Congress has taken a good first step in reforming Amtrak, the nation’s passenger rail service. By separating the budgets of the profitable Northeast routes from the money-losing rest of them, Congress has set the stage for a full breakup of Amtrak in the future. That’s what’s needed – so that the market can decide whether the federal government should remain in the passenger train business.

“Lawmakers want to separate the budget for routes along the popular Northeast Corridor from the rest of the network,” wrote the Washington Post. “Any operating profits Amtrak makes on the Northeast route, which people actually use, would be reinvested there rather than going to prop up lines elsewhere. Advocates for maintaining lines serving little-used stations between the coasts may balk. But this reform is long overdue.”

The Post is correct on this issue. That Northeast route makes sense, though little else about Amtrak does.

“U.S. geography differs from that of, say, the Netherlands, and rail may not make much sense in vast swaths of the country’s lightly populated hinterlands,” the Post pointed out. “But it is a must-have for the urban zone from Washington to Boston. Just three cities – Washington, Philadelphia and New York – account for nearly a third of Amtrak’s passengers. Seventy-seven percent of all rail and air travel between the District and New York is on Amtrak. The Northeast Corridor posts an operating profit of about $400 million.”

The rest of the Amtrak system loses money, and its infrastructure is decaying rapidly. That’s the case even with the approximately $1 billion Congress spends propping up Amtrak every year.

And as the Post noted: “Segregating the Northeast Corridor’s budget from the rest of the system’s will not be a cure-all. For one thing, the transportation bill gives Amtrak some flexibility to transfer money between accounts as long as it gets permission from its governing board and notifies Congress, so there’s still some opportunity for Amtrak to force Northeastern rail passengers to subsidize others.”

Still, it’s a good first step. What’s next? Breaking up Amtrak, and perhaps even privatizing passenger rail. Amtrak is not one company; it doesn’t have one mission. It’s several different companies, really, with different missions. On that Northeast route, it’s a viable commuter rail service. It even runs on time, mostly.

In the West, however, its inability to keep to a schedule and its limited routes prevent it from serving business travelers – the backbone of the airlines. It’s really just a charming tourist attraction with a high appeal to retirees.

Privatization has worked in Virginia, where the “Virginia Railway Express dropped Amtrak as its operator and awarded a five-year operating contract to the American subsidiary of the French company Keolis to provide better service at a cost below Amtrak’s,” according to the Heritage Foundation.

As for the other routes, the ones draining Amtrak’s coffers and taxpayers’ patience, why keep them?

If there’s truly a need for train service through the Midwest and the Southwest, then a private operator will surely step forward to offer it.