The Hill's Morning Report - Infrastructure vote fails; partisan feud erupts over Jan. 6 panel

Sgt (Join to see) - We are almost in agreement. You want to ax Amtrak now I want to give it one last chance over next 5 years. If no performance by then I will say ax it. Amtrak has two near high speed corridors comming online, Chicago to St. Louis, and Chicago to Detroit both 110 mph. I want to see how those do ridership and financial wise first. Chicago to Milwaukee will also be 10 frequencies by then and probably paying it's way as well. So I want to give it a few more years to see how those turn out.

SPC Erich Guenther - Why another wasteful 5 years? They've never turned a profit since they were created. They might be putting in more trains that are supposedly running faster, but what they're also doing is trying to get the government to put pressure on other lines to ensure that Amtrak gets priority over everyone else. That translates to crushing all competition. And they want $75 BILLION to do it.
It's time to cut ties with the billions we've already wasted.

https://reason.com/2021/05/28/amtrak-wants-75-billion-to-create-more-money-losing-routes/

Sgt (Join to see) - Actually Amtrak is in it's own bucket in the budget and they are not exerting any pressure over any other rail projects for priority. In fact a lot of the Amtrak projects benefit our GDP directly as they have the ancillary impact of making the freight railways much more efficient as outside the Northeast Corridor Amtrak travels on the Freight railway system as a contractor. You don't understand the whole priority issue and it would take more pages to explain both sides of it but that is not hurting freight railways and in fact most states compensate for Amtrak priority by paying for freight railway improvements for added signaling, added passing tracks, and paying to maintain the tracks at a higher speed limit than freight would use. Chicago to St. Louis is the Union Pacific railway and taxpayers not Union Pacific are paying the tab for the 110 mph track maintenence. Union Pacific is only paying to maintain the track to 55-60 mph. Small example. The problem Amtrak has with some and only some of the freight railways is one or two refuses to outline what improvements need to be made to host faster Amtrak trains or they stall indefinitely. Or come back with a ridiculous estimate of Billions of Dollars needed to spend to host Amtrak trains. So that is the crux of the issue of why Amtrak needs the ability to sue to settle the issues in Civil Court. Again not all the railroads are fighting them, primarily two at the most from what I see.

SPC Erich Guenther - I do understand the issues, thanks for asking.
And I disagree with you on whether or not Amtrak is beneficial. You say it is, I say it's a waste. You think we're getting ancillary benefits, I'm saying we're paying more than we're getting in return.
I'm not going to convince you and you're not going to convince me.