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AMTRAK Railway Age article
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<p>[quote user="John WR"]</p> <p>Well yes, Sam, but what you do not like to acknowledge is that Amtrak is a national rail system. Loping off routes is like me making a cost accounting analysis of my body and finding that my left arm is underperforming so I decide to lop it off. [/quote]</p> <p>Amtrak is a national rail system in name only.</p> <p>If by national you mean the long distance train network, in FY11 the long distance trains carried just shy of 15 per cent of Amtrak's passengers. Those who could afford a sleeper (663,947) were 14.7 per cent of the long distance passengers and a whopping 2.2 per cent of Amtrak's system passengers.</p> <p>The long distance trains, which are used by less than one per cent of intercity travelers, are not a vital public service. If the Texas Eagle, Sunset Limited, and Heartland Flyer were dropped, very few people in Texas, based on the ridership numbers, would even know that they are gone. So why am I opposed to the long distance trains, especially since I ride them on occasions, although I will tell you no more overnights on an Amtrak sleeper.</p> <p>Because they take the eye off the ball. Pumping money down the long distance train rathole means that there are fewer dollars available for where trains make sense, which is in relatively high density, short corridors. Over ten years, the subsidies required to float the aforementioned trains would make a nice down payment on building up a corridor from San Antonio to DFW and perhaps from Houston to DFW. </p>
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