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[quote user="Paul Milenkovic"]The Amtrak subsidy may be a pittance compared to what goes to highways and airways, but the Amtrak portion of passenger miles in intercity travel is in proportion even lower, which means the money spent per passenger mile is higher than any other mode.  The longer the passenger train advocacy community is dismissive of this concern, the quicker we are to becoming irrelevant.[/quote]It would seem to me that the solution is to increase Amtrak's traffic volume. A skeletal network such as we have now is bound to produce the very situation you describe. Having just 15 long distance routes on once a day or "try-weakly" schedules, and unreliable connectivity is insufficient to draw large volumes of passengers. But if we can get serious about developing a real interconnected network, with convenient, reliable schedules and connections, I think the system would draw enough passengers to bring the subsidies per passenger mile into proportion through economies of scale. You know, in the early days of the Capitol Corridor there was talk of shutting it down because three round trips a day weren't attracting much business. Instead they worked towards expansion. Now that they have 16 round trips a day, ridership and revenue has exceeded projections. The Capitol Corridor is now the third busiest and fastest growing rail corridor in the nation. This experience has never been tested on the long distance trains, but it would be interesting to see what effect expansion might have before tossing them aside.
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