Figure 1: Amtrak and KiwiRail bailouts, (exchange rate US$1:NZ$1.53), 2008 – 2015
Sources: Federal Funding Received by Amtrak | Mercatus and New report: Corporate welfare in the 2015 budget – Taxpayers’ Union.
New Zealand with its KiwiRail does a good job of keeping up with the Amtrak bailout especially when you look at figure 2, which computes the bailouts on a per capita basis.
Figure 2: Amtrak and KiwiRail bailouts per capita (2014 populations), (exchange rate US$1:NZ$1.53), 2008 – 2015
Sources: Federal Funding Received by Amtrak | Mercatus and New report: Corporate welfare in the 2015 budget – Taxpayers’ Union.
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
Jul 19, 2015 @ 05:20:58
The money to KiwiRail is neither a bailout nor corporate welware. The freight, passenger and ferry business itself is profitable. The expense that requires government assistance is the track network. This is exactly the same as the road network being profitable for its users (trucking companies etc), but requiring government and council funding assistance for the actual network itself.
Roading actually requires a much greater subsidy. The subsidy to rail equates to 18%, and to roads 44%.
I’ve yet to see anyone claim road funding is corporate welfare or a bailout. Thankfully we don’t shut down loss making roads. If we did, there would be very few roads left outside the core state highway network.
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