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What we know is that Penn Central hoisted the Metroliners between New York and Washington from 1969 to 1971.  The service stared on January 16, 1969, nearly 2.5 years before the coming of Amtrak, with some funding provided through the High Speed Ground Transportation Act of 1965.   The best time from New York to Washington was 2 hours and 59 minutes.  By the summer of 1969 the service was hoisting at least four round trips per day, including one non-stop, and they were apparently well patronized, thanks in part of a strike at Eastern Airlines that shut down the shuttle. The rest of the story is largely speculative, including my premise that it could have survived.  It could have survived.  And it could have collapsed for some or all of the reasons cited.  The operative word is could.  No one knows!  Frankly, had the states served by the NEC not been willing to put up the money to help support the NEC or the market would not support it, it should have been allowed to die.  No one knows whether they would have or would not have.  Having lived in the New York area for years, I came to realize that they are much better at regional cooperation than most other areas of the country where I have lived.  And I have lived in seven states as well as DC and four other countries. I worked in the electric utility industry for more than three decades.  When I started it was a regulated monopoly that functioned like a government agency.  It had no competition.  By the time I retired a couple of years ago it had become a competitive business.  The waste, prior to competition, was mind blowing.  It took competition to weed it out.  This is the reason that I favor fair market competition, especially when it comes to the operation of commercial transport services, as opposed to having the government perform the service. Asking a taxpayer in Texas to pay for a train in New York is as unfair as asking the New Yorker to pay for trains in Texas, especially given that they are regional transport solutions. We disagree on this issue.
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