Wrong way for Amtrak, GOP



November literally can’t come quickly enough, but probably not for the reason you think. This isn’t about Election Day, Nov. 6. No, on the day before, Amtrak is scheduled to launch almost $200 million of improvements in upstate New York.

It has been more than 30 years since any major upgrades were made to what’s known as the Empire Corridor. So it’s time. Besides, who knows how much longer those trains would be dragging along, short of the potential for faster and more reliable service, if Mitt Romney is elected Nov. 6 and Republicans have their way? Talk about timing!

Mr. Romney reiterated his thoughts about transportation policy last week, with a declaration that the government should stop funding Amtrak, period.

No clearing the way for passenger trains in upstate New York by taking over tracks from the CSX freight line, then. No money for a second track that would end all those annoying delays between Schenectady and Albany in the Romney platform and the House Republican agenda, either. No money for better signals for the first 75 miles of the trip from the Rensselaer station to New York City.

“There are many functions that the private sector can perform better than the public sector. Amtrak is a classic example,” Mr. Romney wrote last September in the New Hampshire Union Leader.

We have to wonder. Would ridership have set a record every month since Mr. Romney wrote that if Amtrak were operated the way he would prefer? Would overall ridership be at an all-time high? How much better fiscal shape would a private Amtrak be in?

We also have to wonder what it is about highways that make them appropriate for taxpayer subsidies — you don’t hear Romney calling for privatization of the interstate system — when efficient, lower-cost rail travel is such a target. What’s the philosophical basis for that distinction? Or is it simply the lobbying power of oil and road construction interests?

Private railroads often have a hard time breaking even. Public bailouts have become common in England and in Japan, smaller countries where maintaining service tends to be more economical.

Amtrak actually covers 85 percent of its own operating costs, more than you might think after hearing years of Republican demonization of railroad subsidies. The $1.5 billion that the government spends on Amtrak isn’t money that should be taken away as Mr. Romney tries to make good on his vow to cut federal spending by $500 billion a year. Instead it’s money that should be allocated more prudently.

The problem with Amtrak is that 40 years later, it’s still trying to serve vast swaths of the less populated part of the country where neither publicly nor privately operated rail travel is very practical.

A consensus has emerged that trains can best provide profitable and competitive service along routes of between 200 and 300 miles. The best example is the Boston-to-New York City-to-Washington corridor, where each leg is less than 250 miles. That’s also where Acela, America’s only high-speed rail line, runs.

A quick look at the nationwide Amtrak map  shows a system doomed to fiscal trouble. It extends through all but four states, and includes 15 long-distance trains, through places like the Great Plains, on routes from 764 to 2,438 miles long.

That’s where politicians so critical of Amtrak need to look for savings, just as they should turn to the heavily traveled corridors to make smart investments. Mr. Romney might ride Amtrak from his home base of Boston to Washington. Whether or not it’s for his own inauguration, it would be an illuminating trip.

Amtrak can run even better, and its finances can be fixed, if it’s allowed to follow a more sensible path.

18 Responses

  1. JOE PERKINS says:


  2. OCULUS says:

    Your focus on this issue is as narrow as your political outlook. Has it occurred to you that any smart businessman running AMTRAK could take Romney’s proposal, transfer the funding losses from hundreds of trains to nowhere and turn it into benefit for self-supporting, high-volume train service? That’s called prudent management and is what you get when you have smart business people in charge of these fat dumb government “services” that serve only their local political sponsors.

    You need to look no further than Vermont. I don’t know what AMTRAK’s ridership is there, but I do know that last I checked, there is NO bus service to the state. Does that tell you something about the need to continue public subsidy of train service there?

    Further, since you sarcastically invite Romney to take a train to DC, have YOU ever taken the train from Boston to Albany? It is at best a pathetic SIX HOUR joke. You want to get out an walk across the Berkshires, because you know it would be faster. And what is the US government paying to to subsidize this on its meager per-passenger basis?

    Sure the NYC-ALB run could be improved, and yes, it is probably making money (at those fare prices it had better be…) but let’s see it earn its upkeep through logical per-passenger funding, rather than political lard aimed at local pols and union rail employees.

  3. Charlie says:

    It has been 40 years. If AMTRAK cannot stand on it’s own then the people who use it don’t really want it. NOBODY subsidizes the cost of my transportation to work, why should we subsidize AMTRAK? Romney is right to cut this wasteful spending.

  4. Gene Poon says:

    OKAY, so you want to increase and maintain Amtrak service in YOUR part of America, while cutting off the “vast swaths of the less populated part of the country,” including “15 long-distance trains, through places like the Great Plains, on routes from 764 to 2,438 miles long” where alternate transport modes are thin, expensive or nonexistent.

    Typical “Trains for me and not for thee” bellyaching.

    Tell you what. Do that and the rest of the country should stop funding YOUR service. Pay for it yourself.

  5. danny says:

    Since my first comment wasn’t posted I’ll try again.

    In related news Romeny has vowed to cut funding earmarked for bike lanes throughout Herkimer County.

    Sarcasm aside- can the TU editors find something worthwhile to pick on Romney about? You’re bias is so strong and evident to anyone with a brain. I can’t imagine why you would want to continously thumb your nose at the other half of the population that doesn’t drink Obama’s coolaide? Bad business model.

  6. Office of Ganja Services says:

    Well, Charlie, unless you’re walking across open fields or through forests to your workplace, your transportation is subsidized in one manner or another, whether you’re walking on sidewalks or riding a bicycle, and especially if you’re driving a car on town, county, state, or federal highways.

  7. oamundsen says:

    Three quarters of adult US population do not own cars. There are 76 million “baby boomers” rapidly entering “old age” and its attendant frailties. There are millions of US citizens with significant mobility disabilities. ALL of these folks live all over the nation and all of them have the same needs and wants as the rest of the population including the need for mobility. The passenger train is the best option for this significant portion of the nation’s population. How can a nation call itself civilized when it can readily come up with several trillion dollars to bomb desert nations into dust but says “we can’t afford” Federal dollars to invest in infrastructure needed to help a huge portion of its population with essential transportation provided by rail passenger service?

  8. Kendo says:

    Stop subsidizing Amtrak and let the riders foot 100% of the travel costs. If the riders are unwilling to pay that cost-well, there’s your answer. A lot of us in the 53% who pay taxes are sick and tired of subsidizing the routine living expenses of moochers and freeloaders. You want it, you pay for it. Just like us.

  9. Albany Resident says:

    Amtrak actually covers 85 percent of its own operating costs, more than you might think after hearing years of Republican demonization of railroad subsidies.” Since you say that AMTRAK already covers 85% of its costs then it can raise the remaining 15% in its more lucrative markets and we turn it back over to the private sector. The TU argues against its own observations, they want certain sectors closed and still have government subsidy control. Give it to the private sector let them run it like a company instead of a charity and let’s get on with it. “Private railroads often have a hard time breaking even.” tell that to the stock holders of CSX or NS, this stock holder is here to tell you, you are nuts, both railroads are extremely profitable, and doing quite well in private hands!!!

  10. Allen says:

    “NOBODY subsidizes the cost of [your] transportation to work”?
    Really? Did you pay for I-87, the Twin Bridges, I-787, US Rte 7, or 20, or 9…? There are a myriad of Federal, State, and local roads I doubt very much you paid for yourself. Then there are the airports…and harbors. You certainly helped pay for them, but general public funds were used as well.
    I don’t use the airports since I don’t fly. But I understand some of my money is needed to keep airports (and airlines) viable.
    In this country we work for the common good. Rail travel is breaking records every year. Long distance travel still connects isolated communities. Infrastructure improvements are necessary for railroads, just as they are for airports, just as they are for the highways and bridges all around us.
    With proper funding, Amtrak would have been in a much better position than it is now.
    “Nobody subsidizes you…”?… hogwash.

  11. iknowtruthismine says:

    The greatest subsidy ever given to industry (in this case the oil and automotive industry) was the Eisenhower interstate highway system, that emptied the cities and created the suburban sprawl that now has everyone in need of a car to get to work (jobs having been left back in the cities) which cause so much of our energy use problems. The cities, once emptied were trashed by red-lining, creating absentee landlord ghettoising, and the concentration of poverty which we conveniently forgot about (except when victims to be blamed for our social and economic woes, were needed). Public transportation was allowed to crumble, and the railroads (who can still move freight around far cheaper than the thousands of diesel chugging trucks), given little consideration, with rail travel made a joke as we shove gas eating monsters into the air (also subsidized). Our giving subsidies to the wrong industries, tore down our efficient urban communities (where workers and goods could be moved cheaply) , building heartless bedroom communities wherever an exit could be built, that now have streams of one occupant cars moving twice a day (at great cost), back and forth to communities where we barely know our neighbors. Let’s do something smart (before we run out of enough gas to keep the current mess going) and make rail travel work again.

  12. Srsly... says:


  13. george t says:

    The albany corridor would be better served by expanding the metronorth hudson line to albany.The continued Amtrack subsidies are pouring money down a hole.

  14. Jim Loomis says:

    Your editorial is a bull’s-eye, despite the rants from know-nothings that follow it. When are we going to start looking at facts and reality and stop letting conservative/libertarian ideology drive this discussion. Fact: ALL public transportation is subsidized, from the airlines to sidewalks. Fact: Amtrak recovers some 85% of its operating cost from the farebox, an achievement no other national passenger rail system in the world can come close to matching. Fact: For millions of people, Amtrak is the only public transportation in or out of their communities. Fact: Despite repeated cynical attempts, year after year, by conservatives to starve Amtrak to death, it continues to provide good service that is used by a steadily increasing number of Americans … some 30.2 million last year alone. And as to the annual subsidy Amtrak requires to maintain this immensely popular service, it’s a tiny fraction of one percent of the federal budget. Here’s an easy-to-grasp comparison: It’s just about the same amount (roughly 1.5 billion) that the U.S. has been giving every year in foreign aid just to Egypt! Just imagine what Amtrak could do if the know-nothings and the politicians stopped pandering to the radical right for votes and started treating Amtrak as an important part of our national public transportation network! For solid, non-partisan information, visit http://www.narprail.org

  15. Billy says:

    Albasny Resident,
    Private sector doesn’t mean no government subsidy. CSX, NS, BNSF all the the freight RR’s recieve government subsidies. They receive money for equipment, maintenance for tracks, upgrades. A huge portion of Amtrak’s money makes these freight carriers a very tidy profit.
    The freight railroads aren’t they the private sector? They were the same companies begging the government to let them out of the passenger business back in the 70′s. Now you think they can make a go of it. Nobody is going to provide passenger rail service in this country without a government subsidy!

  16. Kendo says:

    “Nobody is going to provide passenger rail service in this country without a government subsidy.” Exactly right, Billy, because few would be willing pay for the true cost of the service themselves. That’s why we have government-to burden the many for the benefit of the few.

  17. Susan says:

    Totally agree with this editorial. Why are the trains such whipping boys when they are a miniscule percentage of the budget and do so much good is the ways other commenters have noted?

    And if you drive, your transportation is heavily subsidized every day. In the 1990s I worked at a private college that was expanding parking. The budgeted cost to add spaces to an existing lot (no tree removal, demolition) way back when was $1,000 per SPACE (not in a garage, just a lot). Maintenance, plowing, and repaving were on top of the initial cost. So every time you park at Crossgates Mall, your parking is being subsidized (through prices of goods and services at the mall) by those who take the bus there.

  18. Neil says:

    Amtrac is operating at a lose because the government is involved. Put the government in charge of the sahara desert and in no time there would be no sand.