This Washington Times article talks about VRE and MARC attempting to find ways to avoid using Amtrak services. Both MD commuter lines either run on Amtrak rail (MARC) or use Amtrak employees to run trains, take tickets, etc. (MARC and VRE).
Why not sell Amtrak to one or more of the airlines? They need the revenue and they’d probably be willing to upgrade the system to the point at which it might make a profit. And I’ll guarantee they wouldn’t stop in every podunk town in America along the way, which is in my view the biggest problem with trains like the Cardinal. (I’d actually take the Cardinal from Indianapolis to Washington if it didn’t take 18+ hours to get there. I can drive it in 10. But I don’t stop in every little town in Kentucky and West Virginia on the way.) Time and money are lost every time a long-haul train stops.
Airports have been wildly successful being located in large urban areas; some people may have to drive an hour to get to one of them, but it’s just not efficient to land a 757 in, oh, I don’t know, maybe Kokomo, Indiana. Intercity trains need to follow the old express model (now used successfully by the big airlines) and not the milk-run model in order to be profitable. Regional rail can take up the slack by serving outlying towns and rural areas, just like it did fifty and sixty years ago (and just like commuter jets and turbo-props do now).
(Some might wonder why I care about MARC and VRE since I live in Indiana. I spend far too much time in the DC area, that’s why 🙂
A "surly curmudgeon[], suspicious and lacking in altruism." (Robert A. Heinlein)