>>1111482Amtrak's subsidy is a fraction of the interstate/automobile subsidy or the airline subsidy. They also only need a subsidy for the long distance routes they're not allowed to drop, because many of the towns served by them have no other real means of long haul transportation. The NEC makes money, and their other local routes are covered by states that have decided they want them, and they either make a small profit or only lose a small amount, again despite being shit from a lack of capital investment.
The Acela and Northeast Regional could be vastly improved for a relatively small capital investment to boost speeds. I know the same goes for the routes in California. Surfliner, Capitol Corridor, and San Joaquins are all immensely popular despite running on single tracked freight ROWs with 79 MPH speed limits (with a few exceptions).We spend God knows how much on building and maintaining (and doing a shitty job at it) our interstates and freeways, but jack shit on building modern rail connections.
>inb4 muh military transportRight, because they couldn't have been transported more efficiently by rail, let's run jeeps with fuck huge off road tires and treaded tanks across hundreds of miles of concrete, instead of loading them onto steel-on-steel trains. If you believe that's why we built the interstate system you're high on crack.
