Wheel Column: A Trainwreck- Has the Amtrak System Reached the End of the Line?

Have you ever ridden on Amtrak?

Have you ever even heard of Amtrak?

Amtrak is America's national train system that hasn't turned a profit in its 35-year history and is still chugging along only by virtue of a yearly cash infusion of more than $1 billion from Congress. Right now, Amtrak is in debt to the tune of $3.5 billion and has almost no hope of turning a profit in the near future.

You probably didn't know there is a daily Amtrak train that runs through Atlanta. Each night at 8:21 p.m., the Crescent Train on route from New Orleans to New York City pulls into the Amtrak station on Peachtree Street. For $119 - and nearly 18 hours of your time - you will arrive at New York City. For a mere $5 more, you could take an AirTran flight that would get you to New York in time for a late dinner.

And here lies the problem with Amtrak. Most Americans do not want to spend days on a train when they can get to their destination in hours through the air. Even worse, Amtrak usually charges more for long-distance routes than air travel, leaving it without a competitive advantage against the airlines.

For example, an Amtrak trip from Chicago to Los Angeles costs $140. Travel by Southwest Airlines, and it costs $109. The Amtrak cost includes nothing more than a seat on the train; for a shower or a bedroom you can expect to fork over hundreds more. Considering a trip from Chicago to Los Angeles takes almost two days on Amtrak, you'll probably want that shower and bed.

Amtrak even manages to achieve what many travelers would view as impossible - a system of travel less punctual than the airlines. Throughout the long-distance system, Amtrak's trains average being on time about 50 percent of the time. Even if you include the reasonably efficient operations in the Northeast and on the West Coast, Amtrak's overall on-time percentage last year was around 70 percent. Compare that to around 80 percent in air travel.

As mentioned before, each year, Amtrak gets a federal subsidy from Congress for their operations. President Bush proposed to eliminate this subsidy in 2005, but Congress decided to give the beleaguered railroad system $1.3 billion anyway.

For 2006, Bush proposed $900 million, which the administration claimed would force Amtrak to become more efficient. Amtrak cried foul, saying that an amount so low would kill the system. Once again, Congress jumped to the rescue and allocated $1.4 billion.

So why does Congress love Amtrak so much? Simply put, it runs through 46 of the 50 states in the Union. Members of Congress fight hard to keep service in their state in order to benefit the handful of people who use it.

All in all, Amtrak is a waste of money. The billions of dollars Congress gives Amtrak so they continue to lose even more money would be better spent on college loans or a multitude of worthier causes.

The era of long-distance rail service is dead in America. Amtrak's routes in the Northeast, the last bastion of feasible railway travel, could be sold and run successfully by a private company. Amtrak's other semisuccessful route in California could either be privatized or sold to the state of California. The long-distance routes would be abandoned as relics of the past.

Joseph Vranich, an Amtrak creator turned leading advocate of the railway system's dissolution, wrote in his book, End of the Line: "The federal government does not run a national airline. It does not operate a national bus company ... There is no justification for the federal government to own and operate a national railroad passenger system."

Vranich is right. Congress has no business wasting our tax dollars just to keep a money-hemorrhaging train system alive. Amtrak has outlived its usefulness.

Benjamin van der Horst is a College sophomore from Cincinnati. He is executive director of the nonpartisan political organization CSAmerica and the managing editor of the Emory Political Review.