New Source of Funding for Amtrak?

[user 1215]

I think that the arguments here that have been made for keeping Amtrak alive is precisely what is needed to keep funding available. I suggest we each propose to our congressperson that Amtrak be funded through the Farm Bill. With a $956 BILLION budget, Amtrak would be a blip in that bucket and will ensure that those teeny weeny towns (ie: FARMS) that currently only have Amtrak as a viable source of transportation to the rest of the United States will continue to be served into perpetuity.

 

[Woody]

I think that the arguments here that have been made for keeping Amtrak alive is precisely what is needed to keep funding available. I suggest we each propose to our congressperson that Amtrak be funded through the Farm Bill. With a $956 BILLION budget, Amtrak would be a blip in that bucket and will ensure that those teeny weeny towns (ie: FARMS) that currently only have Amtrak as a viable source of transportation to the rest of the United States will continue to be served into perpetuity.

There are rich people who own thousands of acres of prime Amtrak?

 

[Crossover]

One way , as mentioned ,is expansion .

 

[Nathanael]

I think that the arguments here that have been made for keeping Amtrak alive is precisely what is needed to keep funding available. I suggest we each propose to our congressperson that Amtrak be funded through the Farm Bill. With a $956 BILLION budget, Amtrak would be a blip in that bucket and will ensure that those teeny weeny towns (ie: FARMS) that currently only have Amtrak as a viable source of transportation to the rest of the United States will continue to be served into perpetuity.

Surely, the Military Funding bill would be a better place for it. The military seems to be handed unaccountable "black budget" slush funds of billions of dollars, which are sometimes used for things like illegal assassinations, and sometimes simply disappear (graft). Mica couldn't complain about Amtrak's food & beverage expenses if they were a "state secret" controlled by the CIA.

 

[Anderson]

I don't see the Farm Bill as being a place to stick all of Amtrak's funding, but it would be a plausible place to stick some sort of "rural services" grant to places with little or no other public transportation and where even the EAS isn't doing a whole lot for the area. Something like that could be used for either supplemental funding for some LD trains or to run some rural services routes.

 

[Crossover]

Comment removed

 

[Ryan]

Yeah, they tried that once. It failed miserably and the freight roads HATED IT.

What makes you think it would be different now?

Sent from my iPhone

 

[jis]

Amtrak should stick to its primary business of hauling passengers. It should not branch out into doing other random things like hauling freight or such. Been there. Done that already, and it didn't work out so well. Whatever can be carried in available space in baggage cars is fair game IMHO. but nothing that requires special cars etc.

 

[Devil's Advocate]

So was the reason the parcel shipping didn't work because they were too expensive to operate? I thought it was because Amtrak was being bullied by the freight railroads to the point that it was severely hurting their passenger operations. How did Amtrak manage to suddenly shut down the USPO service without prior notice? We often talk about how Amtrak burns their own bridge but in this case I think that was a true scorched earth result. I know I'd never want to do business with Amtrak if they treated me like they treated the USPO.

 

[jis]

So was the reason the parcel shipping didn't work because they were too expensive to operate? I thought it was because Amtrak was being bullied by the freight railroads to the point that it was severely hurting their passenger operations. How did Amtrak manage to suddenly shut down the USPO service without prior notice? We often talk about how Amtrak burns their own bridge but in this case I think that was a true scorched earth result. I know I'd never want to do business with Amtrak if they treated me like they treated the USPO.

AFAIR the whole venture including USPO at that time was losing money and Gunn was running out of cash to run the system. So he shut the entire non-passenger operation down and parked all the boxcars and a whole slew of P40s to save enough money so as to not have to start canceling passenger trains. This was at a point when he was trying to rescue Amtrak from the ruinous situation in which it was left by "Glidepath to Self Sufficiency with Boxcars" George.

As for hurting passenger operations, yes, the freight railroads were upset, but most of the damage was done by Amtrak to itself. Operations were being hurt because trains had to stop at yards to pick and drop of strings of box cars while passengers waited on the train for those operations to complete. It was an utter disaster from all angles.

 

[Crossover]

Comment removed .

 

[Anderson]

Amtrak has looked into doing some very limited point-to-point shipping with spare space in the baggage cars. I could see them adding a second baggage car to some trains and/or working with some shippers in the context of Amtrak Express shipping, but I don't see them pushing shipping to/from intermediate locations or doing anything that would require adding/removing cars anywhere en route.