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There's an article about the current state of Amtrak's Autotrain in the latest Trains. If the majority of people in the US are going to be content to let subsidies rule the balance of transportation, then why not separate Autotrain into its own division with its own financing? It's succeeding, but is dying of financial neglect. It has the advantage of not needing to serve a network of cities in order to succeed. It doesn't require prime real estate, doesn't need high-speed trackage, is a simple operation (point-to-point like unit coal train service), and allows people to use their own vehicle to get to-and-from where they're going. Best of all, people want to buy its service (even though they're already paying for I-95). Also, wouldn't there be other routes that the service could grow into? For instance, there are 10 million people in the Chicago region and 50+ million in the NEC with an overnight distance between them. Couldn't a service between them be an exciting opportunity to develop? Can you think of other routes that might work?
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