Amtrak
Amtrak:
'Fraud, waste, and abuse are long-standing problems'. The government-subsidized transportation service
Amtrak has consumed $40 billion in subsidies over the last four decades, according to Tad DeHaven of the Cato
Institute. He writes: "The system has never earned a profit and most of its routes lose money. Amtrak's
on-time record is very poor, and the system as a whole only accounts for 0.1 percent of America's passenger travel."
Besides sucking more and more money from the U.S. government, there are many documented cases of fraud.
Privatizing Amtrak:
An independent analysis found that the average operational loss per passenger on all 44 of Amtrak's routes
was $32 in 2008. ... The Sunset Limited, which runs from New Orleans to Los Angeles, lost an astounding $462 per
passenger. All of Amtrak's long-distance routes lose money. According to the Government Accountability
Office, these routes account for 15 percent of riders but 80 percent of financial losses.
Senate
infrastructure bill would fund airports, highways, Amtrak. Senate Democrats on Wednesday
[11/2/2011] will begin considering a $60 billion infrastructure bill that would provide billions of dollars
in new funding for airports, highways and Amtrak and other rail systems, in addition to funding a
new $10 billion infrastructure bank.
The Editor says...
Amtrak is pork, not infrastructure. If Amtrak goes out of business, the regular users will make other
arrangements and the rest of the country will hardly notice.
Trains
In Vain. This week, Amtrak marks its 40th anniversary, which means that for decades it's wasted
tens of billions of tax dollars. Naturally, Washington wants to reward this with billions more under the
guise of "high-speed" rail. To say that Amtrak is a failed business is to be unkind to failure.
Top 10 Spending Cuts Thwarted by
Democrats: [#3] Amtrak: When Amtrak started in 1971, officials
predicted it would break even by 1974. Forty years and tens of billions of dollars in
federal subsidies later, the train service is still bleeding red ink. Republicans want
to cut $224 million from its budget, which could be accomplished by axing highly subsidized
routes outside the Northeast Corridor.
Amtrak
CEO ditches broken train to travel by car. Today's the big day for Amtrak's Wilmington train
station. It is being renamed in honor of Vice President and former Delaware Senator Joe Biden following
major renovations made possible with stimulus funds. One problem: the CEO of Amtrak got stuck on
the train. ABC News Deputy Political Director & Political Reporter Michael Falcone tweeted at approximately
10 a.m. that the Acela train he was riding had been "delayed" in Baltimore and that he was sitting next to
Amtrak CEO Joe Boardman.
High-speed
rail is a fast track to government waste. Passenger rail service inspires wishful thinking.
In 1970, when Congress created Amtrak to preserve intercity passenger trains, the idea was that the system
would become profitable and self-sustaining after an initial infusion of federal money. This never
happened. Amtrak has swallowed $35 billion in subsidies, and they're increasing by more than
$1 billion annually. Despite the subsidies, Amtrak does not provide low-cost transportation.
The Quest for the Holy Rail.
Amtrak carried 29.1 million passengers last year. Sounds impressive? That's only one quarter
the amount of automobile commutes in a single day. ... The liberal fixation on rail transit, a 19th century
technology ill-suited to 21st century mobility needs, prompts a lot of questions. The proposed high-speed
rail system will be a fiscal sink-hole forever. Why is it that liberals only apply "sustainability"
to how us lowly private citizens use resources, but never to government spending?
Who's
Policing Amtrak Joe Biden's Rail Boondoggles? At Philadelphia's 30th Street Station on
Tuesday [2/8/2011], lifelong government rail promoter Vice President Joe Biden unveiled a $53 billion
high-speed train initiative and half-joked: "I'm like the ombudsman for Amtrak." As with most
gaffetastic Biden-isms, the remark should prompt more heartburn than hilarity. Just who exactly is
looking out for taxpayers when it comes to federal rail spending?
Rails Won't Save America. Amtrak
spent more than $3 billion carrying people about 5.4 billion passenger miles in 2006. This
works out to 56 cents per passenger mile, more than four times the cost of flying. Also in 2006,
America's urban transit agencies spent about $42 billion on 49.5 billion passenger miles, for a
cost of 85 cents per passenger mile, or more than three times the cost of driving.
Amtrak E-Mail
Misuse Alleged in IG Scandal. Amtrak's independent investigative officer is asking the U.S.
Postal Service to look into whether Amtrak officials misused the e-mail system by searching for
communiqués between his office and Congress about the unexpected retirement of Amtrak's
longtime inspector general, according to House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif.
Going Off The Rails With Amtrak.
In June 2009, the inspector general of Amtrak, Fred Weiderhold, completed a report that concluded the "independence
and effectiveness" of the inspector general's office was being "substantially impaired" by Amtrak management, as
reported in the Wall Street Journal. Coincidentally, Amtrak management chose that moment to conclude
Weiderhold's career. He was paid over $300,000 to sign what amounted to a non-disclosure agreement on
his way out. ... Amtrak has a long history of doing things they would happily pay three hundred grand of your
money to keep quiet.
Commerce
Committee defends Amtrak executives. The Senate Commerce Committee is defending two top Amtrak
executives whom Republicans want investigated for failing to tell Congress about the removal of longtime
Amtrak Inspector General Fred Weiderhold. Committee staff in a report this week also rejected calls by
three Republican leaders in the House and Senate calling for the removal of Amtrak Chairman Thomas Carper and
General Counsel Eleanor Acheson.
High-speed
rail will take taxpayers for a ride. My wife and I are planning a weekend in Philadelphia with
our three kids. I thought it would be fun to take everybody up from D.C. to Philly on the Acela Express,
Amtrak's fastest passenger train. It's only 95 minutes from downtown to downtown. Then I checked
the ticket prices: $1,320.00 round-trip for the five of us. Even the slow Northeast Regional would
cost hundreds of dollars. Driving takes an hour longer than the Acela but costs about $115.00 round-trip
for gas, tolls and parking. We're driving.
Amtrak
'misled' Congress on finances. When Amtrak assured Congress it was on a "glide path" to
free itself of federal subsidies early last decade, a handful of top executives secretly had reason to
know better. In fact, the rail service was on the verge of bankruptcy. But Amtrak's public
assurances were based on far more than overly rosy financial projections.
GM,
Amtrak and an Increasingly Fascist America. The promise that [the nationalization of GM] is temporary
and will eventually be profitable is supposed to ease the American people into accepting this arrangement, but
it is of little comfort to those who remember similar promises when the American taxpayers bought Amtrak.
After three years, government was supposed to be out of the passenger rail business. 40 years and
billions of dollars later,the government is still operating Amtrak at a loss, despite the fact that they have
created a monopoly by making it illegal to compete with Amtrak.
Excellent:
Replacing Amtrak. Amtrak is a colossal
failure. I was one of the people who worked to create Amtrak in 1970-71. The railroad today
bears little resemblance to what was promised. Federal subsidies to Amtrak now exceed $30.7 billion
(and states have provided several billion more), yet Amtrak remains in dire straits and has yet to launch major
reforms. … The more Amtrak "flourishes," the greater taxpayers suffer. That's because Amtrak is an
"enterprise" where the more customers it serves, the more money it loses.
Obama
administration tries railroading General Motors. The Obama administration is dropping a cool $8 billion
on improving long-distance passenger rail service in the United States. President Barack Obama's goal is to get back
what America had decades ago — a large, reliable passenger rail network that kept people off overburdened highways.
It would be a propitious time for Obama to consider why America went from having the greatest railroad service in the world
to having sorry old Amtrak creaking along, still managing to lose money despite a $1.5 billion annual subsidy.
Amtrak ticketing system outage: On
Saturday morning, 25 Aug 2007, the nationwide Amtrak ticketing system failed. It wasn't restored to
service until early Sunday afternoon. During that time, passengers couldn't buy tickets except
(sometimes) at a ticket window, query or change reservations, or retrieve previously-purchased tickets.
Some other web functions were also unavailable.
Amtrak to Reevaluate
Long-Distance Routes. Amtrak's chairman on Thursday [3/16/2006] said the railroad will
scrutinize all of its long-distance routes this year for efficiency and could scrap, reconfigure or
add lines as it tries to prove to Congress and the Bush administration that the rail system is
reforming itself. … In its 34-year history, Amtrak has never turned a profit. It has debt
of more than $3.5 billion and its operating loss for 2005 topped $550 million.
Amtrak Should Go to the
Movies. My favorite statistic regarding this ultimate boondoggle is that the
per-passenger-mile government subsidy is so high that it would be actually cheaper for the
government to give people free plane tickets from New York to California than to underwrite
their train ticket.
Amtrak: On
Time for Yesterday. On-time performance has long been Amtrak's
principal strength … not the trains, but the financial crises. Little
seems more predictable than Amtrak's periodic budget crises and calls for
more money from those naïve enough to believe that nostalgia should be publicly
financed, like defense or welfare. The latest chapter is a new U.S. Department of
Transportation Inspector General report indicating Amtrak is experiencing
unsustainably large losses and is deferring needed investment.
Springtime for Amtrak and
America. Despite continued economic expansion and the recovery of the travel market from the
9/11 terrorist attacks, Amtrak's ridership increased by only 1.3 percent in 2005 compared to the
3.6 percent gain recorded by the domestic airlines. Even among the one-half of one percent of
America's intercity travelers who use Amtrak, support seems to be shrinking.
Is
Amtrak Cooking the Books on Food and Beverage Services? With the close scrutiny that it has
received in recent months, Amtrak should be working overtime to satisfy the demands of its congressional
overseers. (Well, really it should be working overtime to satisfy its customers but, in a
politically-driven enterprise like Amtrak, customers come, at best, third, behind legislators and labor
unions.) One wouldn't think that Congress would be satisfied by being misled by senior Amtrak
management, right?
Amtrak's Acelas: Amtrak and the
DOT insisted on a custom, untested design based on a design concept that was out of step with every other high
speed train built in modern times. Had Amtrak simply purchased a modified form of the X-2000 tested in
the early 90's, we wouldn't have this fiasco today.
Amtrak is Anti-American. The irony is
that, while the United States preaches free-market economics, it runs a retrograde socialist-style rail system
while the rest of the world is privatizing.
Juvenile Logic: Senators Torticelli and
Schumer on Amtrak. In addition to paying for the nation's roads, highway users pay a nearly
20 percent premium on their gasoline taxes to subsidize mass transit, which carries barely one percent
of the nation' travel.
Amtrak: Don't Let Colorado's Back Door Hit You In the
Caboose. Amtrak, you're just too much. You've operated at taxpayer expense to the tune
of $44 billion since 1971, a black hole for federal funding.
How To Run A Railroad (Or At Least Amtrak):
Many wasteful government programs contribute to the growing federal deficit, but the king of them all is Amtrak.
The national passenger rail service incurs two dollars in costs for every dollar of tickets sold.
Senate Scheduled to Vote for More Wasteful
Transportation Spending. Following a successful vote in favor of Rep. Don Young's
$320 million "Bridge to Nowhere" in Alaska, Sen. Trent Lott has shown that he too can waste
taxpayers' money on underutilized transportation projects. … As rewritten for the amendment,
Senator Lott's proposal would spend $12.2 billion over the next six years on Amtrak. At a time
of fiscal crisis, boosting federal subsidies to money-losing and mediocre Amtrak makes no sense.
Amtrak — The Railroad to
Nowhere. Nearly five years ago, as Amtrak officials were hailing their new Acela train as "a
giant step forward" for America and "the kind of rail system we've all been dreaming about for decades," a
former Amtrak official named Joseph Vranich offered another perspective. "I say without equivocation,"
he told The Hartford Courant, "that the Acela program is turning into the world's worst high-speed program."
… Mr. Vranich has moved beyond all that and reached acceptance. He now sees that the dream of
decent Amtrak service is dead.
Amtrak: The Federal Government's Own Corporate Financial
Scandal. Amtrak has for years used creative accounting to disguise its financial problems,
hiding operating expenses as capital costs, as well as misled the public about its effectiveness and performance.
If honest accounting practices had been enforced with Amtrak, it would have gone bankrupt years ago.
Democrats vow fight to
protect Amtrak funding. The leading House Democrat on transportation issues, Minnesota Rep.
Jim Oberstar, on Tuesday [2/8/2005] predicted a "test of wills" over the Bush administration's proposal
to eliminate subsidies to Amtrak.
Amtrak takes us for a
ride: The scene is a staple of silent movies and TV cartoons -- a damsel tied to the railroad
tracks as a train comes hurtling around the bend, while the hero races to free her in time. But this
time, there's a twist: It's the people running the trains who have bound the victim.
Don't Give a Penny to Amtrak: Amtrak
seized on the Sept. 11 calamities as a chance to lobby Congress for $3.2 billion in "disaster"
aid -- even though it suffered no disaster.
Taxing Taxpayers on a
Train Ride. Congress deserves much of the blame for Amtrak's losses. Under
the Amtrak Reform and Accountability Act of 1997, the same legislation that created the Amtrak
Reform Council, Amtrak was required to submit a plan for its own liquidation if it could not
achieve operational self-sufficiency by Dec. 2, 2001. But, after it was clear that
Amtrak could not meet this deadline, Congress got cold feet and (in an unpublicized amendment
to a defense-spending bill) forbade Amtrak from preparing a liquidation plan.
New Amtrak boondoggle may outdo all
others: Legislation now before Congress proposes to dedicate as much as $16 billion of future
budget surpluses to prop up Amtrak, America's federally chartered and subsidized passenger rail service.
Members of Congress should view this new proposal with skepticism given Amtrak's record-breaking losses,
stagnant ridership, and persistent failure to implement high-speed rail service, promised for 1997 and now
delayed for a third straight year.
Congress Should Link Amtrak's
Generous Subsidy to Improved Performance. Amtrak has asked Congress for
$1.680 billion for FY 2008 — a significant increase over the FY 2007
subsidy — but unlike the previous year's request, this year's makes no particular
commitment to implement major reforms. Indeed, at a time when it should be attempting to
follow the airlines' successful lead and seek reductions in the wages of Amtrak's overpaid
workforce ($54,000 per year plus tips for snack car workers), Amtrak's new president announced
early this year that he will "Strive to achieve labor agreements providing reasonable wage increases."
This
train's not bound to break even.
Silent
Rage: "This is the quiet car!" The voice belonged to a woman glaring at my kids, ages 5
and 2, standing (quietly, I should add) next to the door. I ignored her and focused on snagging an empty
spot on a packed Amtrak train — a miracle the day before Christmas — for our nuclear
family with big luggage. (Why Amtrak can't figure out how to assign seats on its "reserved trains" like
every major European rail company will have to be left for another day.) In any case, we weren't about
to give ours up. The pitch went up a notch: "This is the QUIET car!!" "So be quiet."
Ah, my wife to the rescue.
The feds got away with it at the airports, and
now the police state extends to the train station.
New security measures for Amtrak:
Amtrak passengers will have to submit to random screening of carry-on bags in a major new security push that will
include officers with automatic weapons and bomb-sniffing dogs patrolling platforms and trains, the railroad
planned to announce Tuesday [2/19/2008]. The initiative is a significant shift for Amtrak. Unlike
the airlines, it has had relatively little visible increase in security since the 2001 terrorist attacks, a
distinction that has enabled it to attract passengers eager to avoid airport hassles.
Taxing Taxpayers on a
Train Ride. Congress deserves much of the blame for Amtrak's losses. Under
the Amtrak Reform and Accountability Act of 1997, the same legislation that created the Amtrak
Reform Council, Amtrak was required to submit a plan for its own liquidation if it could not
achieve operational self-sufficiency by Dec. 2, 2001. But, after it was clear that
Amtrak could not meet this deadline, Congress got cold feet and (in an unpublicized amendment
to a defense-spending bill) forbade Amtrak from preparing a liquidation plan.
The feds got away with it at the airports, and
now the police state extends to the train station.
New security measures for Amtrak:
Amtrak passengers will have to submit to random screening of carry-on bags in a major new security push that will
include officers with automatic weapons and bomb-sniffing dogs patrolling platforms and trains, the railroad
planned to announce Tuesday [2/19/2008]. The initiative is a significant shift for Amtrak. Unlike
the airlines, it has had relatively little visible increase in security since the 2001 terrorist attacks, a
distinction that has enabled it to attract passengers eager to avoid airport hassles.
Amtraking Automakers: The
odds that the federal government will ever get its hooks out of Chrysler or General Motors are slim to none, regardless
what President Obama says. Why? In one word, Amtrak. ... Amtrak may just be the future business model — if
you can call it that — for Chrysler and General Motors. Amtrak is highly subsidized, underutilized and poorly
performing. Since its inception thirty-nine years ago, Amtrak has been a losing proposition.
Obama's
Health Care Promises Ring Hollow. Past government programs designed to be self-sustaining in the
long run simply haven't lived up to lawmakers' expectations. ... It was originally believed Amtrak would be
self-sustaining within 3 to 5 years. The program lost almost a billion dollars last year and
almost $30 billion dollars since its creation in 1970.
Who
Railroaded the Amtrak Inspector General? Amtrak bosses have effectively gagged their budgetary
watchdogs from communicating with Congress without pre-approval; required that all Amtrak documents be
"pre-screened" (and in some cases redacted) before being turned over to the inspector general's office; and
taken control of the inspector general's $5 million portion of federal stimulus spending. Moreover,
the report revealed, Amtrak regularly retained outside law firms shielded from IG reach. In another case,
Amtrak's Law Department appeared to meddle in an inspector general investigation of an outside financial
adviser suspected of inflating fees.
Amtrak accused of hindering stimulus oversight.
Amtrak managers have improperly interfered with oversight of the railroad's $1.3 billion in economic stimulus funding,
according to an independent report by a former federal prosecutor. The report commissioned by Amtrak's former
inspector general says the railroad's lawyers and financial managers interfered with the internal watchdog's ability
to get stimulus-related documents and the $5 million Congress appropriated for stimulus oversight.
GM,
Amtrak and an Increasingly Fascist America. Public officials are now involving themselves in tactical business
decisions such as where GM's headquarters should move and what kind of cars it will build. The promise that this is
temporary and will eventually be profitable is supposed to ease the American people into accepting this arrangement, but
it is of little comfort to those who remember similar promises when the American taxpayers bought Amtrak. After three
years, government was supposed to be out of the passenger rail business. 40 years and billions of dollars later,
the government is still operating Amtrak at a loss, despite the fact that they have created a monopoly by making it illegal
to compete with Amtrak. Imagine what they can now do to what is left of the great American auto industry!
Amtrak
conducts major East Coast security search. Amtrak, with other transit agencies and dozens of
law enforcement groups, conducted a broad security crackdown Wednesday [9/9/2009] that included random bag
searches at train stations along the East Coast including Union Station. Amtrak conducted the major show
of force at train stations in Virginia, Maryland and as far as Vermont just two days before the anniversary
of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
On the other hand...
Senate votes to allow guns on
Amtrak. The Senate voted today [9/16/2009] to permit passengers on the Amtrak passenger
railroad to transport handguns in their checked baggage.
Pew Analysis Shows Amtrak
Lost $32 Per Passenger in 2008. The average loss per passenger on Amtrak's 44 nationwide
routes was more than $32 in FY2008, according to analysis released today by Pew's Subsidyscope
project. This is four times higher than the loss of $8 per passenger, which was calculated
using Amtrak's own figures. Further, 41 of Amtrak's 44 lines lost money, between
$5 and $462 per passenger depending on the route. Amtrak received $1.3 billion in
direct payments from the federal government in FY2008.
Study:
Amtrak loss comes to $32 per passenger. U.S. taxpayers spent about $32 subsidizing
the cost of the typical Amtrak passenger in 2008, about four times the rail operator's
estimate, according to a private study.
Amtrak
loses $32 per rider. This runaway train is running away with taxpayer dollars!
Amtrak loses an average of $32 for every passenger who boards one of its trains, and 41 of its 44 routes
lost money in 2008, according to a scathing watchdog report released yesterday [10/27/2009].
Budget Buster Express.
Members of Congress must feel a bit shortchanged by the amount of playtime they received during childhood. Their
ongoing fascination with one of the world's most expensive model-train sets, Amtrak, otherwise defies explanation.
Politicians continue to treat the heavily subsidized operation more like a prized toy than a solid business operation.
The time has come to stop shoveling money into this runaway choo-choo.
Amtrak and
the Railroads. Amtrak and its lobbyists at the National Association of Railroad Passengers (NARP)
recently invited us to commemorate the third annual National Train Day on May 8. Supposedly celebrating
"America's love for trains," the day could not boast a more ironic host than the railroad nobody rides.
Worse, Amtrak's sponsorship was as shameless as Dracula's funding a fashion show concentrating on décolletage:
The government that owns Amtrak has sabotaged, subsidized, and sucked the life from American railroads since
the industry's inception.
Amtrak's
first-ever ad campaign targeted at LGBT demographic. For the first time, Amtrak is courting
lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered travelers with a targeted $250,000 multimedia advertising blitz
this summer. The government-owned rail company is looking to the LGBT community for business with
the hopes that its propensity for travel will translate well into rail transportation.
Woman feels 'disrespected' after being kicked off
train. A woman who got pulled of an Amtrak train by police after passengers complained she was
speaking too loudly on a cell phone said she felt "disrespected" by the entire incident. Lakeysha Beard
of Tigard was charged with disorderly conduct after police said she got into a "verbal altercation" with train
passengers on Sunday [5/15/2011]. Passengers complained she refused to put down her cell phone and conductors
had to stop the train in Salem, where police got involved.
More information on mass transit issues can be
found here.
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