Amtrak - Will it makes its way into the future?

Amtrak isn't as old as you think? Sitting right around 40 years old, Amtrak has had it's tries and tribulations and is still hanging on by a thread and we will tell you why. Let's look at how Amtrak got started in 1970. In 1970, Congress passed a Rail Passenger Service Act taking all the passengers from trains that specialized in cargo movement to a more feasible passenger catered train service. Basically, it was built to take over the passenger services from other rail road companies. In 1971, Amtrak incorporated itself and this was beginning to look like a great move in future transportation. In 1971, Congress stated a 2 year federal grant to save the railway, Amtrak would be given $40 million dollars for new operations and $100 million dollars for new equipment all hoping that after 2 years this company would be "self-supporting". In 1973, the OPEC oil crisis drove up the passenger attendance for transportation on Amtrak which was positive for this company.

In 1974, Congress approved grants in excessive of $179 million dollars and another $100 million dollars in loans. In 1976, Congress authorized another $1.9 billion dollars over 5 years to rebuild and improve tracks and facilities. The track are still owned by Freight Carrier, a company that has owned the tracks before Amtrak came along. Now, thru 1971 to 1975, Amtrak had $900 million dollars in loans and only $252 million dollars in revenue coming in.

Now, Presidents have come and gone and have had their say in Amtrak's future. President Carter wanted to cut costs in Amtrak. In the early 1980's, President Reagan wanted to cut costs again, and during his presidency, it was actually cheaper to buy a airline ticket for travel than a train ticket. In the late 1980's, 1.2 billion in revenue was coming in for Amtrak, but don't get too excited, because at the same time operation costs reached an all time high of $2 billion dollars.

Currently, what is in the forecast for the future of Amtrak is they want the transportation department to have a $129 billion dollar transportation department allowance and by 2012 put $8 billion dollars into the passenger rail system and over the next 5 years to spend $53 billion dollars to build new high speed rails. The problem with the future of high speed rail is its initial costs of not only building new rails, but who's going to purchase the land it needs to travel over, and secondly, I can't imagine the figures for upkeep and maintenance, so the Governor of Florida has denied $25 billion dollars in federal grants mainly because of the future upkeep and maintenance costs for the "future of transportation".

This "for profit" business with 500 locations in 46 of our states, moving over 20,000 route miles on rail ways and after 40 years, Amtrak has yet to make a profit. And what was once suppose to be "self sufficient" when created, is now being paid by the tax payers. In 2007, Amtrak has suffered a $1 billion dollar loss in revenue.

But, you ask, why do we continue to fund the train system today; first off, it is a back up route of transportation so we keep it running and secondly, it will be sufficient to use if some thing does happen to our highways and airline transportation system.

The question really comes down to: Does Amtrak have a place in our modern transportation future?