From James K. Glassman’s There’s Something About a Train Subsidy That’s Magic…:
Right after the November 1994 election, I wrote that “the way to tell how serious Republicans are about cutting federal spending is to watch the Big Four programs: farm subsidies, Amtrak, public television, and arts funding.”The four are big, not in dollars, but in symbolic value: “It’s impossible for a party that professes to believe in limited government to justify the use of taxpayer dollars for any of the Big Four, yet each has a powerful constituency.”
A decade later, the record is not encouraging.
Amtrak in a nutshell:
In 1970, Washington created Amtrak as a way to rescue passenger rail service, which hadn’t made a profit since the end of World War II, thanks to the unleashing of air and auto travel. Since its advent, Amtrak has never made money. Subsidies total $30 billion.Amtrak’s audited statement for fiscal 2003 (the most recent figures) show a loss of $1.3 billion, up from $1.1 billion in 2002. Amtrak’s payroll alone exceeds its ticket revenues. [...] It would be cheaper, on some routes, for the government simply to buy plane tickets for train travelers.
Why does it still exist?
The brilliance of Amtrak is that it creates a constituency in the 45 states in which its trains roll.