Well..That is a negative article! Here in the UK there are two broad views of the funding and standards of our rail systems..at one time British Rail ran ALL the trains, and maintained ALL the track. This resulted in a tradition of employing for the long term, often for life, so the rail workers had lots of experience, both in running the trains, and in safety matters. Training was good, and there was an ethos of working together to keep the trains running, overall there was a concern to observe safety, and professional maintainance of track was routine. The "foreman" of a track team would walk his section of track each day, and replace bolts, or report back as required. in case of major faults.
Since B.R. was taken from public ownership, about 10 years ago..ie broken up into seperate sections and sold off to "shareholders" there have been lots of issues, including lack of skilled and competent track workers, safety being second to profit, and a decline in service and standards.
We now have several rail companies trying to run trains, with different wages for each driver, signals and tracks owned by one company, stations by another, ticket offices by another, enquirey services by someone else, safety and maintainance by another!
The article's Author sounds as if he is a "right winger" as we say in UK..he has no interest in spending public money for public services..I understand that the private rail maintanence companies here in UK have been ordered
to hand back the track maintanence to a public owned government non-profit making outfit.
I have no idea how Amtrak spends its "allowance", but it needs to be able to say how it is spent each year. I for one would be real pleased if they spent a tiny amount on cleaning the train windows so that we could admire the views properly! B) Ed.
P.S. One thing that annoys me in talks about funding is how the infrastructure costs are delt with..for example I imagine communities without airports do not expect airlines to pay up front for the building costs of new airports, so why expect Amtrak to pay for tunnels and bridges out of its revenues?
If I was under pressure to "make a profit this year", I too would not embark on expensive and disruptive long term track work or big projects, but would patch things up so as not to be seen to spend too much of the profits....it all depends on how you do your accounting !