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Should parts of Amtrak be privatized? [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-06-22
Before you blow a head gasket, just hear me out.
Amtrak has been chronically underfunded since its creation. And over the course of the carrier’s existence — now 54-years plus — the national passenger-rail-service provider has been the target of attempts to zero it out. I am happy to report regarding its perpetuation, wiser heads prevailed, thank goodness!!
So, if you remember from history, the United States Railroad Administration took control of all railroads domestically during World War I. It obviously felt it had to, otherwise it wouldn’t have. But, at the end of the day, close of the war, actually, those railroads were returned to private ownership.
Then there’s this. The Railroad Revitalization and Regulatory Reform Act, passed on April 1, 1976, salvaged parts of six bankrupt northeast railroads and transformed them into what became known as Conrail which stands for the Consolidated Rail Corporation. The railroad was controlled by the U.S. Government for 11 years until 1987 when Conrail was sold to private interests for the cool sum of $1.65 billion, just a fraction of the $7 billion the fed invested in the railroad over that 11-year time span. Conrail survived another twelve years (1999) before it was split up, 58 percent of all assets going to Norfolk Southern; the remainder acquired by corporate giant CSX.
And this. Amtrak’s 457-mile-long Northeast Corridor connecting D.C. and Boston, has yet to be brought up to world class high-speed rail standards.
In my ebook The Departure Track: Railways of Tomorrow in “Chapter 3: A New Direction?” I wrote:
As this is being written [2013], American high-speed rail has yet to really gel. There is no telling when, or if, this will happen. Sure, there is [sic] Amtrak’s 150 mph (165 mph capable) Acela Express trainsets. However, by industry and/or government estimations, to bring the Northeast Corridor (NEC) - on which Acela Express and other Amtrak passenger trains operate - up to world class, high-speed rail operating standards, $151 billion in [sic] (2012 dollars), will need to be invested….
If, in fact, that’s the objective, where is this money, required to fund the upgrade, going to come from? Where, I ask?!
Add to this what Politico noted at Wikipedia: “[Amtrak] chronically operates in the red. A pattern has emerged: Congress overrides cutbacks demanded by the White House and appropriates enough funds to keep Amtrak from plunging into insolvency. But, Amtrak advocates say, that is not enough to fix the system’s woes.”* Is Politico on the right track with this?
But there is also this:
“In 2021, the 117th United States Congress signed the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which directly appropriated $66 billion for rail over a five-year period, of which at least $18 billion is designated for expanding passenger rail service to new corridors, and it authorized an additional $36 billion. Amtrak received $22 billion in advance appropriations and $19 billion in fully authorized funds.”*
So, I ask now: Is partial privatization in Amtrak’s future? Should it be?
* Wikipedia, “Amtrak”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amtrak
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