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From: Kovalcik@MIT-MULTICS.ARPA (Richard Kovalcik, Jr.)
Newsgroups: net.railroad
Subject: Re: AMTRAK funding.
Message-ID: <991@brl-smoke.ARPA>
Date: Mon, 17-Feb-86 13:43:06 EST
Article-I.D.: brl-smok.991
Posted: Mon Feb 17 13:43:06 1986
Date-Received: Wed, 19-Feb-86 20:25:54 EST
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    Date:  9 February 1986 14:31 est
    From:  johnl at IMA.UUCP
    Subject:  Re: AMTRAK funding.

    /* Written  8:25 pm  Feb  7, 1986 by JOHNSON%northeastern.csn@brl-smoke in ima:net.railroad */
    >       Did anybody else hear that the '87 budget for AMTRAK was cut?

    Reagan's 1987 budget, like his 1986 budget, proposes zero financing for
    Amtrak, which would mean that all Amtrak operations would stop at the end
    of FY1986.  I suppose that when everybody in the adminstration goes places
    by helicopter, they don't notice that abandoning Amtrak would, among other
    things, produce continuous traffic jams all the way from Washington to
    Boston, both in the air and on the highway.  Write your congressmen --
    despite its flaws, Amtrak needs and deserves all of the money it's got.
    I don't know where Reagan got the idea that Amtrak trains are all empty,
    but he's quite wrong.

    John Levine, ima!johnl


I sincerely doubt that it would produce continuous traffic jams all the
way from Washington to Boston.  Conrail's fairlure MIGHT do that.  I am
sure that Greyhound could pick up all the northeast cooridor passenger
traffic without any noticable change in the number of vehicles on I-95.
I for one like trains, but I like having money to spend too.  If AMTRAK
can't operate at or close to profitiablity then I feel it should go.
There are more important things to save in the federal budget.

Please save your boo's.

-Rick (with the honest opinion) Kovalcik