3 Reasons to Keep Amtrak's Long-Distance Trains Running

When it comes to profitability, one of Amtrak's main three services is not like the others. While routes in the Northeast Corridor make a decent profit and individual state corridors just about break even, long-distance routes that traverse thousands of interstate miles and often connect remote areas suffer an indecent loss.* Last week, at a hearing about Amtrak's fiscal future, Bill Shuster, chair of the House transportation committee, suggested it may be time to cut these routes loose (via Streetsblog):

Shuster's response to the situation is certainly a logical one. As we pointed out last fall, Amtrak's long-distance routes lose, on average, $111 per rider. (For comparison, the Northeast Corridor makes $20 a head, and state routes lose about $11.*) Long-distance trains did carry about 4.75 million riders in 2012, but they cost more than a billion dollars to operate, and stood more than $500 million in the red.