While I love that they’re investing in rail travel, it would be so much better to make a separate national high speed rail service that competes with amtrak. Thier investors can inject their own billions.
Building an entirely new rail high speed rail network would cost hundreds of billions of dollars, if not trillions, with a construction time measured in decades and a repayment time of a century, if ever, because passenger rail is very low margin.
In our modern economy where quarterly results are the only thing that matter there is no company that will make that investment.
Yes, when you're a communist government and don't have to pay people for rights-of-way and don't need to worry about profit and don't need to worry about where the money is coming from you can do things very quickly.
I think it should be fully publicly owned, but OP said investors should get together to compete with Amtrak, and those investors ostensibly want repaid.
No, I meant amtrak can invest in itself. Taxpayer money shouldn’t be used to enrich corporations. Unless we’re buying shares and getting some control, perhaps.
Rail is something that works well when organized at government level, not by private entity.
Whether the privatization of the rail exploitation is beneficial or not is subject to debate but privatization of the rail construction and maintenance as been a disaster for the UK and I don’t know any other country who attempted to do that.
Founded in 1971 as a quasi-public corporation to operate many U.S. passenger rail routes, Amtrak receives a combination of state and federal subsidies but is managed as a for-profit organization.
Not disagreeing, but I want to add more context. High prices do not necessarily mean Amtrak is being greedy. As a quasi-public entity they are forced to keep open unprofitable routes and pass that cost on to the consumer. Over a third of their revenue comes from the Northeast Corridor alone, despite those railways being private and charging Amtrak rent to use them. They are stuck in a lose-lose situation unless something changes via government intervention.
Personally, one of my dream vacations is to take an Amtrak sleeper car across the nation. I just don’t see how that is remotely justifiable given the current prices.
Add comment