From: cfmpublic@ns.sympatico.ca

On Tue, 08 Apr 2014 14:04:41 -0500, Stephen Sprunk
 wrote:

>On 08-Apr-14 10:13, conklin wrote:
>> "Stephen Sprunk"  wrote in message
>> news:li0ugr$gps$2@dont-email.me...
>>> On 07-Apr-14 14:03, conklin wrote:
>>>> You said that, not me.  Passenger trains lose money, period,
>>>> anywhere.
>>>
>>> ... except for many places where they make a profit, including
>>> Acela.
>>>
>>>> Even Trains Magazine made that statment about 2 months ago.
>>>
>>> Cite?
>>
>> It was in the article about whether Amtrak would ever make money,
>> etc.  I was going to post it at the time, but I assumed everyone knew
>> that.  The pigs used to subsdize the passengers.  Now that is not
>> possible,
>
>Is has been proven around the world that, with modest capital
>investment, passenger service turns a profit; it doesn't _need_ freight
>subsidies.

Where?  The Swiss network gets government support.  The contracted out
services in Germany are government supported.  Some but not all of the
Shin Kansen need government support.

CLark Morris
>
>However, doing that would require Congress to pull their heads out of
>their collective asses, so I suppose that's close enough to "impossible"
>for our purposes.
>
>> it is going to be very hard to keep up the Northeast corridor.
>
>The NEC routes have the _best_ financial performance of Amtrak's entire
>network, largely due to Acela's profits; even the Regionals don't do too
>badly.
>
>It's trains running on your beloved _freight_ network that lose enormous
>amounts of money, almost entirely due to lack of capital investment,
>which hurts both passenger _and_ freight service.
>
>Investing in more/faster track pays for itself because you spread your
>(mostly fixed) expenses over more passengers paying higher fares.
>
>S

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