Railroaded, again

Amtrak pulled out of Las Vegas back in 2001 due to budget constraints. But the government-run rail line obviously has no qualms about losing money elsewhere.

On Tuesday, an arm of the Pew Charitable Trusts released a private study which found that taxpayers spent about $32 subsidizing the typical Amtrak customer in 2008 -- and that only three of the line's 44 routes made money that year.

The subsidy amounts to about four times what rail line executives have claimed they soak up from taxpayers.

The biggest loser? The Los Angeles to New Orleans route -- the Sunset Limited -- which lost a whopping $462 per passenger. Even many of the popular northeast services couldn't turn a profit. For example, the Northeast Regional route lost about $5 per rider.

Despite these numbers -- and despite the fact that virtually all mass transit rail projects bleed taxpayer cash and fall far short of ridership projections -- the Obama administration and Congress larded up the stimulus bill earlier this year with about $8 billion in rail subsidies.

Perhaps a more thorough examination of failing Amtrak routes would be in order before the nation's struggling taxpayers are forced to lay down on the tracks once again and be steamrolled by the mass transit lobby and their many friends in Congress.

But rail aficionados continue to defend the necessity of money-losing enterprises.

"Let's not hold rail up and say it needs to make money when highways don't make money, transit doesn't make money and a lot of small airports don't make money and they all get subsidies," said Stephen Van Beek, president of the Eno Transportation Foundation, a think tank.

Fair enough. But rail is certainly a good place for the budget hawks to start.