As anyone who has been reading my work for any time knows, I've spent a lot of time in Japan. Working in Japan, particularly in Tokyo, where I've spent a fair amount of time, means using the trains and subways. In Japan, those transit methods are a wonder: Clean, reliable, well-maintained, and scrupulously punctual. The train and subway stations are likewise; none of the filth, sketchy people, and stench of stale urine that I remember from my one excursion on San Francisco's BART system. That was an experience I never care to repeat.
But Japan, we should note, is a nation of 123 million people in a series of islands with about as much land mass as California. Tokyo is a massive, heavily developed city of over 14 million people; a train system with enough granularity to serve that city makes good sense. You can't make that claim for most of the United States - and yet, we continue to subsidize Amtrak, a money-wasting interstate passenger train system.
The Mises Institute, a libertarian think tank, recently provided us with some great arguments in favor of defunding Amtrak, and they're right - it's long past time.
Founded 54 years ago, Amtrak set out on a bold adventure to see if passenger trains could be profitable. Fast forward to today, this experiment has been unsuccessful. Politicians have often crafted routes to win votes rather than attract riders. As a result, Amtrak has been squandering taxpayer money since its start in 1971.
Take, for instance, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021. It allocated a monumental $66 billion to bolster passenger rail. Yet, even with this backing, Amtrak’s losses soared from $1.12 billion in FY2019 to $2.12 billion in FY2024. This financial drain isn’t new; America’s passenger trains have lost money for 79 years.
Amtrak asserts that it is “on-track to reach operational profitability.” Yet, this is a bald-faced lie. While Amtrak reported a loss of $705.2 million for FY2024, it didn’t include:
- $966.2 million in depreciation;
- $447.3 million in “Project Related Expenses”;
- $314.1 million in state subsidies, which it classified as “revenue”;
- $26.9 million in Office of Inspector General funding
By omitting these costs, Amtrak paints an optimistic view of its financial health. In reality, Amtrak needs larger subsidies than ever before. In fact, Amtrak has been deceiving Congress with its “path to profitability” since 1990.
This is what we in the real world call "lying."
There are places in the United States where a passenger rail system makes good sense, like, say, the corridor from Boston to the District of Columbia. New York once had a great subway system, until lackadaisical law enforcement, rampant homelessness, and crime made it unusable; that could be fixed, of course, if the voters of the city would only stop electing thug-loving liberals to the city government. Those trains and subways should, however, succeed or fail on their own merits; no federal subsidies.
For years now, the federal government has been far too free-and-easy with handing out taxpayer dollars - our dollars - to pet projects, of which Amtrak is just another example. Markets are supposed to work freely; it's not the role of government, at any level, to pick winners and losers. And yet, with these subsidies, with this boondoggle masquerading as a passenger train system, this is precisely what the federal government is doing, and this is precisely the kind of thing that the Department of Government Efficiency was created to eliminate.
See Also: Mass Shooting Averted? Man Arrested With Multiple Firearms on Amtrak Train in NJ
California's High-Speed Rail Project Says 'Hold My Beer,' Manages to Get Horribly, Comically Worse
It's long past time for the DOGE to take a good, hard look at Amtrak - and to defund it. If the various states in which Amtrak operates want to subsidize its continued operations, on their heads be it, but Washington needs to drop out.
In 1998, my Mom and Dad wanted one more excursion to spend Christmas with our growing family in Colorado, but Dad, then 75, didn't want to drive from Allamakee County to Denver. So, they got my sister to drive them to Iowa City, where they caught an Amtrak train to Denver. They arrived from the painfully slow journey exhausted and angry; the passenger car was dirty, as Dad informed me, the ride on tracks intended for freight trains was uncomfortable, and the seats caused my Mom, who had severe arthritis in her spine and hips, a lot of pain. They had to take the train home, as they already had the tickets, but they swore never to ride Amtrak again.
Yes. It's time to defund Amtrak. If they can make it on their own, sans subsidies, fine. If now, well, Amtrak's not too big to fail.
