[Myrddin]

I say stop funding and let competition play out. I just checked and an Amtrak ticket from Dallas to Charleston, WV is the same price as the plane ticket I purchased 3 weeks ago. The plane will get me there 32 hours faster.

The Amtrak ticket was actually MORE expensive. You just didn't get the itemized amount of the taxpayer subsidy that was extracted from our paychecks. It's socialism on parade. Rail transportation is popular in places dominated by socialists. Competition? If they had to compete, the passenger railroads would have been defunct long ago. Ayn Rand made no mistake in featuring railroads as a central theme in Atlas Shrugged.

[tcrlaf]

1- We NEED, and MUST HAVE a viable National Rail (Pax and goods) System in this country. 9/11 showed just how valuable this backup can be.

2- That said, Amtrak has been a political vote-buying and union welfare program for FAR too long, and needs to be DESTROYED, and something new built from the ashes, FREE of the nearly yearly political shenanigans..