Would someone please tell me what it is with Democrats and trains? No where have we ever seen these things break even. They are all running in the red. Who are they paying off? It doesn’t matter whether it’s in Dallas, Albuquerque, Houston, Seattle, Amtrak, they all lose money. A lot of money.
Does no one wonder why we are trillions of dollars in debt? This is only one example of wastefull spending. Who benefits from these trains?
They all lose money, but some are actually used - Dallas, San Diego, Denver, Portland, Sacramento and now Salt Lake City are crowded. But all those cities have a much greater population and population density than ABQ so economically it might make sense to take a reasonable percentage off the highways. All of the above are light rail (think modern trolleys) except SLC and Dallas also have commuter rail which is what the RR is. The light rail systems in Houston and Phoenix are a joke — single tracks that really don’t go where the population is (growth in both Phoenix and Houston is radial around a central core).
ABQ has its major traffic flow east (east city and East Mountain area)-west (Paradise Hills, Rio Rancho). The RR goes north-south where development density is much less due to the Indian Pueblos. It remains that the RR was a resume enhancer for Bill Richardson when he was running for president or for a cabinet post under Obama (foiled by the many scandals of his administration).