Amtrak

First Tamara puts up a post about Amtrak, and then Dustbury puts up one of his own, and since trains are near and dear to my heart, I better put one up too. Looks like the government is going to shell out about as much as Amtrak gets from ticket sales to keep it going another year, $1.5 billion each for a total of $3 billion.

My kids use it to get back and forth to school. More often than not the the Portland to Eugene run is supplanted by a bus, but a bus much superior to those run by Greyhound. For short runs like this (one or two hundred miles) the train is an acceptable means of travel. Much longer than that and the price of tickets and the time required begin to make travel by air, miserable as it is, attractive.