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[quote user="henry6"] [quote user="Sam1"] Amtrak has lost more than $25.4 billion since its inception.  As stated by its external auditors, its prospects for covering its costs without significant government support are nil.  If Amtrak was a business, it would have gone belly up decades ago. [/quote] So what would be the figure for airlines without the aid of government from their inception?  And what would be the figure for trucks, buses and cars if the government did not build roads, etc.? Or is Amtrak the only one there are figures for so the only one that can have an arguement against it?  Greyhound has been on its knees many times as has virtually every airline and man trucking company.  Surviving companies are the mostly the results of mergers, bankruptcies and total quits.  Can all that be quantified like Amtrak?[/quote] The infrastructure for every transportation mode in the U.S. (canals, roadways, railways, airways, etc.) has be kick started with government monies.  The users pay for the infrastruce through user fees or general revenues.  Whether they pay their proportional share is debatable, but at the end of the day the users pay for them.  Only Amtrak as well as commuter rail has failed to pay for the infrastructure that it uses. Many intercity bus companies, airlines, trucking companies, etc. have gone belly-up because they could not cover their operating costs, including the cost of the infrastructure embedded in the user fees.  The costs for Southwest Airlines (consistently profitable), American Airlines, etc. could be quantified.  It would take a considerable amount of time to do it, but the information is there.  The airlines that have survived, i.e. Southwest, American, United, Delta, etc. have done so because they have accumulated retained earnings to allow them to do so.  To be sure, United and Delta had to resort to bankruptcy to survive, but they did it.
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