Another record year on America's rails

By N.B. | WASHINGTON, D.C.

AMTRAK, America's government-run passenger rail service, announced earlier this month that it carried 30m passengers in the 2011 fiscal year, which ended on September 30th. The number is a new record for the company and represents a 44% increase since 2000. Over 7m of those passengers travelled on Amtrak's Northeast Corridor, which runs between Boston and Washington, with stops in New York and Philadelphia along the way. Ticket sales increased 5% on FY 2010 and ticket revenues were up 8%.

FoxBusiness's Jennifer Booton makes a fairly convincing argument that Americans are turning to trains as an alternative to driving and air travel, noting that Amtrak has hit record ridership and revenue levels almost every year since 2002, "which is about the time airlines started to struggle." (The only year since 2002 that Amtrak didn't set new records for revenue and ridership was 2009, in the depths of the recession.) High gas prices and the growing hassle of flying have made trains more attractive. Here's more from Ms Booton:

Of course, government-run Amtrak and its Acela Express still have their problems: low funding, meager profits, speed regulations and sharing tracks with freighters, to name a few. High-speed rail supporters call for a system that is built from the ground up, using rails designated only for high-speed trains and new technologies that whip trains around at speeds faster than 200 miles per hour.

That vision, however, is still young in the U.S. as funding just trickles to the ground-level builders of high-speed train infrastructures and technologies. There also seems to be a fundamental disagreement between supporters and protestors over how its expensive creation will benefit Americans or the broader economy.

Meanwhile, in Washington, Democrats are using Amtrak's results to continue their fight against privatising the service. Nick Rahall, a West Virginia congressman who is the top Democrat on the House transportation committee, issued a press release attacking the GOP for rushing to "auction off Amtrak's assets" to "Wall Street". But despite the invective, two things about the government-run service remain fairly certain: it will continue to require government subsidies, and it will continue to be state-run—at least until the end of 2012.

After 2012, though, the situation could change considerably. The government-run railroad's prospects for privatisation have little to do with ridership records and a lot to do with which party controls Congress and the White House. House Republicans like Florida's John Mica have already been pushing hard to sell off big chunks of the railroad, including the profitable Northeast Corridor. But without control of the Senate and the White House, Republicans can only advocate for privatisation—they can't make it happen. For Amtrak's leadership and its unions, which oppose privatisation, the stakes of the next election are high indeed.