Comments by "Colorme Dubious" (@colormedubious4747) on "" video.
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@jakerushia8555 What a truly peculiar reply. I did NOT call you out on a grammar issue. I called you out for conflating an intercity passenger rail system with an urban rail transit system. They ARE two completely different modes, even though both run on standard gauge track. If you want to make it about grammar, here we go! My post contains no errors in spelling, punctuation, capitalization, nor otherwise. It was grammatically perfect and logically correct. In your case, however, I cringed so hard that it registered on the seismometers at the local University. You failed to capitalize the word "English." There are TWO "Ms" in the word "slamming." NOW you've been slammed for substandard grammar. Are you happy? Back to the ACTUAL point I made: Intercity passenger rail service in America dates back to 1830, when the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad instituted it on their freight lines. Freight and passenger service continued to expand across the continent throughout the 19th Century as more railroads were founded, reaching a peak of roughly 300,000 route miles. Passenger service was a loss leader. The railroads made most of their profit from freight service, land sales, mining, and timber. Boston's first subway was built in 1897. During the 1920s, highway networks began to expand throughout the United States. This growth accelerated with the New Deal programs in the 1930s. After the Second World War, war production shifted to automobile production and residential construction. The war had roughed up the privately owned railroads and the promised government compensation never materialized. Instead, we used our money to rebuild European and Japanese railroads and focused on highway projects at home. The deterioration of the railroads combined with the availability of non-tolled highways delivered the death blow to passenger railroads in America. By 1971, our Class I railroads could no longer justify taking losses on passenger service so Amtrak was created by the federal government to take over that function, running passenger trains on the same routes that had been used by freight trains for decades (in many cases, more than a century). Today, out of the roughly 24,000 miles of track used by Amtrak, only about 800 miles is owned by Amtrak itself. The rest is owned by the railroads who built it and continue to maintain it. You're welcome.
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