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[quote]QUOTE: Originally posted by tomtrain 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? [/quote] I like your idea tomtrain, privitization of the more profitable Amtrak routes is an excellent idea. It would be interesting to see if there was a railroad out there that would be interested in this particular venture, Rail America or Omnitrax perhaps? Splitting off the parts of Amtrak that are making money would most likely improve service and allow for better micromanagement, not only would it be bringing more companies into the passenger rail service, but it could very well encourage them to expand to other areas and try to make a run at other routes that are not running at present day. It would also take the burden off of Amtrak to be able to better allocate their rolling stock to routes that need it. As the article mentioned, there are people currently being turned away from the autotrain service because Amtrak just doesn't have the infastructure to keep up with demand, this is an EXCELLENT opportunity for a company to step in and take a run at it, hopefully making a nice profit in doing so. I believe that passenger rail can be profitable, it just has to be the right time and place. Anyone out there who this effects should be writing letters to their congressmen and getting this idea off the ground! [tup][tup][tup][tup]
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