this post was submitted on 16 Mar 2024
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Nice! I just checked Amtrak prices and it would be $180 for my wife and I to make a trip for probably $50-60 in gas.
More money is spent each month on maintaining the roads in the United States than has ever been spent on passenger rail. If tax funding were reallocated away from roads towards trains the costs would reverse.
Man, I'm not arguing for cars, I want trains to be a viable option! They just aren't for a lot of people right now.
How is that possible? Trains are extremely cheap to run.
I would guess because Amtrak isn't being subsidized enough. A lot of government money is spent on building and maintaining roads. If the consumer had to pay for that directly in the form of toll roads instead of through taxes then Amtrak would be much more competitive.
I believe part of it too is that much of the rail infrastructure is owned by companies, and so Amtrak is getting permission from them to use their tracks. Freight trains get priority over Amtrak trains, for example, and I assume Amtrak has to pay for permission to use those rails.
You also have to take into account that they are buying tickets for 2 people whereas they only need to get gas for one car. If I do end up using AmTrak, I'm just one person so the gas price to ticket price ratio is one to one
capitalism
Amtrak is government owned
But indeed it is a special corporation that is not quite private, yet seeks profit. Subsidized by the government, it wouldn't be the first capitalist enterprise to rely heavily on government funding.
The question is how you define capitalist then.
I'd consider it state capitalism. A private for-profit company owns the means of production/capital but that company is government owned.
That being said though, I don't think its fair to blame Amtrak being a private company as the reason Amtrak has high prices. Amtrak is at the mercy of freight rail as Amtrak only owns 3% of the rails they operate on. They pretty much have to pay whatever the freight companies say and freight is given preference over passenger trains. Amtrak has never made a profit since its creation.
State capitalism is an oxymoron. Socialism(not Marxism which is more specific) is the collective control of the means of production, collective control includes state control, I(and I think most people) consider capitalism and socialism to be antonyms, so I don't think you can really say state control of something is anywhere near capitalism.
That is true, but I don't think anything stopped them from building their own track like Brightline is doing.
Correct me if I am wrong but isn't like 100% of US rails owned by freight companies? And Amtrak must negotiate it's prices for using them with each company whose track they want to use. This drives prices hella high.
Not 100%. Amtrak's FY2022 fact sheet says that 72.6% of miles driven was on tracks owned by other railroads. That doesn't tell us how much rail they own, but they do own some of their own rail.
Not only does it mean higher prices, but worse service because they have to rely on freight companies to maintain their rails properly and preference is given to freight leading to passenger delays.
Edit: Found a better source.