Many people might think, when presented with a text, they first check who wrote it, and who published it. Some might think that with this article, the readers don't get to know anything about who this Leigh Haugh writer should be. And about the website that published the article, it says about itself on the "About us" page:
Guardian Liberty Voice. The new name fits perfectly with the company’s “small ‘L’” libertarian philosophy.
As others noted, the article mainly about Amtrak's amenity cuts doesn't seem to have much of a message, besides telling travelers to
1) "stick to riding the profitable routes" (which to many might seem like nonsense, f.e. implying that if one wants to travel from Tucson to El Paso, one should avoid riding Amtrak and take other transportation instead, just because it's the least profitable route)
2) "provide Amtrak with feedback" about "how it can improve" and "what aspects will make [customers] return"
3) and finally "let Congress know" about "negative experiences", because "If passengers report negative experiences to their representatives, it could make a big difference". Many might think that this could be counter-productive towards improvements in rail service, because of members of Congress hearing about negative experiences with Amtrak, it might lead them to support passenger rail (even) less.
Then again, with some libertarian politicians going as far as to propose that even all publicly funded health care should be eliminated, it surely seems possibly a largely irrelevant article on some little known libertarian website would like to see some more publicly funded rail to be eliminated (after all, one is supposed to only ride the profitable routes
).
To some, it might seem like a better way - in case one really wants to reverse amenity cuts, or have amenities improved like the onboard Wi-Fi service - to advocate for more investment in passenger rail, f.e. towards the members of Congress, as better Wi-Fi needs investments, and providing amenities and free services in general also is an investment to increase ridership. F.e. airlines offer free amenities and services, like JetBlue offering free drinks, snacks and live TV, or Norwegian offers free Wi-Fi on its European flights. These and other transportation providers obviously came to the conclusion that it's not better to "boost profits" by charging for these things, but make the investments to provide them, to increase the passenger numbers. To many it might seem very unlikely that JetBlue will start to charge for drinks, snacks and live TV, or Norwegian will start to charge for Wi-Fi (as other airlines do), because this might be one way how they differentiate themselves from other travel options, and for lots of travelers these aspects may be part of the reason to choose that travel option (JetBlue or Norwegian in this example). So some might think, in the same way, it would make just as much sense for passenger rail to provide amenity kits or other services for free as well.
To some, this might be especially clear when it comes to the talk about the missing profitability of Amtrak's food service. To go along with the example above, JetBlue's food service will not be profitable as they hand out drinks and snacks for free, still everybody accepts it as part of their business model. Also regarding rail, Eurostar high-speed rail or the French TGVs still include a bistro car that most likely in itself is not profitable (though the rail operation as a whole is). And while Deutsche Bahn's ICE high-speed rail and IC higher-speed rail services made 364 million Euro (approx. $496 million) in profits in 2012, it was estimated its dining cars and bistros still showed a bottom-line expense of about 80 million Euro (approx. $109 million). Still Deutsche Bahn decided not to stop food service, because profits probably would not go up by 80 million Euro (approx. $109 million) as the "loss" can be elimianted from the books, instead probably profits might likely go down as in the past Deutsche Bahn's riders made it very clear they want food service onboard, as likely much less people would ride. After all, there has been an uproar every time some manager proposed to replace the dining car with even more (revenue-carrying) seats. Some might think, all of this became especially obvious when Austria's OeBB RailJet high-speed train, just introduced in 2008, had to have its bistro cars converted and expanded to full-flung dining cars in 2011 because customers revolted so much.
Some might think, instead of taking things out of context f.e. by mentioning the alleged "losses" of food service without explanation, what might actually help is more investment in rail. In conclusion some might think, what might lead to a much better situation for rail could be advocating for more and better trains and tracks, no matter if it is streetcars, heavy or light rail, commuter rail, conventional intercity rail or high-speed rail.