Amtrack moves just shy of 17 million passengers in a year. Airlines in the US do that in 8 days. That's works out to roughly 45x as many passengers, with only what, 6x the subsidies?

I think if you don't look at raw passenger figures, but instead at passenger-miles, it becomes even more lopsided in favor of airlines.

American rail is apparently heavily biased towards moving freight. This may even be a good thing, but it'll throw out the numbers if you compare train to car or plane and don't include it.

> and that doesn't account for all the local and state funds used to subsidize airports. Or Department of Transportation spending...

probably this counts for at least a few billions

How does that translate to carbon foot print per dollar.

Most Amtrak trains are diesel powered.