtrak??
Amtrak is the result of the Government taking over PRIVATE RAIL COMPANIES!
Further, the railroads at the time agreed to the arrangement in order to get the passenger trains off their books. They promised to give Amtrak's trains full dispatching priority over their own freight trains in return. With the exception of BNSF, they didn't deliver on that promise.
The State of Michigan recently bought the old Michigan Central RR mainline from Dearborn to Kalamazoo from Norfolk Southern to do track and signal upgrades to let Amtrak run faster.
Everyone needs to recognize that in the the government subsidized and roads and airports with Billions upon Billions... and about $5B of funding for highways and airports was generated between 1942 and 1962 by way of a 10% tax on rail fares... which originally was designed to curb rail travel during WWII.
This wealth redistribution scheme made it impossible for railroads (read as: businesses with bottom lines and shareholders to answer to) to continue in the for-profit passenger transportation business.
From 1921 to 1971 total Federal Subsidies of Highways, Aviation/Airports, and Waterways was $97,700,000,000.
From 1921 to 1971 total Federal Subsidies payed to Railroads was $65,000,000. That works out to 0.07% (rounded up) of the whole pie of Federal transportation spending prior to Amtrash.
Total Federal transportation funding from 1971 to 2001 for airlines and highways was $1,890,000,000,000. Amtrak funding for the same time period was $30,100,000,000, or 3.3%.
I don’t mean to be back-from-the-ZOT Undead WillieGreen Jr. here... but have a little perspective on the the amount of complete and total waste there is in transportation funding for roads and highways... and that essentially it was at the cost of PRIVATE ENTERPRISE through socialism, corporate welfare and capitalist cronyism.
It is ongoing today... and I would love to see all the all transportation deregulated and privatized. Consider that Florida East Coast wants to start up passenger service without a handout... they wouldn’t do it if they could not show profit to shareholders.
That, my FRiends is how the American system of free market capitalism should work... everything else is a scam at taxpayer expense.