From: stephen@sprunk.org

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.

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

--
Stephen Sprunk         "God does not play dice."  --Albert Einstein
CCIE #3723         "God is an inveterate gambler, and He throws the
K5SSS        dice at every possible opportunity." --Stephen Hawking

--- SoupGate/W32 v1.03
 * Origin: LiveWire BBS -=*=- UseNet FTN Gateway (1:2320/1)