Posted on 03/30/2017 4:51:28 AM PDT by SJackson
The City of New Orleans, the train immortalized in the Steve Goodman song, could disappear under President Donald Trump's preliminary budget blueprint.
So could the California Zephyr, the Empire Builder and other storied long-distance Amtrak runs, along with the federal funding that could replace Metra's out-of-date rolling stock, unclog Chicago freight traffic and extend the CTA's Red Line from 95th Street to 130th Street, according to transit advocates and officials.
Trump's 2018 "skinny budget" proposes a 13 percent cut on federal funding for transportation, which is directed entirely against nonroad spending. Trump's 2018 spending plan will start getting more attention in Congress since the bill to replace the Affordable Care Act has been pulled for lack of votes. A full budget release is expected in May.
The president's transportation budget proposal may ultimately get no further than did the Republican health care bill. But the transit cuts laid out in the proposal are still worrying local transit advocates and agency officials, since they show the administration's priorities.
(Excerpt) Read more at chicagotribune.com ...
If they’re hemorrhaging cash, tighten up or cut it off.
Rat run cities bottomless pit of money has ended
So, Donald no longer wants to subsidize failure.
America approves.
Violent ghetto dullards hardest hit.
Is that a 13% cut before or after baseline budgeting? In any case, the SoNO is there, along with most of the rest of Amtrak’s trains, to cover up the fact that Amtrak exists for 1 reason. And that’s the NE corridor route the pols use. The rest of the system is horrifically expensive and overpriced camouflage.
Trump ‘skinny budget’ would starve Chicago transit, City of New Orleans train: officials
A couple of years ago...I did my first ever Amtrak trip...DC to Birmingham. I was a bit shocked over the cost of the ticket (includes the cabin)...but I did this on Sunday when the rate was about 70-percent of the norm.
The ticket included dinner...which was acceptable but nothing to brag about. After the whole thing ended, I got out at the Birmingham train station which is a dilapidated old station. That was my one and only trip with Amtrak. I won’t repeat it. If the Fed is helping to carrying their budget....there is something wrong with the system.
NE pols like to use Amtrak’s NE corridor. That’s the only damn reason that bloody boondoggle exists. Check out the schedules for trains in and out of Chicago. Some of them are in the middle of the night. Who the heck wants to use an Amtrak station in Chicago in the middle of the night?! This isn’t about efficient, competitive, affordable train transpo. It’s about the bloody pols.
President Trump should just automatically deny funding to these rail and transit systems.
For the past 2 weeks, the local politicians have been harping on the need for renovation of the local rail station. The cost would be north of $86 million. Someone one did a study and found that only 108 people use the system on a daily basis. This works out to $796K per passenger. The politicians won’t let this go. (I suspect it means jobs for cronies and relatives during the 2 years of renovation work).
One of the local talk radio guys suggested that we simply give each daily rider a Cadillac Escalade at a cost of $73K each. It would be cheaper by more than 10X.
It is exactly the right thing for President Trump to deny funding for these type of money pit projects.
"budget" = salaries and benefits, salaries and benefits.
Passenger trains are in many cases a 19th Century solution to 21st Century transportation problems. They have their place in high-population-density areas. Unfortunately, many policy makers live/work in such areas, and think their transportation problems are everyone’s, even those in flyover country without the population density.
The local - NYC, Chicago - major urban “mass transit systems” were built without federal funds. What did he politicians and unions do that turned their operations into financial losses that were unsustainable without taxpayer subsidies from everyone, instead “user fee” taxes on the mass transit users?
Th report said Chicago would “disappear” with the federal budget cuts. That’s amazing in as much Chicago, not the nation, rebuilt Chicago after the great fire - when there was not even the federal “emergency management” agency.
What is this all really about.
It’s about federal dependency. The political class transferred local dollars to Washington D.C. in the form of higher federal taxes, and with them transferred control to Washington D.C., and became dependent on the opium of “federal funding”.
I would only say to Trump one thing. That is: dollar for dollar, cut federal taxes as much as we are cutting the federal budget. At first it will seem like leaving a deficit in place, but the economic activity from the tax reduction - taxable economic activity - we’ll soon reduce that deficit.
“The Steel Rails still ain’t heard the news”
All of these are money losing boondoggles and have been for years. Why support them.
This train got the disappearin’ railroad blues
(I always thought it was - This train got to disappear in railroad blues.)
As everything else they support, liberals have to build a false narrative around the national passenger rail system in order to win the support of those who don’t know better. Images of “ridin’ the rails” and nostalgic Woody Guthrie songs give the average reader an impression that Amtrak has an air of romance surrounding it.
In reality Amtrak trains have the air of dirty seats and carpets, lousy food, and filthy train stations.
Why should I pay for Chicago thugs to get to their preferred mugging site?
The eastern corridor is the big exception. The east coast is congested, period. The interstate highways are clogged and will only get worse. There is nowhere to build new ones. Amtrak needs to get its costs down somehow; if it weren't so danged expensive, there would be a much bigger market.
If they want to survive, they need to break even or make a profit.
Or, if it is sooooo important, the State or local governments need to subsidize them, not the Federales.
If the Fed is helping to carrying their budget....there is something wrong with the system.
(((
We were just talking about this recently. I would love to see train travel that is operated with market competition.
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