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[quote user="henry6"] One of the determinations that has to be made is where to you measure financial success of a passenger service?  At the cash box or somewhere else?   And are you talking all passenger services, just commuter, or just intercity/long distance?  In commuter services...if there were no trains running in and out of NYC for instance, what would the economy be like? How many businesses would not longer be and how many would not be working?   So, take the commuter's ticket price and subsidy and determine the value of the service,  What does the service do for the overall economy and business of a region and what would happen if the service were gone?  How about any and all services on Amtrak's Boston-D.C. Corridor?  What if Amtrak weren't there, no trains besides commuter trains existed?  What is the value to the commerce and ecnomony of the East Coast?  Is there only one way to determine value and profit of railpassenger service, i.e. somebody gets to count more money in the cash box?  Doesn't it really mean the most after where you put the cash box? [/quote] If the users pay for the goods and services that they consume, thereby covering the costs of the entity offering them, it is a financial success.  If they require a taxpayer bailout to cover the cost of goods and services, it is not a financial success. I don't know a single accountant, financier, or economist who would argue otherwise. This is true for commercial enterprises run by the government, e.g. passenger rail, postal services, etc., as well as non-commercial activities, e.g. police, education, etc.   If a nation covers the cost of the services that people want, it is a financial success.  Passenger rail is not a financial success in the sense that the passengers are willing to pay for it.  And given the debt structure of the United States, which is in hawk to the tune of $18 trillion, which includes national as well as state and local government's debt, it would be a stretch to say that the republic's citizens are willing to pay for the government that they supposedly want. Part of the transport problem with in the United States, as well as the other countries where I have lived, is hidden and cross subsidies distort the true cost of the transport services, with the outcome being that most people don't understand the financing and, therefore, make sub-optimum decisions, i.e. drive big SUV's because they don't see the true cost of doing so. I am a strong advocate of passenger trains in relatively short, high density corridors where the cost of expanding the highways and airways is prohibitive.  I am also a strong advocate of fiscal responsibility.  That is to say, people should be willing to pay for what they want and not pass it off on others, either those now living or those to come. The argument that we should tear everything up and start over is unrealistic.  That is not the way things work. No country, even one as rich as the United States, can afford to do so.
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