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Not only is Amtrak in trouble, so are our airlines, they are all going broke, and all of them with their tin cups out! Considering that last year the federal government subsidised the airlines with $ 11 billion, for new terminals and runways, a $ 1 billion Amtrak subsidy is just a drop in the bucket! Keep in mind that the our airports/airlines have been receiving this subsidy for years. The airlines received a $15-25 billion bailout last year to boot, and Amtrak can't even get $55 million to fix damaged rail cars which are desperately needed..... downgrading service is not the answer! What is needed is a new plan, of high speed rail across the nation similar to the interstate highway system. It should be funded and operated by the federal government, and should resemble the French/German system with new rails only for passenger traffic, keep the slow freights off! If you think our major airports won't run out of airspace, look again! They are near capacity already! Chicago wants the feds to revamp the runways at O'Hare with $6 billion of our tax dollars! This is just for one airport! For less than $100 billion, spread over 10-20 years, America could have a high speed rail network, of new passenger only 150 mph track, linking New York City to Miami, to Chicago, and beyond to Denver and Dallas. Add a high speed rail link between the Bay Area and Los Angeles, more than half of our population would be within a couple of hours of high speed rail whether by a local train or bus. I doubt seriously whether it is feasible to build high speed rail over the Continental Divide. Yes, high speed rail is the ticket. You only have to look how air traffic dropped dignificantly between Paris and Lyons. Airliners are slow to board, consume huge expenditures of energy to get to altitude, and usually fly at less than 400 mph for fuel economy, and bad weather disrupts air travel. I doubt seriously whether high speed rail would ever be better than air travel over long distances, but high speed rail can and should be reevaluated for the short distances. The question remains how short? Many say for only a few hours, 3 or 4. I am of the opinion that a high speed rail network can compete with the airlines up to 12 hours, which is the average time of daylight.... 12 hours at 150 mph could get rail travelers from New York City to Kansas City, Denver to Cleveland, Dallas to Cleveland, and yes, New York City to Orlando..... Yes, it is time to reevalutate rail travel. But the answer is what I described above, not a complete shutdown. There is no support in the Congress for just a northeast corridor Amtrak.... Some might think this could survive, but it will be dead on arrival......
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