IT’S BASICALLY ETHANOL FOR THE BOS-WASH CORRIDOR: Amtrak Doesn’t Need More Taxpayer Cash, It Needs To Be Given Away. “While first responders were still trying to get crash victims off the smoking trains, partisans took to Twitter to explain why all this had happened: those awful Republicans were starving Amtrak of cash. . . . Amtrak lost nearly $1.3 billion in 2013. Since its creation, Amtrak has racked up over $31 billion in accumulated losses. And every penny of those losses has been covered by federal taxpayers. Amtrak has a lot of problems. A lack of taxpayer generosity is not one of them, not even close. . . . Given that the bulk of its rail traffic occurs in the well-heeled Northeast corridor, the company primarily serves as a means of transferring wealth from middle America to D.C., New York, and Boston. In its current form, Amtrak is less a for-profit passenger rail corporation and more a union jobs program (its ridiculous labor contracts are a major reason why the company is perpetually swimming in red ink). Despite all the disingenuous chatter about a lack of infrastructure funding for Amtrak, the company’s salary costs absolutely dwarf its infrastructure depreciation expenses. In 2013, for example, Amtrak spent $2.1 billion on salaries, while it recorded $687 million in annual depreciation costs. Amtrak’s pension losses alone in 2013 totaled $425 million.”