Anybody who knows me knows that I love riding on trains!  But the time for Amtrak, in any area other than the Northeast where they own their own tracks, is gone.  As a socialist railroad formed in 1970 when the regulated rail industry was hemorrhaging money, Amtrak has bled red ink for nearly 50 years.  But the more troubling hidden damage is the priority Amtrak receives on the tracks owned by the likes of BNSF – pushing freight to the side.

 

Now, with its own infrastructure in, for example, Penn Station causing derailments, it’s time to get real.  Spin off the Northeast, invest money to fix it up, and close the rest.  

 

Parcel shipping has become more expensive, partly because of the added costs of delivering e-commerce orders to homes rather than business-to-business. This means UPS’s costs are up, and while revenue is up, profits are down 2.4% domesticity.