Amtrak and the airline industry - both are money losers

The lesson: we think of government-owned Amtrak as money-losing socialism, but the money-losing airline industry as a bunch of noble capitalists. Maybe we should re-examine our national transportation policies the way JetBlue is rethinking its customer-service policies.

[Quoted from Allan Sloan: Lessons From JetBlue’s Meltdown ]

That comment about the airline industry - my feeling exactly. As we all know, Amtrak is a money-losing entity. Lots of people think it could be otherwise, but I just don’t think so. But then, the much touted airline industry is also a money loser. Nobody really knows about the road transportation industry, because there is no single entity at whose income statement one could look at, but last I heard, most of the roads are paid for by the taxpayer and can therefore be considered a subsidy of the road transportation industry, so they’re probably not real profitable either. Looks like the only profitable transportation entities are freight railroads - they pay for their own infrastructure and still make a profit.

Well, maybe the general conclusion should be that transportation in general is just too cheap nowadays, i.e. the operators don’t charge as much money as they should in order to pay all the bills. I believe the general public in the USA somehow has the notion that transportation is/should be “free” and that cheap airfares are as much a basic human right as freedom or free speech… That’s just not true - especially with “Global Warming” showing up on people’s horizon more and more, I hope that those same people will soon have to recognize that transportation is a major factor. And the only way to really teach them is through their pockets - get them where it hurts most: charge more money for it. And then they might well recognize that trains are a much more efficient means of transportation than either air or road.

(via TicketPunch).

Posted in: Amtrak, Policy, USA | February 26, 2007 11:16 pm

2 Comments »

Nick, on February 27, 2007 @ 3:30 pm

Well said Marcel!

André Kenji, on March 10, 2007 @ 2:10 pm

In the United States, only 70% of the costs of the Interstate Highways are paid by the gas tax. And no taxes in gas era used to anything but highway construction and maintenance.