[panick21_]

Amtrak is the least subsidies mode of Transportation. It has to compete with road transport and the subsidies given to highways, roads and parking is orders of magnitude larger then what Amtrak gets.

Amtrak gets surprisingly small amount of money.

[sarchertech]

Freight rail also has priority over Amtrak, which causes all kinds of problems with scheduling and adds insane delays.

[panick21_]

I mean sure, we can talk for hours about issues with Amtrak.

However that doesn't change what I said so I'm not sure why you are bringing it up. Amtrak most likely wouldn't be profitable if they had priority.

[sarchertech]

I think you may have conditioned by HN to assume that any comment is a refutation. I brought it up because it’s an additional piece of the explanation for why amtrack can’t support itself on ticket prices alone.

[panick21_]

Fair. I'm just saying that its one of many factors so I was confused why you would bring it up specifically.

[sarchertech]

Mostly because it’s the single biggest thing that keeps me from using Amtrak. The last few trips I’ve taken, we ended up sitting waiting on freight trains for many many hours.

Each big city we came to we had to stop and wait without having any idea how long it would take for “freight traffic to clear”.

I love train travel, and I’m not price sensitive at all, but the delays were completely absurd.