Well, here's a few interesting paragraphs...
quote:
Less expensive alternative: This determination is borne of necessity. Improved train service is seen as an important alternative to crowded highways and delayed flights. The cost of construction and land to build highways, especially near urban areas, can make such projects unfeasible. On the other hand, rail routes already exist. The cost of improving them can be less than a quarter of the $50 million-per-mile price tag for highway construction.
Little federal funding has been available for state rail projects. Amtrak received most of the money, which was often gobbled up by operating deficits. What little money Amtrak had left over was spent on its Northeast Corridor from Boston to Washington. Almost all other passenger routes run on tracks owned by private freight railroads. Those railroads have been reluctant to spend money to make the improvements needed to raise speed limits.
Therein lies the real dilemma, you ask me. Amtrak isn't the only operator that uses capital money for operating expenses—NJ Transit has been doing the exact same thing for a decade, and just recently had to raise fares to compensate (somewhat). (However, NJT also continues to subsidize rush-hour bus routes that run but four times a day, but that's another story.) Thanks to Amtrak having been mandated to "run like a business", as it were, it has to cut down capital spending to almost zero and trim as much fat as it can.
However...the one thing that I don't like about the various projects is the fact that they're state-based, which will limit their range, as it were (i.e. especially when it comes to cross-state operations, beyond the one or possibly two state borders in question). Also, some form of Amtrak should be in place, whether operating passenger trains or not, but at least working with these new initiatives, otherwise ticketing will return to the convolution of the past, requiring several separate tickets for each road. (One large problem with an Amtrak "breakup" would be the loss of connectivity...although others would argue that connectivity on a rail system with so few riders is redundant.)
Who knows, though...perhaps were Amtrak to be gone, then the states would finally get the money for their HSR initiatives, because the funds wouldn't be eaten up on operating costs. We'll see...
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