“Degradation of the U.S. passenger railroad system was not a natural development — it was a result of national transportation policies that invested billions of dollars into highways and air transportation,” argued Vukan Vuchic in his advocacy piece for high-speed rail. “Meanwhile, Amtrak is supported at the survival level.”
There is some truth to that. The billions of dollars spent on interstate highways virtually all came from highway user fees, so can’t really be considered an unfair competition with passenger rail. However, in the 1940s and 1950s, Congress spent about half a billion dollars — several billion in today’s dollars — on airport construction. Subsidies to airports continued on a large scale until 1970, when Congress allowed local airports to fund themselves out of ticket fees.
At the same time, the airlines were throttled by regulation. In 1960, domestic airlines carried only about 31 billion passenger miles. Today, when they have been deregulated but receive relatively minimal subsidies, they carry more than twenty times that many. There is little reason to think passenger railroads could have competed with deregulated and unsubsidized airlines. Continue reading
