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Rail Travel News is a twice-monthly print publication, published since Dec 10, 1970.
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PO Box 9007,
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   One of the nation's leading anti-passenger train individuals, Wendell Cox, told the press a few days ago that "Amtrak will probably get most everything they're asking for."

   As reported here earlier, the House of Representatives passed a budget resolution with $1.2 billion for Amtrak. 
While the Senate failed in a similar move, it was judged that supportive Senators were waiting for a more appropriate time to introduce Amtrak funding. 

   Amtrak Board chairman David M. Laney, a recent Bush appointee, may be aligning himself with president David Gunn's vision of Amtrak's near-term future, talking in supportive terms of the reforms and improvements Gunn has set in place during his term. 

   Amtrak supporters are hoping that the path Gunn is taking to Amtrak improvement will be seen by legislators as appropriate and worthy of further rail funding. What rail passenger advocates do not want is a shrinking of Amtrak to only isolated corridors in some heavily-populated areas. This concept has been around since the 1970s in the speeches and proposals of anti-passenger train sources. Amtrak supporters recognize it as a rather thinly disguised effort to kill off passenger trains entirely, since these corridors would need federal funding, and Congressional support for such funding would be rejected by legislators outside the corridor areas.

  Also on the supportive side are the numerous reports in the media recently concerning a coming oil crisis. In the past, these could have been written off by some as the products of environmental radicals, but now the warnings are issuing from established experts in petroleum analysis. They see a point at which demand outstrips world supply as coming as early as the present decade.

   In such a situation, it would seem illogical to give up rail as a passenger transportation mode, given its energy efficiency, safety and wide appeal. The nation already has experienced the massive turn to rail passenger service in the oil crises of the 1970s and the need for rail following the terrorist attacks of 2001.

   Last year Amtrak experienced its highest ridership count ever, of 25.1 million riders. The statements tossed out by chronic train-haters that no one rides Amtrak are seen as patently absurd by those actually familiar with the system.