Of course, the administration also favors ending subsidies for highways and airlines.

Hahaha. I kill myself sometimes.

It seems to me that Amtrak is considerably less reliable than even under Warrington -- recognize that the Coast Starlight and Sunset routinely run many hours late, putting passengers at their destinations at very inconvenient hours. And while it isn't directly Gunn's fault, the story of the express service hasn't been very prominent -- the guy who started it cooked the books for some years and was fired under Warrington, but Gunn continued the money-losing service for some years -- as far as I can see, just to save face. From a West Coast perspective, the long distance service is a disaster; I would have no problem seeing it eliminated.

Look all...the concept of a "for Profit" national passenger rail system is a JOKE. There is no large scale passenger rail system in the WORLD that makes a profit. All this is about is trying to redirect monies to other repulican agendas. We need Amtrak, even the costly long haul trains. Need I remind you like Mr. Bush does all the time, about 911? Amtrak was the only thing moving firefighters and other emergency personel into the stricken region. Geez. We spend more in a week in Iraq than Amtrak needs in a year or two. Get REAL.

Gunn shouldn't have been fired, but let's get real.

We don't need trains from Vegas to Orlando. We just don't.

Every day we waste trying to preserve services that run mostly through low-density rural areas is a day when we are further from high-quality rail service where it is needed most, in the 100-500 mile trip distance range.

Here in NC we are sooooo close to having some quasi-European quality (though not European frequency) intercity rail service on our mainline. Right now, the Piedmont travels 182 miles between Raleigh and Charlotte, makes 7 stops in between, and AVERAGES 60 mph.

http://www.bytrain.org/passenger/routes/piedmont.html

NCDOT is preparing to take another 5 minutes off the schedule in the spring.

Unfortunately, the highballing NC trains are isolated. The trip from Raleigh to DC over CSX is a nightmare, often arriving in DC 2-3 hours off schedule. With Kaine's election this week, and his promise to work on transportation, if a federal funding opportunity emerged, NC and VA would build the SOutheast High Speed Rail corridor so fast your head would spin.

www.sehsr.org

But as long as we're fighting about subsidies of long-distance routes under the same roof, we remain further away from this happening.

By the same token, we should stop spending money maintaining the 'unprofitabe' highways that serve rural areas. I've driven those highways, and there's no way the gas tax generated by the vehicles driving them covers their costs. We should also allow power companies to discontinue electricity to rural areas as well, as I doubt those lines are profitable. We don't do either because we view them as public utilities, and should treat Amtrak the same way.

Amtrak is a symptom of the problems in the railroad industry in general. Today, freight traffic on the railroads is so great, they don’t have the infrastructure to handle it. For Amtrak, there’s a direct correlation between financial losses and on-time performance. The worst-performing train on both counts is the Sunset Limited because the Sunset Route suffers horrible congestion. Union Pacific, a private company that owns the tracks, is working as fast as they can to increase capacity. They’re limited by the fact that if they put too much resources into the route, their bottom line will suffer. Union Pacific can’t raise prices enough to fund the capital improvements because they’re competing with a trucking industry which uses government-owned infrastructure that, while not ‘free’, is available for use at incremental cost.