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>>I think we misunderstand the problem<< I've thought about that part of your post for awhile, and there is a good bit of truth to it. Amtrak Doesn't pay income tax, so there is little government incentive to nurture it. Amtrak employees wouldn't amount to a hill of beans in an election (in terms of votes), so there is no reason to nurture it. There is only one national passengertrain network, and in the absence of competition, no potential for immediate growth in market share via "fare baiting" exists so, fares are escalated in a "cover every conceivable last cost" sort of way. I'm familiar with the way cost of goods sold can be "built" via cost accounting principles, and often, the cost assembly process is thickly laced with seller hubris. Imagine buying a hamburger at McDonalds, and having it necessarily include an apportionment of the walk in freezer, the building, roof, foundation, the truck that hauled the cow to slaughter, the wheat combine that harvested the wheat to make the bun, etc etc. It becomes a matter of "how many hamburgers do you expect to sell?" and if you use too conservative a figure, you've got a $25.00 hamburger Congress, through this misguided type of conservative forcasting, is keeping fares prohibitively high, guaranteeing that the prophesy fulfills itself... In my example, I could barely justify in my mind paying the $650.00 for the trip compared to $400.00 by air...the "adventure" was worth the extra $250.00...But, when forced to add on the several hundred dollars more, for the basic fare I didn't expect, ON TOP OF A FARE THAT I COULD BARELY JUSTIFY ANYWAY, it became a no sale proposition. I don't think THE VOTING PUBLIC has a "travel by rail" mindset, so the elected officials have no qualms about snubbing passenger rail in favor of modes of transportation that (ostensibly, anyway) pay income tax, and most likely pay into campaign fund donations as well. The only thing that's gonna change *that*, is public demand for passenger rail. And at the current fares/value received curve, based upon my own experiances, is not likely to happen. Make the total fare for the trip I outlined (just for the sake of example) $500.00, and public demand WOULD increase, and marketshare COULD be grown from Air and Greyhound, probably much to the dismay of the pork barrel congressmen and their constitutiency... (admittedly, it IS a thorny issue, the idea of the GOVERNMENT competing with private industry)
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