Amtrak, the press says , is threatened,weak, and about to be cut/killed/downsized by Congress.
So what is wrong with Amtrak ?
If you have ridden Amtrak across the USA you might know the real answer. If you are in Congress, you probably couldn't /wouldn't find the truth because of politics,even with something as important as a national railroad service. The USA is so far behind more civilized and culturally advanced Western Europe as far as public mass transportation goes. Who would even think of privatizing the USA Interstate Highway System with gas prices going higher than $3/gallon than those ivory tower fools in Congress ? And who has made sure Amtrak will sooner or later fail ? Our private campaign dirty money funded Congress.
Ask any passenger who has ridden Amtrak long distances and they will tell you what is wrong with
Amtrak, more honestly than Congress. Ask any Amtrak conductor what is wrong with Amtrak and even as employees they will probably tell you what is chronically fatally wrong with Amtrak.
I asked a conductor why this good idea is failing, after all the millions of square miles of land we gave the private railroads on either side of the tracks to build us a state of the art passenger and freight national railroad system. And all the millions in overpayment that the US railroads and people like Stanford stole from us. Think we would have had a /any less than perfect Interstate Highway System if we had gone a similar overspend and allow to steal privatization route ? Not a greedy chance.
The conductor told me that Amtrak has a terrible rough ride and the trains are often late due to being forced onto a sidetrack by a slow freight train. The USA and Amtrak rent the tracks from these same US railroad theives who have been stealing the USA blind for decades and the private railroad trains have the right-of-way on lousy bumpy freight train tracks. The conductor said Amtrak will never succeed unless it owns the tracks and can upgrade them to passenger smoothness, comfort and safety. The private railroad bastards don't care about passengers period. And he said Amtrak must have the right-of-way. Makes sense.
Now why does our overpaid and overpensioned and over quality medical plan and out-of-touch Congress fail to see or fix this obvious simple problem ?
As a California tour and charter bus driver, i can tell you that Congress and it's Amtrak are wasting millions and billions of dollars on feeder bus company contracts whether or not there are any bus-Amtrak passengers, these buses are crisscrossing this state and probably every other state , as a buy off to the bus industry. This should be pork barrel stopped immediately. And these bus companies get away with putting their oldest and least well maintained buses and worst driving record drivers on the Amtrak paid daily runs. Such a waste.
It does not seem to matter who is put in Amtrak, like a seemingly honorable recent Democratic national presidental candidate, as Congress from the get go has designed intentionally Amtrak to fail.
And we lazy-citizenship Americans, foolish with our national trust, are going to just sit by and let Amtrak fail it seems. It isn't a crying shame, but it is such a stupid waste of USA taxpayer billions and the effort of so many. Get ready for $4 and $5/gallon gas and even more obscene gas company profits than we are seeming now at over $2/gallon.
