WASHINGTON — Legislation that aims to reverse Amtrak’s statutory right of preference over host railroad freight trains “within 50 miles of a port or rail yard” has been introduced by a U.S. Congressman representing a rural district without any passenger service. Among its co-sponsors is the head of the U.S. House subcommittee with jurisdiction over Amtrak.
The “Freights First Act” was
Small government is when you waste huge amounts of tax dollars supporting and regulating car centric infrastructure instead of just providing affordable, reliable public transit at a fraction of the net cost to both society and the end user. Small government means fighting against providing services to the public so you can take the savings or infrastructure and do massive corporate giveaways. Small government is when you pave over an entire community to build an eight lane interstate. The nominal reason is that everything government does is worse than what the free market can do, and public transit is government (just don’t ask who builds all the 26-lane freeways car centric infrastructure depends on). The real reason is that, gosh, we sure would hate for our investorscorporate sponsorsdonors free market enterprises to struggle, so we’d better lock the public into a system whose gatekeepers are our private enterprises like car makers, insurers, and oil companies.
That said, I agree that Amtrak shouldn’t be holding up freight, but that’s because Amtrak should be on its own alignment far, far more often, pulling 70-110 mph on average instead of underperforming on speed in order to integrate with freight schedules.
The house republicans are also trying to block funding for CAHSR right now.
Small government is when you waste huge amounts of tax dollars supporting and regulating car centric infrastructure instead of just providing affordable, reliable public transit at a fraction of the net cost to both society and the end user. Small government means fighting against providing services to the public so you can take the savings or infrastructure and do massive corporate giveaways. Small government is when you pave over an entire community to build an eight lane interstate. The nominal reason is that everything government does is worse than what the free market can do, and public transit is government (just don’t ask who builds all the 26-lane freeways car centric infrastructure depends on). The real reason is that, gosh, we sure would hate for our
investorscorporate sponsorsdonorsfree market enterprises to struggle, so we’d better lock the public into a system whose gatekeepers are our private enterprises like car makers, insurers, and oil companies.That said, I agree that Amtrak shouldn’t be holding up freight, but that’s because Amtrak should be on its own alignment far, far more often, pulling 70-110 mph on average instead of underperforming on speed in order to integrate with freight schedules.
The house republicans are also trying to block funding for CAHSR right now.