Passenger rail service is far more valuable than the beggarly approach NARP, AORTA, and the other passenger rail organizations let on.  They commonly whine about this and that subsidy the interstate, highways, and other roadways get.  They commonly write about how badly Amtrak and passenger rail needs subsidies.  Never do we get to hear about the lines that break even or, GASP, turn a profit.  Never do we hear about Alaska Railroad Passenger Service or the privatization of the Japanese bullet trains or the fact that French TGV service now turns a regular profit of over $500 Million per year.  No, NARP, AORTA, and many of the other organizations continue taking the approach of the begging victim.

Well, I want to point out how passenger rail ROCKS TRANSPORTATION!

As mentioned above the Japanese Bullet Trains and much of the transportation networks have been signed of to privatized operation.  They've done so by doing the opposite of what America did when they nationalized the passenger rail service and just before that forcefully took property from the railroads.  In Japan the transportation networks are privatized and maintained, with lower prices subsidized by the surrounding businesses.  These businesses are the ones that now own the railroads in much of the country.  The trains are the life blood of these businesses.  So they might not always turn a profit (even though regularly they do), the profits are made in the station businesses and immediate surrounding areas.

America took the luxury resorts away from the railroads, started breaking them apart under whatever laws and regulations the lawmakers could find.  The railroads where viewed as great big bad evil corporations, so they where attacked.  The anti-trust bills acted to break them up even further.  Without the businesses that fed off of the passenger services the railroads quickly started losing money on most of their lines.  With the decreasing rider counts from the business community leaving for airlines and citizenry leaving for cars because of the price offsets from subsidized roadways, the passenger lines where left to shrivel and die.  Not only did the railroads receive nothing to offset these costs in the 40s and 50s but they continued to be taxed, heavily, more so than any individual or corporation (most) in the country.  But I digress, the mistakes are now far easier to see with the hindsight of modern eyes.

Meanwhile France has been turning significant operational profits on their TGV service.  Enough that if they had taken loans for the infrastructure instead of Government subsidized hand outs they could pay them back over the next 20-40 years and REMAIN profitable!  Yeah, profitable!  Do the math!

Profits equal clear and undeniable value to society.  If people are willing to pay enough for a service to make it profitable on its own, it is extremely valuable.  My point that passenger rail is JUST THAT VALUABLE!

I could ramble on about other systems, but let me just slay some of these Amtrak is worthless and Amtrak requires this and that and whatever subsidy because it isn't valuable enough to fund itself like the airlines and autos.  First off, I won't go on about it, but airlines and autos work on a completely different rule system.  The system they work on defrays a massive part of the cost to taxpayer funded ventures such as the FAA, airports, interstates, and highways, almost all of which are primarily paid out of taxpayer funds.  In many scenarios they do however pay for themselves with user fees and other cost remunerations such as airline fees and tolls.  But in the majority of spaces massive subsidies cover these things.  The vehicles however, the operational costs however are covered 100% by the airlines or the drivers that are driving.  There is sometimes a possibility that 1-6% of operational costs might be subsidized in certain circumstances.  But lets get on to the kicker for passenger rail.

First off, the revenue that Amtrak brings in, $1,519,130,083 (AORTA/Amtrak), is far in excess of the actual costs of running the railroad, paying for what infrastructure costs are incurred, and other "operational" hard costs.  The soft costs however of their union work force is easily over the $1.5 Billion the company brings in.  If you broke that down to half, and carried as many passengers per employee as Virgin Rail (They operate in England), Amtrak would actually be a profitable (YEAH, Profitable) corporation.  That of course would PROVE that passenger rail is valuable to American society, the problem however is the Government would need to, or have to by law, cede total control back to the corporation itself to allow growth, extra services, etc.  The Government would again lose control of passenger rail.  The simple fact is, it's impossible to get the Government to step back once they've managed to cede control even ifsomething is better run privately.

Another case of the valuation of passenger rail is the NEC, or North East Corridor up between Washington DC and Boston.  This area operates the Acela and Metroliners which often run in excess of 100mph in some areas, and on a short 15+ mile stretch at about 150 mph.  These lines carry about 47-48% of Amtrak's traffic and when the operational costs of this area are factored in even with the exorbitant costs of Amtrak staffing levels they STILL turn an operational profit.  In many other corridors, which carry about 49-51% of Amtrak's traffic, the efficiencies are huge.  These corridors are mostly in the Chicago, California, and north western US areas.

Another point that Kummant (the current CEO) has proven is how much more money Amtrak could have been making over the last 30+ years but has been incompetent to do.  Why they haven't earned revenues similar to what Amtrak has under Kummant is up for discussion, something I won't go into right now.  In every corridor, line, etc that Amtrak operates under Kummant rider counts have gone up.  But what is truly impressive is how much more efficiently tickets have been sold and trains have operated.

• On the Cascades line for FY 2006 ridership has gone up by 7.4% for the year, while revenue has gone up by 9.9%!  The yearly revenue is up to $18,165,351!
• Empire Builder for FY 2006 is up only 1.6% in ridership, but it has increased 9.2% in revenue!
• Coast Starlight, up 3.5% for ridership, and revenue has bounced up 5.2%  On time arrivals have gone from 0% to 11.3% too.  A major improvement considering the train for FY 2005 was usually 2-6 hours late on a regular basis.
• The biggest kicker, as would be expected, is the NEC.  With almost 50% of all Amtrak carried in just this corridor good results hit a 6.4% increase running a total ridership of 10,035,012.  The revenue on this small corridor increased a WHOPPING 14.3%!!  The total amount of revenue on this line was $829,304,447.  If this area, infrastructure and all, with that type of revenue, where left to itself it would be self-sustainable at operational levels.

That leads me back to one of my recurring points.  If passenger rail in this country was setup with matching grants and infrastructure that was funded similarly to highways or interstates, there would be problems, but the increase in services would be beyond massive.  The cost effectiveness, luxury, and comfort of passenger travel is vastly superior to auto transit and not even worth mentioning in comparison to air travel.  All but a few over grumpy individuals might find passenger rail uncomfortable, but I'd be hard pressed to think they weren't lying.

In summary, passenger rail is ridiculously underrated, is discriminated against in economic comparison to competition (air and auto), and generally has 2-3x more to operate, maintain, and pay for than road or air transport not including the actual trains and service.  This is horrendous that such a situation has occurred.

I'm against subsidies, but if roads and airline service is going to be, a balance needs to be struck that allows all modes to compete on a more apples to apples basis.  This apples to oranges comparison and extremely unbalanced and skewed (because of subsidies) market usage of these modes is sick and can be blamed for our backwards transportation situation in the United States.

For now, I'm done with this write up, I'll be back later with more stats.  Amtrak is breaking records and setting new standards in passenger rail service compared to their somewhat dreadful past.  Can they achieve the reputation of other world class system?  Better yet can they attain that along with the level of sustainable and independently capable service of our past privately operated US systems?  Will we ever see the level of service of the New York Central, the Milwaukee Road, or the Great Northern?  What about the grand transcon runs of the Santa Fe?  Anything is possible, but Amtrak still has an extreme uphill battle to attain a status even close to these past systems.

Thumbs up so far, hats off to Mr. Kummant, and keep up the good work Amtrak.