"...Well the facts are that Amtrak carried 1,196,483 passengers in Washington State in 2008"
3,200 a day. Whooo hoo! A small town school bus company does that. Would we care if such a small company went out of buisness? No. Then why would we care about an equally small, low quality, tax eating, union paying loser rail road company?
3,200 a day. Whooo hoo! A small town school bus company does that.What kind of adult would want to ride a school bus from Portland to Seattle???
An average jetliner making that short hop only carries 200 people (only 50~75 if you fly in one of those little "puddle jumper" commuter planes)
So Amtrak is carrying the equivalent of 16 flights/day (42~64 flights for the dinky planes)
Put in proper context, that is a respectable amount of business.