[discostu]

Upstate NY would probably still have a train system. The NE corridor is the only part of AmTrak that’s profitable. The rest of the country, where towns get further apart and flying becomes more likely, is really where trains died the minute there was an alternative.

[Publius]

Actually, the Northeast Corridor is unprofitable if you add in the capital costs of keeping all that aged infrastructure intact. But Amtrak doesn't use GAAP (generally accepted accounting principles), so it's hard to trust their numbers.

The surprise is that the long distance trains are cash cows. Why? Because the same seats and sleeping compartments are sold many times over the distance the trains traverses. Most travelers on the Empire Builder don't travel form Chicago to Seattle. They travel from Detroit Lakes (WI) to Browning (MT). But the absence of GAAP accounting permits Amtrak to allocate certain Northeast Corridor costs to the long distance trains, which should be a no-no.

In the 9 years that I've tried to come up with a viable privatization paradigm for Amtrak, I've found myself stymied when I try to make sense of their books. A lot of things we think are true about Amtrak simply aren't, but it's hard to prove when you don't use GAAP principles.