This was listed under the archived discussion board under a topic which started out simply as "Amtrak Great Day" and discussed train watching in San Luis Obispo.

Since people are incapable of keeping on topic, the subject was very misleading by the second dozen posts. Others could not figure out a new topic for the discussion, but a question was raised about how much "subsidy" there is for Amtrak. Despite some question about what that meant, I offered the following:

I can't do the math, but the highway appropriation is about $200+ billion a year, population of the country is 300 million, so the per capita subsidy for federal roads (not county, city, or state) is about $66.67. Amtrak's budget is $1.2 billion, so its per capita subsidy is $4.

The Defense Department spends $1 billion a day which is "too little" to protect us, but the $1.2 billion a YEAR for Amtrak is what's upsetting the entire Federal budget.

Someone told me once (in jest I hope), that the Federal gov't spends more money on picking up road kill than it does on Amtrak.