I’ve been a supporter of passenger rail for most of my life, including 32 years as an Amtrak employee. Outside of North America, rail is an integral part of the transportation system. In Europe, Japan, China, and other developed countries, passengers can travel rapidly and cheaply on well-maintained rail systems. 

But Trump and Musk don’t want Americans to have that option. Musk wants Amtrak, the quasi-public system of intercity passenger rail, to be privatized, after comparing it unfavorably to the Chinese rail system. Yet the Chinese State Railway Group is government-owned, and China has spent over $500 billion in the past five years in new tracks, trains, and stations. If Amtrak had that kind of support, it truly would be a world-class system. 

The reason Amtrak came into being was that the private railroads were unable to make money on passenger trains after the U.S. Post Office shifted first class mail off the trains and onto trucks and planes in the late 1960s. Fred Frailey, in Twilight of the Great Trains (1998) writes that most railroads kept two sets of books: one using the “fully allocated” formula demanded by the Interstate Commerce Commission, which included costs that the railroad would incur whether or not the passenger train ran; a second, based on solely related costs, showed the true expense of running a train. “In 1960,” Frailey writes, “In 1960, when the fully allocated loss on U.S. passenger trains was $485 million, the loss based on solely related expenses was a mere $10 million and would turn into a $17 million profit in 1961.” 

That all changed, beginning in 1967, when the Postmaster General, Larry O’Brien, began eliminating the Railway Post Offices—cars where first-class mail was sorted enroute. Most of the first-class mail went to trucks and planes. While some trains still carried bulk mail, the drastic cut in revenue made virtually every passenger train a money-loser, even using solely related costs. Railroad companies, which had opposed federal subsidies for passenger trains, suddenly changed their tune, and Congress, after massive discontinuance proposals, especially by the Pann Central Transportation company, passed the National Railroad Passenger Service Act of 1970, creating the National Railroad Passenger Corporation. 

When the Nixon Administration signed off on the NRPC, later called Amtrak, it added a “poison pill,” making the corporation “for profit.” While Congress changed the wording to “operated and managed as a for profit corporation” in 1978, some Amtrak opponents believe the profitability is the only way to measure Amtrak, despite the intercity passenger train’s fuel-efficiency and low carbon footprint. And, of course, they ignore massive government subsidies of other transportation modes. 

Privatization, without major spending on infrastructure and the return of mail and express to the trains, would mean a shutdown. Last year, Amtrak advocates were talking about an expansion of both short- and long-distance Amtrak service. That won’t happen if Trump and Musk get their way—the entire Amtrak system would go down. 

Former Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood wrote in 2023, “In recent decades, America invested trillions to maintain and expand highways and air travel, while European and Asian nations invested heavily in high-speed trains. Between 1949 and 2017, the federal government invested only $10 billion in high-speed rail with $4 billion of that dedicated to the California project, compared to investments of $777 billion in aviation and over $2 trillion in highways. 

“Meanwhile, since 2004, China has invested over $1.4 trillion to build a 25,000-mile high-speed rail network and is pouring billions more into high-speed rail projects worldwide.” 

The message needs to get out. Trump and Musk can’t be allowed to destroy passenger rail.

Note: I recently sent an abridged version of this letter to Indiana Senator Todd Young, a moderate Republican who has the potential of challenging the Trump Administration. I’ve also published shorter versions in the Elkhart Truth and South Bend Tribune.