Amtrak is an intercity train service currently owned by the United States government. There are a number of critics who believe that the government should not own Amtrak and that Amtrak should be sold to a privately-owned company. These critics put forward several arguments to support their position.
First, the critics point out that the government loses money on many Amtrak routes. In its effort to serve citizens in all parts of the country, Amtrak maintains routes even in remote and less populated areas. Those routes are not used by enough passengers to cover the cost of maintaining them. The amount of money lost every year due to underuse is sizeable: the government loses up to several hundred dollars per passenger on some routes: and the total losses due to underuse add up to hundreds of millions of dollars every year If Amtrak was privatized, these unprofitable routes could be cut.
Second, government ownership of Amtrak is unfair to privately owned transportation companies such as airlines Government fundi ng of Amtrak means that ticket prices on Amtrak are cheaper than they otherwise would be. However, the government does not give airline companies money so they can lower their ticket prices. This situation clearly is unfair to airlines and other private transportation companies because they must compete against trains for customers.
Third, critics maintain that if the government wants to support national transportation, it should spend its money elsewhere Rail travel is relatively unimportant in the United States: Amtrak currently transports less than 1 percent of the people traveling between cities. A large majority of intercity travelers use other means of transport, such as private cars. The critics argue that rather than finance Amtrak, the government should direct its funding at maintaining and improving the highway system so that intercity car travel becomes faster and more efficient.
During the last several years, supporting rail traveling services in comparison to others like airlines has been a controversial issue for governments. In the passage, the author concentrates on several arguments to convince the United States government in order to sell Amtark, an intercity train service, to a private-owned company. However, the lecturer cast doubt on these arguments and respectively points out the problems with all authors' logic.
To begin with, according to the text, the government losses a lot of money on some routes that people do not use frequently, and they can not even cover the maintenance costs. The lecturer, however, highlighted the fact that people misunderstood with the usage of those routes. The government provides services for people that live far. If they sell Amtrak to a private company, they cut those routes to decrease costs. Consequently, people will not have any services to use in those regions.
Furthermore, the passage states that the government ownership of Ambark does not play fair with other private transportation services. Conversely, the lecture state that these words are stupid. Indeed, the government supports other services in many ways. For instance, it pays the weather satellite services fees of airlines. Actually, without the support of the government, they cannot exist.
The last point discussed in the passage has to do with the amount of money that government spends on rail travel. The author believes that people prefer to use other services. However, with reference to the account of the lecturer, rail travel is not popular because is out of date in the US. If they look at the rail services in Japan and Europe, they can find out they have modern and popular rail services. The lecturer proposes that the government should increase the budget to update Amtrak.
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Comments
Essay evaluations by e-grader
Transition Words or Phrases used:
actually, consequently, conversely, furthermore, however, if, look, so, as to, for instance, to begin with, with reference to
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 4.0 10.4613686534 38% => More to be verbs wanted.
Auxiliary verbs: 5.0 5.04856512141 99% => OK
Conjunction : 4.0 7.30242825607 55% => More conjunction wanted.
Relative clauses : 8.0 12.0772626932 66% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 22.0 22.412803532 98% => OK
Preposition: 45.0 30.3222958057 148% => OK
Nominalization: 12.0 5.01324503311 239% => Less nominalizations (nouns with a suffix like: tion ment ence ance) wanted.
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1547.0 1373.03311258 113% => OK
No of words: 297.0 270.72406181 110% => OK
Chars per words: 5.20875420875 5.08290768461 102% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.15134772569 4.04702891845 103% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.76594356997 2.5805825403 107% => OK
Unique words: 157.0 145.348785872 108% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.52861952862 0.540411800872 98% => OK
syllable_count: 477.9 419.366225166 114% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.55342163355 103% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 4.0 3.25607064018 123% => OK
Article: 12.0 8.23620309051 146% => OK
Subordination: 2.0 1.25165562914 160% => OK
Conjunction: 1.0 1.51434878587 66% => OK
Preposition: 7.0 2.5761589404 272% => Less preposition wanted as sentence beginnings.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 18.0 13.0662251656 138% => OK
Sentence length: 16.0 21.2450331126 75% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively short.
Sentence length SD: 38.7068756453 49.2860985944 79% => OK
Chars per sentence: 85.9444444444 110.228320801 78% => OK
Words per sentence: 16.5 21.698381199 76% => OK
Discourse Markers: 6.94444444444 7.06452816374 98% => OK
Paragraphs: 4.0 4.09492273731 98% => OK
Language errors: 0.0 4.19205298013 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 5.0 4.33554083885 115% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 8.0 4.45695364238 179% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 5.0 4.27373068433 117% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.192887007263 0.272083759551 71% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0611008054319 0.0996497079465 61% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0670996276451 0.0662205650399 101% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.113260803703 0.162205337803 70% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0247186415507 0.0443174109184 56% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 11.4 13.3589403974 85% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 55.24 53.8541721854 103% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 5.55761589404 56% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 9.5 11.0289183223 86% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.64 12.2367328918 103% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.47 8.42419426049 101% => OK
difficult_words: 76.0 63.6247240618 119% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 14.0 10.7273730684 131% => OK
gunning_fog: 8.4 10.498013245 80% => OK
text_standard: 10.0 11.2008830022 89% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
Rates: 80.0 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 24.0 Out of 30
---------------------
Note: the e-grader does NOT examine the meaning of words and ideas. VIP users will receive further evaluations by advanced module of e-grader and human graders.
Transition Words or Phrases used:
actually, consequently, conversely, furthermore, however, if, look, so, as to, for instance, to begin with, with reference to
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 4.0 10.4613686534 38% => More to be verbs wanted.
Auxiliary verbs: 5.0 5.04856512141 99% => OK
Conjunction : 4.0 7.30242825607 55% => More conjunction wanted.
Relative clauses : 8.0 12.0772626932 66% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 22.0 22.412803532 98% => OK
Preposition: 45.0 30.3222958057 148% => OK
Nominalization: 12.0 5.01324503311 239% => Less nominalizations (nouns with a suffix like: tion ment ence ance) wanted.
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1547.0 1373.03311258 113% => OK
No of words: 297.0 270.72406181 110% => OK
Chars per words: 5.20875420875 5.08290768461 102% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.15134772569 4.04702891845 103% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.76594356997 2.5805825403 107% => OK
Unique words: 157.0 145.348785872 108% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.52861952862 0.540411800872 98% => OK
syllable_count: 477.9 419.366225166 114% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.55342163355 103% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 4.0 3.25607064018 123% => OK
Article: 12.0 8.23620309051 146% => OK
Subordination: 2.0 1.25165562914 160% => OK
Conjunction: 1.0 1.51434878587 66% => OK
Preposition: 7.0 2.5761589404 272% => Less preposition wanted as sentence beginnings.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 18.0 13.0662251656 138% => OK
Sentence length: 16.0 21.2450331126 75% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively short.
Sentence length SD: 38.7068756453 49.2860985944 79% => OK
Chars per sentence: 85.9444444444 110.228320801 78% => OK
Words per sentence: 16.5 21.698381199 76% => OK
Discourse Markers: 6.94444444444 7.06452816374 98% => OK
Paragraphs: 4.0 4.09492273731 98% => OK
Language errors: 0.0 4.19205298013 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 5.0 4.33554083885 115% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 8.0 4.45695364238 179% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 5.0 4.27373068433 117% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.192887007263 0.272083759551 71% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0611008054319 0.0996497079465 61% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0670996276451 0.0662205650399 101% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.113260803703 0.162205337803 70% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0247186415507 0.0443174109184 56% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 11.4 13.3589403974 85% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 55.24 53.8541721854 103% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 5.55761589404 56% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 9.5 11.0289183223 86% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.64 12.2367328918 103% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.47 8.42419426049 101% => OK
difficult_words: 76.0 63.6247240618 119% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 14.0 10.7273730684 131% => OK
gunning_fog: 8.4 10.498013245 80% => OK
text_standard: 10.0 11.2008830022 89% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
Rates: 80.0 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 24.0 Out of 30
---------------------
Note: the e-grader does NOT examine the meaning of words and ideas. VIP users will receive further evaluations by advanced module of e-grader and human graders.