A job creator that's worth $3 billion

Trains -- which we all know to be a leading agent of Communistic state planning and control, as a government bureaucrat determines not only your exact route from Point A to Point B but the precise time at which you will arrive -- are, in spite of that, getting more popular:

Long a punch line for harried Northeast travelers, Amtrak has come to dominate commercial travel in the corridor connecting Washington, New York and Boston, and this summer its trains are packed.

A decade ago, Delta and US Airways shuttles were the preferred mode of travel between the cities. But high fares, slow airport securityand frequent flight delays — along with Amtrak's high-speed Acela trains, online ticketing and workstation amenities — have eaten away at the airlines' share of passengers.

Between New York and Washington, Amtrak said, 75 percent of travelers go by train, a huge share that has been building steadily since the Acela was introduced in 2000 and airport security was tightened after 2001. Before that, Amtrak had just over a third of the business between New York and Washington.

On one of the rare days that our liberal media conspiracy works the way that it's supposed to, that New York Times article ran on the same day as this piece in the Inquirer (yes, the Inquirer):