Amtrak Boom Just One More Sign the Terrorists Have Won
The 9/11 attacks and rising fuel prices are just two more ways to say that there's something magic about a train!
Amtrak is proud to report, in the Wash Times' motion-sickness-inducing, pun-inflected gloss, that it "is chugging toward its fifth-straight record year for ridership nationwide….The money-losing service…says it is riding higher, illustrated by the hundreds of thousands of additional riders flocking to expanded routes in Illinois and California."
How big is the jump in ridership? In the fiscal year that ended last September, 24.3 million rode the service, setting a record for the fourth consecutive year; the odds look good that this fiscal year will set a fifth straight record.
But hey, Casey Jones, you better watch your speed. Trouble ahead, trouble behind:
The service has never been out of the red since its start in 1971, meaning it must rely on government handouts year after year.
In trying to hash out the federal budget for next year, Congress is weighing how much U.S. taxpayers should underwrite the passenger service. Amtrak has requested $1.53 billion, nearly twice the amount the Bush administration wants to give it. In the past, President Bush has proposed giving the service nothing.
The House Appropriations Committee recently agreed to boost Amtrak's federal funding to $1.4 billion—a modest increase from the service's $1.3 billion in government help—while a Senate panel has endorsed spending $1.37 billion. But Mr. Bush has promised to veto any spending bills exceeding his budget requests, forcing Amtrak to slice service if the president makes good on his threat….
The service also continues to be nagged by travel delays, mostly tied to having to share the tracks with freight haulers that own the rails and charge Amtrak a modest fee….With freight traffic soaring in recent years, Amtrak's on-time performance slid to an average of 68 percent last year, its worst showing since the 1970s….
I don't know about the current numbers, but in 2002, reason's Mike Lynch calculated that Amtrak cost $3.37 for every $1 they took in from passengers (I know, I know, they'll make it up on volume). And that same year, I noted that 71 percent of Americans–real Americans, the kind who drive everywhere, god bless their souls–absolutely loved Amtrak, "the state-sponsored terrorist network that has extorted billions of dollars from taxpayers over its tortured 31 years of existence."
And back in 1997, reason foundation founder Bob Poole counseled "Kill Amtrak Now!", a title that was reportedly optioned by Russ Meyer. And in 2005, reason cartoonist Peter Bagge devoted four fun-filled pages to the self-evident truth that Amtrak Sucks.
More Amtrakania (and it's all ania) here.