Oh Margaret, where do I begin.......

Because you are running an effing service, regardless of who funds it, you need a "business plan" or "business model" to effectively plan and carry out that "mission". Maybe, if some folks don't like the "evil capitalist" term "business plan" or "business model" used because it contains the "evil" word "business", and offends your Marxist sensibilities, you can always just use the term Amtrak's "Five Year Plan". for long distance service.....

What are we trying to achieve, why are we trying to achieve it, what is our purpose and mission?

These are the most basic question any enterprise "public or private" must answer to define what is required to do any such enterprise successfully. That is true without regard to whether it is a public or private service. What are we doing and why are we doing it, was the first question to be answered in Dr. Demming's famous work on the 14 steps to total quality management. That's because if we can't define our mission it won't matter how we carry it out. But, that is probably just more of my "evil" capitalist rhetoric to you, right?

It's not the size of the budget of the effing portion of the Federal Budget Amtrak represents, that has nothing to do with my critique. It should be about whether you are getting your effing money's worth of public service, regardless of what you are spending.

So, while I personally don't really believe we spend nearly enough on infrastructure, transportation infrastructure, or transportation services, to get the kind of first world transportation investments or services we deserve and need, if we don't get your money's worth and an effective return on those dollars we do spend, be they public or private, we are still getting short changed.

Of course, by your response, I guess that you are apparently perfectly okay with burying your head in the sand on the wasteful and ineffective use of taxpayer dollars, as long a we fund Amtrak, no matter how poorly it performs or how much of it is pissed away.

I don't support killing long distance trains, nor much else that Putin's girlfriend. or that these clowns in Congress, are proposing right now.

I simply pointed out that we have no effective public service policy, "strategy", or any workable "plan" that has resulted in providing anything close to reliable, frequent, effective and efficient long distance rail services that actually meet most folks real transportation needs. I did this in refuting Mook's unbelievably simple minded (dare I say stupid) "bury your head in the sand" brain dead put downs of Erik.

So, can you show me what the plan is, and what the strategic service goals of the long distance Amtrak program are, and how they are meeting those public needs, using those most fundamental "public good" consumer oriented transportation service benchmarks?

As to your other comments, what you know about the geography of Europe wouldn't fill a small thimble, what you know about travel demand there or on Amtrak is laughable, your understanding of markets and subsidies was my "F" for the day in Econ 101, and the length of freight trains, here or there have nothing whatsoever to do with anything. It is certainly not any real response to my critique of Amtrak's 40 year failure to ever develop and effective "strategy" be it an "evil" "business model" or a full on Stalinist "five year plan", to figure out a way to provide cost effective, reliable, frequent, effective, efficient customer oriented long distance passenger rail service in America.

I have been a long suffering supporter of Amtrak, since the day it started. And, I have been involved, in many efforts to find more funding for better rail passenger service, all the way back to working with Brown's first Administration. Hell, I was actually put me in charge, and I ran some of the efforts on behalf of the Railway Labor Executive Associa83tion on the West Coast, back in 1983, when I was still a UTU Officer, to save Amtrak from Reagan's proposed cuts. So this nonsense you prattle and/or what you think you know about my views on Amtrak, from this response, aren't really worth a warm bucket of spit to me.

I have no problem with paying more taxes to spend more on public services, including on effective, efficient, useful rail passenger services. But, unlike you, I don't see any merit in stealing money from taxpayer wallets, in order to provide a wasteful $#itty public service. Maybe, that's just me, but that just isn't my idea of the best way to meet the public needs, since you;re not really effectively meeting them, at all

Your truly amazing logic (or lack thereof?) and poor reasoning skills remind me of the exactly the kind of "brain dead", "I don't want to hear it", and "I refuse to believe it" true believer nonsense I hear from the "right wing"" reactionary clowns who refuse to believe things that they don't want to hear, because it causes them extreme cognitive dissidence, which might require them to actually have to think, and cause their heads (kind of like yours) to explode.....