When did Noel get his accounting degree, and what does that even have to do with his thesis? What does he mean by "most of the costs" operating, capital, deferred maintenance? What does the backlog of capital projects in the NE corridor have to do with differentiating those things? Where are the numbers or proper "accounting" to support some of these "assertions"?

"Another factor is the
Long Distance Trains generate much more revenue per train than
shorter distance trains. This is because passenger miles (the number
of passengers plus the miles each passenger traveled) is a common
measure of productivity of travel services.


Huh? What does that even mean? What does this statement purport to claim? Where are the number to support this disjointed statement? And, then he seems imply that somehow, Amtrak "knows this" (whatever "this" is???) and somehow hides this... Show me the numbers!

Short Distance trains, those numbers don't produce any passenger mile revenues, because they don't serve multiple markets, like the long distance trains... WTF? Really? Show me the numbers!

The long distance serves many markets and are somehow more efficient. Really Long distance Amtrak routes competitively serve multiple markets? Where? And, evil Amtrak is doing a bad job on long distance trains, because they don't care...

So his "thesis" is that long distance should be taken away from "evil" Amtrak... And, given to who, to operate? So who would take over these money losing long distance trains, if Amtrak didn't run them? The "tooth fairy" or maybe Santa Claus... What utter nonsense.

Most folks don't drive, or take a train, on trips over a 1000 miles, they fly. Most folks on long distance trains are not even going from LA to Chicago, or LA to NO, or SFO to Chicago.

Folks do drive from Paso Robles to SFO, they do drive from Salinas to SLO, they do drive from Santa Barbara to Palm Springs, on congested roads, on short distance intercity corridors, by the millions every day where short distance time competitive rail passenger service has proven it can attract riders. Virgin/Brightline understands this "business case" and has just sold a lot of debt, to folks who apparently think that, too. How many folks take the train from LA to Chicago every day? Who is proposing selling bonds to start up long distance service from LA to New Orleans?

The States have pretty much taken over the heavily used short distance corridors, where there are auto competitive travel times between into or out of, or between major travel markets City pairs. There are a handful of relatively successful long distance corridors, like the Florida trains and the Starlight (serving multiple high trip generating short distance city pairs) that we probably need to look at State consortiums to "take over", if an when Amtrak "gives up the ghost".

But, yeah sure, take long distance away from Amtrak, give it to the "tooth fairy" to operate... Let's see how that all works out....

When that doesn't happen, just give CA the underutilized long distance coaches to run the multiple mid distance Daylights, we can fill, recover much higher above the rail operating costs on, and serve viable rail passenger markets, in highly congested "short distance" multiple "on-off" City pair corridors, like the Coast line.