American passenger rail revival?
Passenger trains to return? One of the routes proposed by Amtrak would extend the ‘Heartland Flyer’, which restarted in 1999 between Fort Worth and Oklahoma City, north to Wichita and Newton, Kansas. This would use the existing BNSF-owned line used by Amtrak in its early years. A BNSF freight with two BNSF locos and a third from Mexican operator Ferromex, seen heading south on the line, having just left Kansas near Newkirk, Oklahoma, on June 28, 2019. KEITH FENDER
AMERICAN President Joe Biden has announced a massive $2 trillion package of infrastructure investment, to be paid for largely by higher taxes on large companies – some of whom currently manage to pay very little tax in the USA despite being based there.
The political debate over the proposals has already been divisive and TheRMis not the place to even try to explain the details, although a simple summary would be that some of Mr Biden’s own supporters think ‘infrastructure’should include almost all government spending, while his opponents disagree and say that taxes should not be increased, whatever the money is to be spent on.