The current passenger rail system, operated by Amtrak, for cross-country travel is inefficient, unpredictable and impractical. Cross country travel by rail is often wrought with severe time delays (hours). Amtrak does not own the passenger rail lines that it uses cross-country, leasing them from private freight carriers. Although federal law requires the private freight lines to defer to Amtrak trains, delays are, nevertheless, quite common. Airline and vehicular travel should not be the only practical means of cross-country transportation for the United States. Statistics from 2011 indicate that the EU transported 397.8 billion passengers per kilometer as compared to 27.6 in the US. Furthermore,rail travel is the most energy efficient means of travel when compared to automobile and air.
This is historical material “frozen in time”. The website is no longer updated and links to external websites and some internal pages may not work.
