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I love Amtrak , Should not all railfans?
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[quote]QUOTE: <i>Originally posted by Jetrock</i> <br /><br />Okay then...can anyone here convince me that highways or airports could exist without public subsidy? <br /> <br />Or even keep a straight face while TRYING to claim that? <br /> <br />And if THEY can't, why it is such a crime against nature to subsidize passenger rail the way every other nation with a rail system worth a darn does? <br />[/quote] <br /> <br />Jetrock, <br /> <br />The answer to your first question is simple: Yes, unless you believe user fees are subsidies, in which case the answer is no.[^] (That's the closest to a "straight face" smilie I could find!) We could conject that if there were no publicly funded highways or airports that some enterprising person would come up with there own toll roads and airstrips, but since the public funding via user fee or general tax receipt is the norm today, the conjecture is moot. <br /> <br />However, to answer your REAL question e.g. "Are there any other publicly funded transportation operations similar to Amtrak using other modes?", the answer is of course NO. Other nations publicly fund their rail infrastructure, and they do fund both passenger rail operations, as well as airlines and bus lines. We generally don't do it that way in NA, we'll fund the infrastructure (mostly through user fees), but we don't fund the operations because private enterprise does a much better job of that. Since our rail network has the anomoly of being a private proprietary system, it doesn't get any public funding like highways, waterways, and airports.
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