Over the past 30 years, taxpayers have pumped over $30 billion into subsidizing Amtrak–a system that was supposed to be self-sustaining by the early 70s.

Reagan and the first President Bush tried to make Amtrak a private concern. This makes so much sense that it’s hard to believe that it even requires debate. There is no good reason for the U.S. government to be involved in passenger rail service particularly when it’s bleeding red ink to the tune of over $1 billion per year. To keep this pork rolling, supporters have thrown out the following argument:

Passenger rail is more cost-efficient than other modes of transportation and money spent on the railroad lines goes further than the billions spent on highways and commercial air travel.

Unfortunately this argument is WRONG. The facts are:

Amtrak costs taxpayers $185.25 per 1000 passenger milesUrban transit costs taxpayers $118.26 per 1000 passenger milesAirline travel costs taxpayers $6.00 per 1000 passenger milesHighway users actually pay the government more than the subsidy to the tune of $1.91 per 1000 miles

(Source: Bureau of Transportation Statistics: periods 1990-2002)

Amtrak is inefficient and unnecessary, but what to do about it? One possibility is to just keep the well-traveled Northeast Corridor and dump the money losing routes. This is what one would do if one was concerned about costs. However, members of Congress from such undertraveled areas such as Norman, Ardmore, and Gainesville are loathe to stop the rolling pork train into their districts, taxpayers be damned.

The next time you hear someone bitch about there not being enough government money for education, housing, etc., tell them to focusing their energy on cutting funding for the money-losing federal monopoly in passenger rail transportation to free up money for their favorite cause. Better yet, email your Senators and tell them to stop the madness.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 3rd, 2005 at 7:26 pm by Insider and is filed under Brilliant, but uncategorizable, Your Tax Dollars In Action. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.