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[quote user="henry6"]There has always been subsidies for railroads (and all other American businesses).  Charters, subscriptions, bond authrizations, grants, government contracts, US MAIL, patents, land grants, donations, and on and on.  And anybody in the business of moving people does not make money from doing so, especially if not subsidized with traffic control, rights of way, terminal, policing: it is whatever "extra" an operator can charge for that may make money.  This is true of buses and airlines as well as railroads.  But the subsidies to highway and air transportation is measured in hundreds of billions of dollars annually while rail rarely makes it to a billion here or there.  And further, this country has never had a Federal transportation policy beyond fiscal supports: no planning, no coordination, no comprehensiveness.  Many have pushed for such a policy for years but it has fallen on deaf ears and otherwise open pocketbooks.  Now push is shoving and congestion, environment, and energy are converging as major issues which have to be addressed in the transportation arena in order for us to  both move freely and move goods and resources economically and safely.   No one form or method of transnportation is a whole answer, so discussion and private and public sectors pocketbooks have to remain as wide open as necessary and prudent to meet the future.[/quote]Most American businesses have not been subsidized.  Most of them are small to medium sized entities, sometimes referred to mom and pop shops.  They have created most of the jobs in the United States.Most forms of commercial transportation have been subsidized, at least in some form, since the beginning of the country.  But at the end of the day, at least in recent times, the seat mile subsidy for passenger rail has dwarfed that for air or buses or any other form of commercial transport many times over.  It is not even close.For the FY ended 30 September 2007, U.S. airlines earned $7.4 billion with net income of $4.6 billion.  Hauling people as opposed to goods does not generate the best returns, to be sure, but to say that there is no money in transporting people is not true.
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