we all pay less for energy and other products every day
I don't know about you (maybe you live in Venezuela where gas is subsidized to something like 7 cents per gallon) but MY energy costs aren't going down. Gas here is almost $3.00 per gallon again. Energy has been going up; wages have been stagnant or in some cases actually dropping. The increased cost of energy is helpful to Amtrak because it makes other modes that much more expensive and tends to give folks a financial reason to check out something beyond their personal vehicles.The freight railroads may indeed have changed but not necessarily all for the better. They cut back trackage, and cut from double-track to single, all over the place, made their networks smaller. Yes, that saved them money. It "cut their expenses" - the supposed goal for Amtrak. But then when their business exploded, they were suddenly swamped with freight, with no way to handle it all (U.P. especially). As a result, their trains run like they're running through a sea of molasses, and the Amtrak trains running on their tracks pay the price for the freight companies' cutback of capacity, for their "cutting of expenses". That was "penny wise, pound foolish" behavior by the freight companies, just as a knee-jerk "WE HAVE TO CUT EXPENSES" reaction forced on Amtrak tends to result in lack of proper maintenance and repair, followed by high equipment breakdown rates and then demands by CSX that Amtrak run two engines on trains that could be pulled by one.
That result should not happen, and I think it's a failure of leadership that it happens that way. But it's also partly because there's so much politics involved it's very hard to say, given the rampant rabid ideology involved in current politics, just where the lack of proper management ends and the political sabotage takes over.
Amtrak is a national resource, and personally I think it should be operated in a non-partisan manner, NOT operated in such a way that the Executive branch says who top management is, and all too frequently picks them based not on expertise in the subject matter but instead on their personal political purity of thought, (or for their campaign contributions or for their past work on political campaigns) as judged solely by the administration. Amtrak should be operated strictly as a passenger rail transportation operation. As such, management should all be folks who understand how rail works and what it needs to do so properly, always with the thought in mind that it is a NATIONAL NETWORK. Political philosophy, i.e., liberalism or conservatism, should be irrelevant. In the past few years, we have seen, again and again, where political hacks, campaign contributors, and good buddies of the administration leaders have been put in charge of important national posts and rather than preventing national disasters, have instead caused them. Enough is enough.
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