GOP Rep. John Mica: Amtrak 'Soviet-style operation'

[spanone]

shameless

Washington (CNN)Republican lawmakers on Friday dug in to their party's defense of cuts to Amtrak funding, declaring that the train derailment that killed eight people this week "did not have anything to do with money," as Rep. Bill Shuster put it.

Rep. John Mica took the argument a step further and suggested on CNN that opening the commuter rail market to private investment was the solution to what he called a "third-world rail system ... run in a Soviet-style operation."

"There's no question the United States has a third-world rail system. It's a monopoly run in a Soviet-style operation. Amtrak," said the Florida Republican.

Republicans have long looked to Amtrak as a focus of its efforts to cut domestic spending broadly, and many see cutting funding for the train system as a bid to privatize it. On Wednesday, less than 24 hours after the New York-bound train crashed, the Republican-led House Appropriations Committee voted to reduce grants to Amtrak by $252 million -- a drop of about 15% from last year's level.

http://www.cnn.com/2015/05/15/politics/shuster-defends-amtrak-spending/index.html

[AgingAmerican]

1. They want to privatize it

Creeping fascism

[jwirr]

2. Their reasoning is shaky. Amtrak is only one railway in this country - the others are privately run

and they have been having a "few" disasters lately also.

[msongs]

3. they want to privatize it and continue welfare subsidies too lol. what's the phrase: privatize the

profits and stick the public with the costs

[SteveG]

4. What he doesn't know is

there isn't a rail system in the world that is self financing, let alone making a profit. Yes we have a third world system, but the reality is that we would have to provide a lot more federal subsidies to have a first world system.

[djean111]

5. I really hate to see phrases like "Soviet-style" crop up in politicians' blather.

I believe that war with Russia is something the MIC and their legislative lapdogs are inching towards. Why not say "British-style".

I do think the fantastically awesomely great Japanese rail and subway system is privatized, but here in the US, privatizing really means higher prices and less maintenance and accountability, and guaranteed profits.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_transport_in_Japan

Japan also features multiple competing private railway systems. In post-war Japan, the Japanese government encouraged private corporations to develop their own mass transit systems in order to quickly rebuild the country's urban transport networks.[6]

Private rail lines were encouraged to compete with each other as well as the national rail lines with the government's role limited to regulation of fares. In exchange for developing rail lines, private corporations were given business opportunities to diversify their operations and develop the real estate surrounding their railway networks.

By allowing private corporations to control transit oriented developments as well as railway lines, planned communities were facilitated allowing private railway operators to establish a vertically integrated business of developing residential, business, industrial and retail land and the commuting methods used by the populace to travel between such areas.[7]

As such, through diversification of their business, the majority of the private railways in Japan are financially independent and their railway operations are usually profitable, in sharp contrast to most transit networks in other countries.[8]

Unfortunately, this situation would start out of the gate corrupted, here, IMO. The only thing considered would be profit.

In my Florida county, the bus route is run by the county - but only with an eye for profit. Too bad if you are poor or cannot afford rising fares. The routes seem to shrink and get more narrow in scope every year. Hours and routes cut, fares increased. profit above all - and run by the county. Privatization would mean, I have no doubt, that we would merely get less service, higher fares, and less maintenance. And taxpayers would likely be on the hook if ridership decreased due to less and less convenient access. Like we are on the hook for empty jail cells.