Anonymous asked:
It's more expensive for me to take your train to university than to fly. What's up with that?
amtrak-official answered:
Planes are subsidized incredibly heavily compared to amtrak, additionally we are required by law to become profitable but have to rent tracks and must keep all routes open (I support this part but it does hurt the profit goal).
There is more I want to add, airports are almost always public usually either city or state owned, and will never make a profit outside of maybe Louisville and Memphis. This is important because it means that air companies are significantly cheaper to run with the fact that they only need to pay for labor, planes and feul, which significantly cuts costs, meanwhile trains have to run on tracks which cost money while air is free and amtrak has to rent to them for even more money and thestations are all also owned by amtrak, all of this means that without full rail nationalization rail travel can literally never be profitable on its own.
