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Why Amtrak hasn't kept up with market share

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What I thought was appaling was the federal government - another in its boneheaded moves to drive passengers away from rail and to highways and air - yes it was a plan - was its stupid taxing of rail passengers to pay for airport construction! What utter nonsense. The feds taxing rail passengers to bulid the airline industry. This fact and many others are found here. http://www.trainweb.org/moksrail/advocacy/resources/subsidies/transport.htm Forget anything about a level playing field. The deck has been stacked from the start.. -- About User Fees... they don't pay the bills User fees only account for about 60% of highway spending by all levels of government. The rest comes from non-users and in 1990, non-highway users subsidized roads at the rate of $18 billion per year. -Source: Highway Statistics 1990, Tables HF-10 and SMT, Federal Highway Administration Air passengers did not pay user fees between 1963 and 1971, ironically the year Amtrak began operation. "Airport and airway development costs incurred prior to the assessment of user charges in 1971 have been treated as sunk costs, none of which will have been or will be paid for by air carriers...these sunk costs total $15.8 billion." -Source: Study of Federal Aid to Rail Transportation, USDOT 1977 Railroad passengers paid for airport construction through special tax! Between 1942 and 1962 a 10% rail ticket tax was levied on railroads as a war measure to discourage unnecessary travel. This tax generated revenues of over $5 Billion, which went into the general revenue fund and ironically, was used in some cases to build more airports and highways. In today's dollars, that probably would amount to about $100 billion and one wonders what would have happened if that money had been invested in rail service after the war. By the time, the tax was lifted, the passenger train was already on the ropes. -Source: report by USDOT Secretary William Coleman, 1977 Air passengers also paid a federal passenger tax, also as a war emergency measure, but the government was busily investing in air facilities at five times the rate at which taxes were being collected. -Source: Study of Federal Aid to Rail Transportation, USDOT, Jan 1977
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