(NOT) RIDING ON THE CITY OF NEW ORLEANS. Josh at Harvard Republican notes that few people died because few people ride Amtrak's City of New Orleans (formerly the Panama Limited; the City was a day train with an 8 am departure and a midnight arrival at the other end of the line, 16 hours from the Foot of the Lakes to the Delta.) Chris at Signifying Nothing suggests that neither the Amtrak subsidy nor the pricing make much sense.

[Passengers] particularly aren’t enticed by a train that costs $182 to ride round-trip, $320 if you want to ride on the lower level, and a whopping $520 if you want to have a bed to sleep in. By contrast, you can fly non-stop round-trip to Chicago from New Orleans next weekend for $398… or, if you’re willing to do some advance planning, you can fly round-trip for $244 over a weekend in May. Not to mention that your trip will be almost 17 hours shorter in duration.

Or, you can ride Greyhound, completely unsubsidized, for $138 round trip—and, if you pick the right bus, it doesn’t take much more time than the Amtrak train.

I'm not sure I follow the lower-level tariff, the City has most of the seating upstairs, but the sleeping car service is not the equivalent of a six-star rolling hotel. Moreover, Greyhound does not have to lease its right of way from the Interstate Highway Authority, which sounds like a subsidy to me.

Sadly, the passenger who died on the train is Chicago resident Clara Downs, a mother of a paralyzed son returning from her sister-in-law's funeral, who rode the train account a fear of flying. The Superintendent's condolences to the Downs family. On a per-passenger mile basis, airplanes are safer than Amtrak trains, with both modes much safer than driving.