jetrock said:Then maybe it's time for people to stop believing the big lie. It was never true, and all the fist-shaking and hand-wringing in the world won't make it true. Perhaps this power outage is a result of all the "deferred maintenance" (a polite term for "don't fix anything, because there's no money for repairs") because of overly lean Amtrak budgets.
Airlines have never been practical. If the government didn't pour massive subsidies into the airline system, subsidies big enough to fund two or three Amtraks, a ticket from L.A. to NYC would cost at least $3000.00 per person each way. By the way that was the number that was estimated for the cost of passenger airline service a few years ago before $3.00/gallon gas.screwysquirrel said:Passenger Service has never really been profitable on its own.
Just as oil is becoming scarce, we're throwing away out BEST choice for city-to-city transport in an era of shrinking resources -- passenger rail. Jetliners have maybe another decade or two at most before becoming impractical.