MAKE THE TRAINS PROFITABLE

[RailFanNebraska]

to secure more funding for amtrak, we are goign to ahve to convince congress they are not wasteing there money on an unprofitable idea.

its our job to figure out a way to make them profitable. Congress might be then more willing to folk over the moeny to buy new equipment and money for new amtrak passenger rail track.

We need to make points such as, they airline industry could surive with the multi trillion dollar air traffic control systems.... amtrak can never get really off the ground if you dont invest money into it. no mass transit system is ever going to be undependent on government money, but if they system makes money, atleast in operations cost, they would be more willing to fund it i believe ... idk what are you ideas to make it profitable

 

[Trogdor]

If the system was "profitable," there would be no need for government funding.

 

[RailFanNebraska]

maybe not though ... even with profits ... how much money do you think it takes to maintain the northeast corridoor, buy and update new trainsets.

 

[Amtrak Watcher]

There is no such thing as a profitable transportation system in even moderately industrialized countries. Systems that appear to be profitable only appear to be so. Analysis of “profitable” transport systems will always expose some kind of government subsidy that completely sustains it. Amtrak is not immune. The current nonsense surrounding the lack of profits at Amtrak is simply the latest scheme to get rid of the system in the face of some resistance.

 

[Sam Damon]

to secure more funding for amtrak, we are goign to ahve to convince congress they are not wasteing there money on an unprofitable idea.
its our job to figure out a way to make them profitable. Congress might be then more willing to folk over the moeny to buy new equipment and money for new amtrak passenger rail track.

We need to make points such as, they airline industry could surive with the multi trillion dollar air traffic control systems.... amtrak can never get really off the ground if you dont invest money into it. no mass transit system is ever going to be undependent on government money, but if they system makes money, atleast in operations cost, they would be more willing to fund it i believe ... idk what are you ideas to make it profitable

Nice try.

Paul Reistrup, with the benefit of a West Point education, tried and couldn't come up with such a plan in the early 1960's. Then he became Amtrak's second president, IIRC.

You see what we have today...

Anyway, the best we can hope for right now is to persuade our legislators here in the USA that Amtrak is a public utility, a placeholder against a time when LD travel by air and by car become uneconomic owing to high energy prices. Electric trains can run on electricity produced by US coal right now. Clean coal technology for power generation (*if* it works) would help spread US railway electrification elsewhere, but great whacking gobs of cash would be required.

 

[Trogdor]

maybe not though ... even with profits ... how much money do you think it takes to maintain the northeast corridoor, buy and update new trainsets.

By definition, "profit" includes the cost of equipment and infrastructure used in the operation.

 

[RailFanNebraska]

my definition of profit is operations cost ...

 

[Amtrak Watcher]

Amtrak is on the way out, because Amtrak doesn’t have an agent (lobbyist) on K Street who can elevate Amtrak to an earmarked (pork) project. At the end of the day, it’s not if Amtrak has any value in our society, it’s how much Amtrak’s supporters contribute to the corruption in Washington. No money, no golf trips, no fancy dinners, no favors… no trains.

 

[RailFanNebraska]

sadly i have to agree with amtrak watcher ... maybe we can convince, if the corruption is cleaned up for a better amtrak.