Over the past few weeks, a number of newspapers ran a column written by conservative columnist George Will. In it, he claims that Amtrak is hopelessly dependent on subsidies from the federal government and that the railroad should be cut loose and allowed to expire. What ignorant, irresponsible nonsense! Ignorant because he overlooks the…
Those of us who are trying to get more and better and faster passenger trains keep getting opposition from both members of the public and some elected officials. They oppose more funding for passenger trains because they don’t need them and they don’t care if others do. It’s the same mentality displayed by those who…
For years, there has been a simmering controversy surrounding Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor, which refers to the Boston-New York-Washington portion of the Amtrak system over which the sorta-high-speed Acelas operate. Amtrak says the Northeast Corridor is profitable. The media reports that it’s profitable. Politicians believe it’s profitable. The public doesn’t care if it’s profitable as…
Two of Amtrak’s long-distance trains—the Sunset Limited and the Cardinal—currently run on a three-days-a-week schedule. I’m sure the appropriate people at Amtrak would be able to provide their reasons in support of that, but it’s still a bad idea. The Sunset Limited operates between Los Angeles and New Orleans; the Cardinal takes a meandering…