waltlantz:
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I think that Amtrak should be pared down into various regional bodies. Kinda how Bell Telephone used to be. Or kind of like British/National Rail. That way it can focus on serving individual regions better. We all see the importance and success of the NEC.
I think that similar success could be duplicated in the Midwest and to a lesser extent the West Coast. It won't be true high speed rail. But if we could get strong inter-city service comparable to what they have in England or France, I think people would be actually willing to buy into the high speed rail thing more
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First, this is exactly what is being proposed. If you look at the maps from the Federal Railroad Administration, there are 8-9 corridors where high speed rail is planned, connecting cities in mega-regions. Nobody is planning the Chicago-San Francisco routes you cite. Still, this doesn't stop uninformed criticism from oil-industry hacks and Ayn Rand-disciples that the US isn't dense enough for high speed rail, even though the Northeast corridor and coastal California is every bit as dense as Europe.
Second, I have to agree with LMich, Amtrak is no behemoth. As Sen. Lautenberg (D-NJ) noted in a hearing last month, more federal money was spent on highways in FY2010 than has been spent on Amtrak in its 40 year history combined. The federal highway trust fund is broke and has needed a $7B-$8B bailout from the general fund (i.e. subsidizing drivers) for each of the past four years. Americans drove something like 1.7% fewer miles last year. At the same time, ridership on Amtrak was up over 5% last year and there are new ridership records established nearly every month. Amtrak seems like a success to me, given the very meager budgets we give to passenger rail and the heavy subsidies we give to automobiles.
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