Title: Privatizing Amtrak | Downsizing the Federal Government
Headings: Privatizing Amtrak
Privatizing Amtrak
Amtrak's Failures
Advantages of Privatization
Notes:

Content: 18 Ridership is hitting levels not seen since the early 1920s, and ridership growth has surpassed the growth elsewhere in Europe. Despite the increase in passengers, the on-time performance of British passenger rail is quite high and surveys find solid levels of customer satisfaction. 19
Rail privatization in Britain brought entrepreneurial innovation to the industry. Vranich noted that "private operators have demonstrated more initiative, imagination, and visionary planning than state-run British Rail did in its prime or Amtrak does today." 20 In a 2013 study, the European Commission found that UK's railways were the "most improved" in Europe since the 1990s. 21
Japanese rail privatization was also a success. In the 1980s, Japanese National Railways (JNR) was stagnating as a result of bloated labor costs, labor strife, and political manipulation. The government-owned JNR was "conservative, indolent, and fearful of change." 22 The government broke up JNR into six regional and vertically integrated passenger rail companies in 1987, and then it started privatizing them in the 1990s. The JNR companies reformed rigid union rules and slashed workforces by roughly one-third following the reforms.