Amtrak, the Damned Track
Commercial aircraft is becoming a lousy way to get from city to city, but it's all we have in most instances and that's a sad state of affairs for a nation with our inventiveness.
Amtrak doesn't work (duh!) because it's just another government subsidized boondoggle. Rail freight works and is profitable, because it's private and serves markets. Eisenhower's Interstate Highway program works because it opened up the country to automobile transportation, as well as trucks and commerce and private individuals wanted both. The legacy (at least part of it) has been congestion as well as expansion.
The time has come when the public interest is served by high speed rail. But Amtrak isn't the right solution and further money spent on a failed system will only make it a more expensive failed system. We might better spend our capital combining Eisenhower's highway system and modern bullet trains to solve an actual need.
I recently asked a friend how long it took him on a business trip to get to Clev…