Hacker News Comments on
Amtrak’s Grand Plan for Profitability
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All the comments and stories posted to Hacker News that reference this video.> Worse still, the Republican party has bamboozled their members into actually believing trains are not cost effectiveIt's even crazier than that. It turns out that Amtrak would be profitable were it not for being required to run long distance passenger rail lines through sparsely populated states, usually represented by the senators you mentioned.
(Note that regional state co-financed Amtrak lines like the Capital Corridor in California aren't part of the profitability problem)
The same senators from those low population density states who demand that Amtrak cut losses in order to become profitable also raise hackles when the obvious solution of cutting the unprofitable long-distance routes through their states routes is raised. It turns out that many of their constituents like those unprofitable routes.
See Wendover's YouTube video on the topic: https://youtu.be/dSw7fWCrDk0
Actually the reason Amtrak runs a huge deficit is their long haul routes (cross country). Their local routes like the eastern corridor and even the ones on the west coast are profitable. Even their regional routes either break even or are very close.I would point you to the following Wendover Productions video that gives a great analysis.
Amtrak’s Grand Plan for Profitability
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