[stetrain]

We nationalized the passenger services that were losing money, that’s why the railroads wanted to get rid of them.

Most of Amtrak’s service runs on track they don’t own, at the mercy of the freight railroads for scheduling and track maintenance.

They are pressured to keep their long distance trains that lose money as a public good, but they aren’t given consistent public funding in return. We treat them as a company that should turn it own profit. We don’t expect the DOT to turn a profit on highways, because we recognize the greater economic impact of having useful highways.

The Northeast Corridor is the exception and notably seems to be the best performing part of the Amtrak network.

Seems to me like the standard American public-private practice of privatizing the gains and socializing the losses, and then complaining about how the government loses money.

[jcranmer]

> The Northeast Corridor is the exception and notably seems to be the best performing part of the Amtrak network.

And, interestingly, the worst part of the Northeast Corridor is the part that's not owned by Amtrak (the Metro North territory between NYC and New Haven).

[kwhitefoot]

> the standard American public-private practice of privatizing the gains and socializing the losses

It isn't only the US that suffers from this. The UK has a bad case of it and even Norway is in danger of doing it.

[olivierduval]

Same for France sadly... but we always take US worst ideas ;-)