From: stephen@sprunk.org
On 08-Apr-14 10:13, conklin wrote:
> "Stephen Sprunk" wrote in message
> news:li0ugr$gps$2@dont-email.me...
>> On 07-Apr-14 14:03, conklin wrote:
>>> You said that, not me. Passenger trains lose money, period,
>>> anywhere.
>>
>> ... except for many places where they make a profit, including
>> Acela.
>>
>>> Even Trains Magazine made that statment about 2 months ago.
>>
>> Cite?
>
> It was in the article about whether Amtrak would ever make money,
> etc. I was going to post it at the time, but I assumed everyone knew
> that. The pigs used to subsdize the passengers. Now that is not
> possible,
Is has been proven around the world that, with modest capital
investment, passenger service turns a profit; it doesn't _need_ freight
subsidies.
However, doing that would require Congress to pull their heads out of
their collective asses, so I suppose that's close enough to "impossible"
for our purposes.
> it is going to be very hard to keep up the Northeast corridor.
The NEC routes have the _best_ financial performance of Amtrak's entire
network, largely due to Acela's profits; even the Regionals don't do too
badly.
It's trains running on your beloved _freight_ network that lose enormous
amounts of money, almost entirely due to lack of capital investment,
which hurts both passenger _and_ freight service.
Investing in more/faster track pays for itself because you spread your
(mostly fixed) expenses over more passengers paying higher fares.
S
--
Stephen Sprunk "God does not play dice." --Albert Einstein
CCIE #3723 "God is an inveterate gambler, and He throws the
K5SSS dice at every possible opportunity." --Stephen Hawking
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