Hacker News Reader

The table is missing railroad unions-- the anti-efficiency factor that's ruined American passenger rail.

Amtrak makes good money where there are customers, even with the same unions. It's almost 100% the fault of politicians that won't let Amtrak shut down low passenger volume lines. If we shut down the losers and actually invested the profits from the Northeast Corridor back into that line, you would see great growth.

You know, the way a company would do it.

If we shut down the losers and actually invested the profits from the Northeast Corridor back into that line,

Yglesias wrote up this exact argument this week [1]. The Northeast Corridor profit he dug up [2] amounts to all of $136 million/year for the Northeast Corridor; a proposed upgrade is estimated at $151 billion [3]. (And the profit figure only includes operating costs -- the actually relevant figures aren't available).

[1] http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/03/01/amtrak_profit...

[2] http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/Research/Files/Reports/2013...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_Corridor

Reply on news.ycombinator.com