Marc Van Dyck   wrote:
>Robert Heller explained on 10/11/2016 :
>> At Wed, 9 Nov 2016 20:18:52 -0600 Larry Sheldon  wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> On 11/9/2016 16:06, hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote:
>>>> What will happen to Amtrak as a result of the election, Trump as
>>>> president and a Republican congress?  Republicans hate Amtrak.
>>>>
>>>
>>> Actually, what we hate is pissing money down gopher holes.
>>>
>>> Our guess is, if anybody wanted Amtrak, some entrepreneur would be
>>> making a million at it.
>>
>> No, actually it does not work like that. Sometimes the "Free Enterprise"
>> system simply fails. In fact the "Free Enterprise" / "Private Sector" is
>> *notoriously* bad at any kind of infrastructure. *Non* of the infrastructure
>> *anywhere* in the world and at any time was ever build by the Private Sector
>> alone. Much of the construction of the existing *freight* railroad
>> infrastructure was funded by the federal government (in the form of land
>> grants in the latter part of the 1800s).  The *entire* highway system is
>> funded by governments at the local, state, and federal level.  Many airports
>> started out as millitary air bases.  The US Airforce has been the primary
>> training ground for pilots.
>>
>>
>>>
>
>Land grants are a thing of the past, but to stay with railroads of
>today, have you noticed how efficient the private railway sector has
>been at solving the problem of Chicago ? They are just getting
>nowhere... unless public funds are thrown at them with programs
>like CREATE. So, yes, sure...

I live here. CREATE is a damn expensive way of solving the problem created
by far too many abandonments within Chicago in the 1970s and 80s. The
Staggers Act was almost too late. By then, there was simply no money for
repair and replacement and traffic had withered.

At some point since the WWII, the federal and state government could have
chosen to stop regulating railroads to death. It's wrong to criticize
railroads for this period.

CREATE is a barely adequate but not a creative solution, and I don't
expect 75th Street to be funded.

On the passenger side, everybody INCLUDING the government just knew that
passenger trains weren't going to survive the 1960s. That included
commuter trains. Chicago lost five intercity passenger terminals, and
Pennsy/Penn Central was allowed to demolish half of Union Station to
build an inadequate replacement facility because commuter trains were
going away. Washington Union Station had its capacity radically diminished
as well.

The public sector has been hideously awful throughout much of railroad history.

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