WILL THERE BE TRAINS IN OUR FUTURE? - All Aboard: The Complete North American Train Travel Guide - page 264

an important corner with the presidential election of Barack
Obama, who has been an outspoken advocate of rail transporta-
tion. Then the Democratic Congress followed by increasing finan-
cial support of rail by the federal government and—probably just
as important—committing to that support over a longer period.
Once some degree of stability has been achieved, the problem
becomes finding additional money to expand the Amtrak system
with new equipment and greater frequencies. In the near term,
the federal government can encourage the freight railroads to
improve track conditions and insist that they give priority to
Amtrak passenger trains. If that happens, Amtrak trains will be
able to travel at higher speeds, which will mean reduced running
times. That in turn will make train travel an attractive option for
more and more people.
The problem, as always, is money. Subsidy is still considered
a dirty word in some circles. Strangely, most of those people
see nothing wrong with government support of municipal bus
systems, for example, but they stubbornly continue to oppose
subsidies for Amtrak. Yet it's a simple fact that, in one way or
another, government subsidizes every form of public transporta-
tion. There are no exceptions. The government builds highways
for cars and buses, airports for planes, and even bike paths for
cyclists and sidewalks for people on foot.
But wait, you say. The government doesn't subsidize Ameri-
can Airlines, Delta, or United, so why should the taxpayers assist
Amtrak? But the government does subsidize the airlines. There
are lots of examples, but the most obvious is our nationwide air-
traffic-control system that is run by the Federal Aviation Admin-
istration (FAA), an agency of the federal government. Railroads
have traffic control systems too, but they pay all the costs them-
selves. Cities and states float bonds to build and expand air-
ports, and I'll bet dollars to donuts that as you read this, there's
construction underway at whatever airport you use. Remember