If the rail industry can't afford to do those things without taxpayer money they should not be in business. Why should the taxpayers have to suffer to keep a dying industry alive?
Excuse me, dumbfuck, but AMTRAK gets ALL it's money from Congress. Congress doesn't just subsidize what AMTRAK can't 'earn'.
So tickets on Amrtrack trains are free? You are stupider than NYCarb. Thats saying something.
No, but ridership won't pay for the maintenance of the infrastructure. And the infrastructure is shared with private rail, which puts tremendous tonnage on the system compared to people-moving trains.
Maybe private rail should have new fees assessed in order to maintain the system? Why should taxpayers foot the entire bill?
OK so you admit that Amtrack does not get all its money from Congress. That's some kind of progress.
Point made, let's move on.
They are totally beholden to the whims of Congress. They cannot do a rate hike without approval. They cannot fulfill the mandate of Congress to install all these PTC systems without acquiring the bandwidth,
yet Congress has not ordered the FCC to assign that bandwidth. This has forced Amtrak in a position of having to buy the bandwidth from the private rail companies who bought up all the bandwidth in that crucial frequency, 225 MHz.
Except that Amtrak doesn't have the money to buy that bandwidth.
So if you can't raise your fees without
Congress' approval, and you can't get bandwidth from the FCC without
Congress' intervention, and you can't buy bandwidth on the open market without
Congress allocating more funds, then
yes - you are totally dependent upon Congress for your funding.