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1 1 (1980)

handle is hein.amenin/aeiaadh0001 and id is 1 raw text is: Amtrak: The National Railroad Passenger Corporation, by George W. Hilton, deals with the system Congress inaugurated in 1971 to prevent the demise of the intercity passenger train. Operation of the trains by the federally established corporation, however, has not been a success. The trains have never carried more than a third of I percent of Americans traveling between cities, and the system has lost over $1.8 billion. Professor Hilton demonstrates that the program failed because of a fallacious interpretation of the decline of the passenger train. In general, the people who value time most were the first to desert the passenger train for alternatives, and consequently the demand for luxury accommodations declined more rapidly than did coach rider- ship. Many. observers concluded that the railroads were discouraging use of the trains by downgrading the quality of the service. The Amtrak program was based on a presumption that ridership could be restored by improving the quality of service. Actually, the public has responded much more to fare reductions and to schedule frequency than to provision of luxury. Hilton concludes that Amtrak serves no useful function in the national transport network, but is rather a subsidy to a limited number of people who value rail travel as a form of consumption. By analogy to the similar subsidy of American flag passenger ships, he predicts that Amtrak will eventually pass out of existence. George W. Hilton is professor of economics at the University of California, Los Angeles, and an adjunct scholar of the American Enterprise Institute. ISBN 0-8447-3369-5 US $12.00 ISBN-13:978-0-8447-3369-2 ISBN-10: 0-8447-3369-5 51200 i808 4i73 36 JI2 7ja American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research 11150 Seventeenth Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036

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