AMTRAK FUNDING

[Anonymous]

I DO SUSPECT THAT AMTRAK WILL EITHER GO OUT OF BUSINESS OR BE DRASTICALLY REDUCED IN SERVICE AND OPERATIONS IF THEY DO NOT GET THE NECESSARY FUNDING BE FEBRUARY 2005. THIS IS VERY URGENT. PLEASE GET BACK TO JOHN ARCHER "RAILROAD" SLOBODIN AT [e-mail]
THANK-YOU.

[Anonymous]

Why? What will change if we get back to you?

LC

[Anonymous]

I'm guessing my inbox!

[jeaton]

What's the rush? That's more than a month away.

Jay

[Anonymous]

Is this a new ID for the guy who was saying Gunn was gonna quit a couple months ago?

LC

[Junctionfan]

Merry Christmas all. I hope everybody is enjoying their holidays so far.

As for this thread, if Amtrak was to go to the scrap heap, would it have be done by now? Somewhere somehow, there is hope in this decreped entity and congress seems to be pondering over everything and anything but a solution to Amtrak or anything else rail related to my knowledge. I would me more apt to think about them interested in a salary increase than meddle with what they likely term "silly trains".

[daveklepper]

I did try to respond and may have gotten through. What I said is that short term USA ENERGY INDEPENDENCE can ONLY be achieved by a National Public Transportation System using available resources, and this would be a fully repaired and expanded Amtrak supplemented by a lot of over-the road Hybrid buses so every town with a post office has some service. Any other ideas? This idea would help our troops in Iraq to say nothing about the other Mideast situation. The terrorists (pardon me, politically correct term is "militants"?) may get their nominal support from Iran or possibly Syria, but the theology and the all-fundamentalist-coercive society is Saudi Arabia and that is unfortunately Islam's center, and those guys could shut town all terror if that was their main goal. Energy independence could make it their main goal.

[Anonymous]

MOST URGENTLY NEEDED AND NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[jockellis]

Isn't it funny that about 30 years ago, we were running out of oil and needed to cut consumption and now all we want to do is burn more of it. Have we come into some unknown supply? And recently the EPA was warning about smog and how auto use made it worse. And streets are filling up with cars. So how does the government solve these problems? Cut funding for the alternative, commuter and passenger rail. Unfortunately, they (government) don't have a clue!
Jock Ellis

[Anonymous]

Ah, all caps and exclamation marks, the hallmakrs of importance and intellectual understanding.

On Amtrak, there are as few motives by Congress to kill it as to keep it alive. Frankly, there are bigger, more important pork barrel projects to concentrate on, and until they run out of them, Amtrak will remain on the back burner. Unless, of course, freight roads push for a "final resolution" -- perhaps as a step to capturing more government funds -- or if the airline market becomes so devastated to require a complete re-evaluation of transportation policy. But no true reform, and no true support, will ever come out of Congress on it's own.