SP5103 Wrote:
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> As part of any train ride over an hour or two long, you have to provide some kind of decent
> beverage and meal service. It's like providing toilets - not anything you're going to make
> money on, but a definite necessity

I'd like to know how you achieve "an hour or two long", considering that millions and millions of Earth residents routinely go four hours between meal periods.

Greyhound doesn't stop its bus every hour for a meal break. Southwest flies across the country serving nothing but peanuts. Nor is it the responsibility for a federal government agency to supply those certain passenger railroad customers with food, when the NPS doesn't run a single restaurant (they are all concessioned out to private operators who must pay rent), and even DOD operated foodservice locations are expected to cover their costs and make a profit (which is reinvested on base). Even the cafeteria at the main post office downtown is a privately contracted operation that pays rent to the USPS for the space it occupies. If Amtrak can't at a bare minimum cover the costs of food service, it needs to go. Don't like it? You have only yourselves to blame, for refusing to pay for it.

Want to save Amtrak? Ride it, ride it all the time, 100% of the time, tell your friends, families, relatives, 47th cousins, co-workers, neighbors, etc., to ride Amtrak and ride it 100% of the time, no matter how short or long the trip, no matter how leisurely or urgent the trip. Even if you have a funeral to get to tomorrow but Amtrak will take you two days...ride Amtrak. Every trip you take even by walking, bicycling, local public transit, car, taxi, Uber, Lyft, etc., that COULD have been an Amtrak trip, is a trip you chose to put Amtrak out of business.