In fact, some news is actually good

As I imagine long-time readers know, I'm a big fan of train travel in general and Amtrak in particular. A reasonable guess is that I've run up over 35,000 miles traveling the US by rail and one of my big dreams remains taking the Trans-Canada railway from Halifax all the way to Vancouver. Like I say, "When you fly, you see clouds. When you drive, you see pavement. When you take the train, you see scenery."

So it did me good to see this from the Washington Post:

Amtrak carried a record 28.7 million people in the past fiscal year, with each of its routes seeing gains, the national passenger railroad said Friday.

The company has posted six years of ridership and revenue growth. The number of trips over the past 12 months increased 11 percent over the 25.8 million taken in fiscal 2007.

Total ticket revenue for the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30 reached $1.7 billion - also a record for the 37-year-old government-owned corporation and a 14 percent increase over the $1.5 billion taken in the previous year.

Both short distance, "corridor" services and long-distance trains saw increases. The Northeast Corridor, Boston-DC, saw ridership go up 9%; the high-speed Acela service on that line went up 6.5%. The Hiawatha Service between Chicago and Milwaukee, up 26% over last year. The Keystone Service, New York City-Philadelphia-Harrisburg, a 20% increase. Ridership went up 31% on the Downeaster, Portland(ME)-Boston. The Texas Eagle, a long-distance train from Chicago to San Antonio, had a 15% ridership increase and the Empire Builder, running between Chicago and Portland-Seattle, had 10% more passengers. Other lines also posted double-digit gains.

Even better,

[e]arlier this month, Congress passed legislation that sets funding targets of $13 billion over five years in a major vote of confidence for the company. ...

The bill also calls for about $1.9 billion in federal matching grants to states for rail projects.

It's a dramatic increase in funding and even Shrub, who has repeatedly tried to kill Amtrak, is expected to sign it - probably because Congressional support was so overwhelming, passing both houses by clearly veto-proof majorities.

Footnote: A writer at the travel site Jaunted.com has some "where do we go from here" proposals for Amtrak, including a new system of passenger rails so Amtrak no longer has to share the rails with freight trains - a good idea but likely prohibitively expensive - and, even less plausibly, double-wide trains. But who cares? It's good to be able to think about Amtrak and long-distance rail travel in terms other than their survival.