States To Share Amtrak Funding?

Well, it looks like someone is finally starting to get the idea that the federal government shouldn't be directly involved in providing passenger rail transportation.

If government is going to be involved in passenger rail transport, it should be at the state level. I would like to see it revert back into private hands again, but I can buy the argument that it is a form of mass transportation and that there is a public interest in providing passenger rail service - where private industry will not. But the feds never should have gotten into the long distance passenger rail game. Never.

One of the reasons that the passenger train was dying in the 1950s and 60s was that the route structure was outdated. Passenger rail service was based around early twentieth century travel patterns, before the advent of the first real airline industry. Once the airlines came into being, the railroads, with substantial help from the ICC, failed to reorganize their runs around city pairs that were too far to drive, but too close for flying. This would translate into city pairs about 100-400 miles apart.

Long distance travel, like Chicago to Los Angeles, or Chicago to Seattle, or even New York to Dallas was no longer viable in the face of air transport. The only route that took longer than 24 hours to traverse, that still made money (and is still one of Amtrak's few money making routes) was the New York to Florida runs.

With some changes, other 24-hour routes like New York to Chicago or San Francisco to Denver might still be able to be made viable. Use of through cars that go from, say New York to Los Angeles on multiple trains might also work. But the bottom line is that solid trains like the Sunset Limited running from Orlando to Los Angeles just aren't realistic.

Passenger rail service needs to revert back to the railroads. Use government funding to fill in the gaps in the private service and let's get a real, useful and workable rail service solution in the US.

The one thing we know doesn't work well is the Amtrak model.