If so, explain why. If you think there is a better way other than complete gov't ownership or complete privatization, then please tell.
And yes, it is actually OWNED by the government. It is a government owned corporation.

Amtrak is private.

The government SUBSIDIZES the rail roads. But they do not own it.


Good Luck.

P.S. l stand corrected:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amtrak

It needs to be subsidized in order to continue running. l believe that the government should increase subsidies & encourage people to ride it. If they want to privatize it & continue to pay subsidies, that is fine.

But the problem is that many small-town politicians r against Amtrak in the first place, & r trying to use privatization as an excuse to shut it down. If they privatize it & it fails, it gets liquidated.

So l would be against privatization unless there is a federal funding guarantee with it.

Amtrack is owned by private but gov. gives them a money into them so they keep off from runnin out of business

In my opinion, it is hard for goverment to keep on eye on them so thats why they are not fully controlled by the government

Railroads get a better price per ton of coal than ton of people. Coal does not complain or sue railroads either. That is why they got out of the business of hauling people. It is not profitable.

oh, there could be lots of debate about all this, l dont think Y!A has enough space for the volumes of opinions on this, let alone all of the other transportation matters involved.

but briefly, government subsidizes many many types of industry, including railroads, highways, the post office, broadcasting, oil, & many other things. sometimes the subsidy is direct, such as outright ownership (such as amtrak or the post office), sometimes it is indirect (for airlines, govt owns & pays for FAA traffic control, removes airport property from tax rolls, etc), & sometimes it is hidden (highways get police protection & support from local property taxes, not from gas tax).

there r different ways that government can be involved too. they can own the infrastructure outright (like the highways, which also removes them from the property tax rolls) while letting any carrier or individual operate over them for a toll or, in america, for free. Or, they can own the company & rent the infrastructure, like they do with amtrak. Or they can own both the company & the infrastructure, such as the postal service.

if we talk about privatising amtrak, then l think it only fair that we talk about privatising ALL transportation, which includes roads. Can this work? It could. Will it work? probably not, people hate toll roads with a passion bcs they feel they should be able to drive per-use for free. But we think nothing of paying for a plane ticket, train ticket, or bus ticket, before getting to use any of the other transport modes. So why is the auto being treated differently?

The gas tax is a joke. Federally, it is still 18 cents per gallon, which is the exact same as in the 1970 is & before. Even tho' the cost of road construction material & labour, police labour, etc have all risen over the last 30 years, the gas tax has not raised even 1 iota of a cent.

Also, think of this - a car that gets 20 miles per gallon will pay more gas tax than a car that gets 40 miles per gallon, right? so, the gas tax has ignored auto technology & CAFE standards that has increased the fuel efficiency of autos by increasing their mpg. so what happens? if/when u get a more fuel efficient car, u either drive the same, thus paying less fuel tax; or u start driving twice more miles (bcs u perceive it as sooo efficient) to only pay the same amount of tax. Thus, in any case, there is less money coming in & people r driving more, thus creating demand for more construction, repairs, calls for new roads & lanes, & congestion for which there is no funding to mitigate.

another point - property. private railroad companies have to own/rent the land their tracks r on, & they also have to pay for installing & maintaining their signal system, & they pay half of installation & full of maintenance of every road/rail grade crossing pavement & signals. And, to boot, the railroads have to pay property taxes on every parcel of land to each county & state that they run through. In addition, if the corporation makes a profit, they have to pay income taxes just like other corporations.

all roads & airports r on government-owned land. there is no annual rent paid. there is no property taxes paid on any of the millions & millions of acres of property that r paved over. the government pays for FAA & runway lights, & for installing, maintaining, & electricity for every traffic intersection signal, & even all the street lights. there is no charges made to the auto user nor the pedestrian for all the poles, light bulbs, electricity, etc, that go with every road.

here is a sobering statistic for you, to show how screwed transportation funding is. autos (and buses & trucks) get over 33 BBBillion $/yr in various subsidies, most indirect. airlines get around 15 BBB $/yr, while amtrak gets 1.2 BBBillion per year for operations & capitalization combined, & the private rail freight carriers get zippo for operations, zippo for signaling/maintenance, & the minimal capital investments tend to be for grade elimination, which is arguably helping the road/auto as much or more than the railroad (altho' yes, it does improve the safety of the railroad too).

here is an example for you: in chicago, the state of illinois (not the city) paid 980 Million $ for repairing the 8 mile stretch of Dan Ryan Expressway. In the past 2 years, they were paying only 12 Million $/yr for helping to subsidize 3 amtrak routes (total 852 miles, 12 separate daily train runs on 3 routes), upped it to 24 Million $ last year for the first time. ridership on trains shot up between 40 & 90 % in first year on the 3 routes, & yet, Illinois is proposing to cut back the amtrak funding this year due to budget problems, in spite of impressive ridership & a successful rail program.

compare: Dan Ryan - 980 M $ / 8 miles = 122,500,000 PER MILE (122.5 Million $). Amtrak - 24 M $ / 852 miles = 28,169 PER MILE (28.17 Thousand $).

and, do l even have to say about repayment of this money to the state? for dan ryan, it is still a freeway, there is not one single toll gantry or booth nor any other taxing mechanism to get ANY money back. whereas on amtrak, the state gets some cost reduction for every fare that is purchased, bcs each train passenger (and remember we had an avg 60% increase in the number of riders) MUST PAY a fare before they can board.

or u could look at it politically -- Dan Ryan 8 miles lies only in 1 county, altho' people & businesses do come from other counties & states to use it too, which is not necessarily a benefit anyway to illinois politicians). The 3 amtrak routes have stations in 28 counties, run thru additional counties without stopping, & serve a larger cachement area of over 80 counties.

so, as far as votes in the General Assembly or federal Congress, now, just WHICH do u think most of the small-town voters will vote for? of course, the one that serves them -- hence the continued popularity of the Postal Service or Amtrak. l mean, if privatisation is soooo wonderful, then why havent FedEx & UPS taken over ALL mail deliveries & let the govt close down the expensive federal Postal Service...see, just 1 of many many examples.

is the car absolutely needed everywhere? perhaps, but only because of land use & zoning decisions, government subsidies for extending sewers/roads for new development while neglecting their existing infrastructure, shopping malls/big box stores built on the outskirts instead of in downtowns, & so on. so, perhaps, instead of just looking at amtrak or roads, we need to look at the bigger picture of urbanism, land use, choice of locations for residence vs employment, post-Euclidean zoning issues, etc.

well, this is just a start. l hope everyone will think of these points, & when it is time to debate the TEA 2009 bill, to accept that either gas taxes or tolls need to be augmented for roads, or that rail/bus/air needs to be subsidized more, in order to compete with the almighty automobile.

Passenger rail loses money in every civilized country, fact of life.

Europe has a ~50% farebox ratio, Amtrak over 80%. Put another way, the European governments subsidize $1 & European citizens match with another $1. When the USA spends $1 on Amtrak subsidy, riders match it with over $4!

So subsidy-wise, Amtrak is already a GREAT bargain.

What do u hope to fix with privatization of Amtrak? You wo not erase the universal rule that passenger rail in every civilized country needs subsidy. Do u expect Amtrak will be run better as a private company? Maybe, but if u get familiar with how they operate now, they're pretty tight now. The best u could hope for is lift some pension burdens off of them but that has nothing to do with privatization.

The government would love to return US passenger train service to the private sector, but the private sector is very unwilling to take it back.

Intercity passenger trains were exclusively run by the private sector in the first part of the 20th century. With the growth of the automobile & air transportation, the companies started to lose money on the service. They began to abandon passenger trains, turning their focus to the more profitable freight service.

Amtrak was established when it became clear that if government did not step in, we would be left with no intercity passenger trains. Amtrak, with federal & some state funding, has kept a skeletal passenger train service going.

It is hated by fiscal conservatives, who continually talk about privatizing trains, without understanding why Amtrak was established in the first place.

Several administrations, including the current, have established panels of ''experts'' to figure out how to privatize passenger rail, but their recommendations r typically unworkable, & would only lead to what we do not want--the death of passenger train service in the US.