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

Content: Other routes may also make sense within a lower-cost privatized system. A privatized Amtrak could close the most uneconomic routes and shift investment and maintenance dollars to the core routes to improve service quality. Reforms abroad show that privatizing passenger rail works. In his book, Vranich counted dozens of nations that had either partly or fully privatized their passenger rail systems. 17 He found that privatized rail systems generally provide better service, increased ridership, and more efficient operations. In Britain, state-owned British Rail was consuming large subsidies and experiencing a declining market share in transportation. In 1994 the government split up the company and privatized the track infrastructure separately from passenger service operating companies. But ending vertical integration has created some problems, and track infrastructure has since been renationalized. However, British passenger services have thrived since privatization. Rail ridership has more than doubled in the past two decades, from 740 million passenger trips to 1.5 billion.