Obama blasts Bush Amtrak plan

WBBM Newsradio 78 ^ | Craig Dellimore

[Land_of_Lincoln_John]

CHICAGO – U.S. Sen. Barack Obama suggests the Bush Administration is headed in the wrong direction on funding Amtrak.

Just a few blocks east of Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta’s news conference defending proposed cuts for Amtrak, Obama was suggesting the White House is on the wrong track, again. The proposal has been made before.

Ideologically, Obama says, the Bush White House is simply opposed to federal subsidies for rail systems.

But, at a time when the U.S. is trying to reduce its dependency on foreign oil, Obama says Amtrak’s passenger rail system should be getting more White House support, not less.

[DoughtyOne]

Yep. We're in agreement. As I said, he's worth less than Kerry. LOL Yes, Obama won the spot on the squad. The other girls are mighty happy...

[DoughtyOne]

Heh heh heh...

[DoughtyOne]

We are a disrespectful bunch. The leftists light up the choir, and we won't genuflect. What's wrong with us...

ABSOLUTELY NOTHIN!

[papasmurf]

Not when you add in the cost of insurance claims, loss of revenue due to delays, private property damage, and damage to the environment. Then add in the acquisition costs, maintenance, and payroll and benefits to operate, AND the cost to the taxpayers to keep 'em running. They are completely upside down.
If they are so efficient, why do they need gov't subsidies to exist? Oh, yeah, that's a model of efficiency, to be sure.
Problem is, we've built our infrastructure around this antiquated model of inefficiency.

:O)

P

[B-Chan]

I love it when people complain about railroads needing federal subsidies to survive -- and completely ignore the fact that airlines are the most heavily subsidized form of transporation ever invented. The airlines fly airplanes based upon military R&D (paid for by tax money) and operate out of huge, costly airports (built using tax money) and navigate from point to point using radio beacons, satellites, and air traffic control systems (paid for by the taxpayer) AND get billions in federal bailout cash when things go sour -- and they still can't make money. ("Warren Buffett once said any right-minded capitalist who had seen the Wrights' contraption take to the skies in Kitty Hawk might have shot it down and saved investors 100 years of agony. Quite simply, he argued, airlines as a whole hadn't netted a dime since 1903." -MSNBC). Take away all that taxpayer cash and watch the airline industry vanish.

Railroads, on the other hand, build and maintain their own infrastructure using private money and turn a profit every year.

Now, what was that again about "taxpayer subsidies"?

[knarf]

"Just another lib mouthpiece but I agree..the Dems don't want a smart black man showing his face or having any PRO-AMERICAN rhetoric with a Dem's name on it..probably has the NAACP running scared about job security..like Condi Rice. Both are dangerous to the libs..."

Oh, he's a mouthpeice alright, but I disagree with your assessment that the dims are scared.

On the contrary ... I think they're very, very pleased with young Obama and he is more of a secret weapon to be kept under wraps until the right time.

Now Condi OTOH, is an entirely different matter. She will be the sophisticated, black, female voice that silences the dims' attempts to hijack the Conservative message.

[EagleUSA]

... I think they're very, very pleased with young Obama and he is more of a secret weapon to be kept under wraps until the right time.
======
Well, we will see. This could be so - the NAACP has simply turned into a radical racist group with no real purpose any more, other than furthering the victim-set for every dollar they can squeeze out of it.

I still hold the old-line socialists still do not like the idea of "their constituency" showing any type of independence from the liberal socialists, no need for them anymore...that need had alot to do with the formation of the Dems originally. Good for mental gymnastics though.

[JarheadFromFlorida]

Wait.....aren't the Democrats the ones always crying about corporate welfare???

[JarheadFromFlorida]

Wait.....aren't the Democrats the ones always crying about corporate welfare???

[supercat]

Not when you add in the cost of insurance claims, loss of revenue due to delays, private property damage, and damage to the environment. Then add in the acquisition costs, maintenance, and payroll and benefits to operate, AND the cost to the taxpayers to keep 'em running. They are completely upside down.

Rail only makes sense for a few specialized purposes, but for those it can make a lot of sense. To be sure, it often gets used in places where it makes no sense at all, but that doesn't mean there aren't places where it is the logical mode of transport

A coal train, for example, can haul over 4,000 tons of coal--more than 100 trucks. For hauling such cargo in places without rivers or canals, there really is no alternative to rail.

Even passenger rail makes sense in some places. London's Underground, for example, serves up about a billion passenger journeys per year. During peak times, most lines run about 30 trains per hour, with a capacity of about 1,600 people per train. About 48,000 people per hour. Putting that many people on 100-passenger buses would require 480 buses per hour, or about one every 8 seconds. The surface streets have nowhere near the capacity to handle that load of buses.

To be sure, some of the 'rapid transit' systems in this country don't serve anything near that level of traffic. And rail doesn't really make much sense in places whose peak capacity needs could be met by running a bus every few minutes. That does not mean, however, that rail shouldn't be used in those places where it actually does make sense.

[Muleteam1]

>>Why, is a decimal point missing?<<

Bush's fault?

Muleteam1