The official tumblr of amtrak (Posts tagged budget qualms)

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See, that’s what the app is perfect for.

Sounds perfect Wahhhh, I don’t wanna
mrfluffles300
accelerationist-king-piccolo

image
raccoongirlmusk

Why? I’m from Australia so I don’t know anything about this stuff

femmeharlequin-deactivated20240

Because there should be public transit and trains. It is a ridiculously short flight that is just polluting the world unnecessarily but a lot of people don’t have a better option. There’s so many major cities in that small area that they should have train lines between them all

seiya234

okay so like, I live in Baltimore. Boston is 8 hours by car away. But! There’s a direct train that goes there so I should take it and-

the train is 8 hours. Okay no big deal at least I’m not driving I can relax and-

the train ticket will run me one way between 100-300 dollars depending on when I buy it from Amtrak.

However, I can get an 80 dollar plane ticket one way on southwest, so I do that instead.

anyway it is beyond frustrating to be in the most used part of the amtrak system and still have train tickets be so goddamn cost prohibitive. 

brunhiddensmusings

thats not a policy failure, its seven policy failures duct taped together

mrfluffles300

@amtrak-official pls esplain

amtrak-official

I get given scraps by government budgets because I am expected by conservatives to become profitable which is an impossible goal. This forces prices on the services that are used to be raised

budget qualms

Anonymous asked:

Stop begging for handouts loser, just because you’re a government agency doesn’t mean the government owes you money, pull yourself up by your train tracks like a true American. I’m sick of everyone expecting funds from the government just because they’re ‘government funded’ or whatever.

It is literally impossible for a train company to be profitable if it doesn’t own any tracks. Amtrak isn’t profitable because and this is surprising, Congress has forced it not to be. If amtrak owned its tracks it would make it more on time and cheaper to both operate and ride. But by law it is forced to rent the tracks for these weird little demons called Class 1 Railroads.

Also yeah, I can turn a profit in New York, I just am the one who has to pay for track repairs when CSX or Norfolk Crash.

asks budget qualms

Anonymous asked:

I actually didn’t know Amtrak was like government funded, so thank you for sharing that

Well calling it funding is generous, we just get a pitance to shut up and keep running till the debt gets us first. If congress wasn’t a pile of climate denialist dinosaurs, maybe we would get a bit more than the minimal shitty budget we currently receive.

asks budget qualms
amtrak-official

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).

amtrak-official

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.

budget qualms nationalisation