Amtrak Ridership Hits Record High Amid GOP Attack.

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38. No one has EVER made money moving paying passengers

I have to use the term "Paying Passengers" for the old slave ships did make money shipping "Passengers" to the new world, but with that exception, Adam Smith in his book "The Wealth of Nations" made that observation AT THAT TIME and remains true today. When you hear of successful passenger service, it is either for a very short period of time, heavily subsidized or both.

Airplane service is an good example, air lines received direct subsidies from the Post Office from the 1920s to the 1940s. Afterward Airlines received indirect subsidies (Mail is ship on Passenger planes on a "Space available" basis, this permit the planes to fly with their cargo hold full, even if they have very few passengers). Similar indirect subsidies were provided by the Post Office to Streetcars and Buses when they were privately owned from 1900 to the 1960s. The Post Office could have dropped off its mail cheaper if it used its own trucks, but used Streetcar drivers and Bus Drivers to pick up and drop off mail not only to other Post Officers, but to Letter Carriers on their route by dropping the mail to be delivered in mail boxes on their route (Both the boxes that take mail, and the grey boxes you can NOT drop mail into). Till the 1970s, in many urban areas, Carriers were expected to get to their route by public transportation, the Post Office would buy them passes to do so. These streetcar and bus systems received the subsidy whether the carrier used the passes or not.

One study has found that if you removed the subsidies provided by the Government in the form of building Airports, none of the Air Lines have EVER made money. People do NOT really value what it costs to move them about and for that reason will NOT pay what it costs to move them about.

If you look at the old Interurban Streetcar system, once the local subsidy provided by the various towns along the right of way removed their subsidy (Given to the Interurban so they would provide an alternative to the Steam Locomotives Railways of the time period), most went bankrupt (The few that did not, did so by converting to Freight operations such as the Lackawanna & Wyoming Valley Railroad, "The Laurel Line" which converted to Freight only service in 1952).

You see this over and over again, Passenger Service, on its own, constantly failing unless they is some sort of subsidy. This may be a direct subsidy (government or other) or an indirect subsidy such as Freight carrying most of the costs, while passengers paying only for the additional costs relating to transporting them (How Ships paid for passenger service, even today you can get a cabin on a "Tramp Steamer" for the freighter already has to have a cook and sewards for the crew, so a few additional passengers is no real additional costs. Similar cross subsidies exist in other areas where passengers are being transported.