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Another Look at Amtrak's Future
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Washington
According to the Transportation Department's inspector general, Amtrak's long-distance trains require about $300 million a year in incremental funding and have higher passenger rates per train mile than many corridor-service trains. The rest of the losses -- about 60 to 75 percent -- are from the biggest financial turkey of them all: the Northeast Corridor. Include depreciation or annual capital subsidies (you choose), and the corridor is the biggest loser in the Amtrak system.
When Amtrak says that corridor is profitable, it always excludes capital costs and depreciation, which amount to about $1 billion a year. If we are going to shut something down, maybe we should start with the Northeast Corridor.
ROBERT MOEN
Minneapolis
The Dec. 3 editorial showed a typical Washington mind-set when the writer called for preserving and improving "the critical Northeast Corridor from Boston to Washington."
Is someone in a rural town with no airline service and no bus service who cannot drive a car chopped liver? Many older and disabled people depend on Amtrak to get them to medical care, stores, family visits, etc. The "critical Northeast Corridor" has great redundancy in travel options; rural America does not.
Your writer also might ask some West Coast folks how they would feel about losing Amtrak's Cascades, Coast Starlight or Empire Builder service.
OLE M. AMUNDSEN JR.
Port Clyde, Maine
