On Monday, the Cato Institute will release the Antiplanner’s latest paper, Stopping the Runaway Train: The Case for Privatizing Amtrak. Antiplanner readers can preview the paper today.
Amtrak’s Empire Builder outside of Glacier National Park, September 13, 2010. (Click image for a larger view.)
The case against Amtrak is simple. Before Amtrak took over the nation’s passenger trains, average rail fares were a third less than average air fares. Today, thanks to four decades of government management, average rail fares are more than twice average air fares. Moreover, subsidies to passenger trains are nearly ten times as great, per passenger mile, as subsidies to airlines (and more than twenty times subsidies to highway travel). When fares and subsidies are combined, Amtrak spends nearly four times as much moving one passenger one mile as the airlines.
