CARBONDALE, Ill. - National politics hits the train tracks, by way of the GOP's recently-adopted political platform. They wants to pull Amtrak funding amid a call for privatization of the rail industry.

Republicans claim taxpayers essentially subsidize every Amtrak ticket by some $50. They point to the fact that the carrier got almost $1.5 billion dollars in federal subsidies last year.

All this comes as new figures show Amtrak ridership is up 5.5% in Illinois over the last eleven months.

The Chicago-St.Louis route had the biggest increase, of almost eleven percent. And here locally ridership from Carbondale to Chicago inched up five percent to nearly 343,000.

When the train comes to town, it usually drops off students like Jacqueline Robinson.

"A lot of students rely on Amtrak," she said.

She used it to get home to Chicago from Carbondale all last year.

"Every time I traveled back and forth from here to home, I took the train. It was reliable," she said.

Carbondale Mayor Joel Fritzler said any uncertainty with Amtrak funding isn't good for the city.

"We're sort of the center between Chicago and New Orleans, and yeah, it's very important to Carbondale," he said.

The daily arrivals and departures keep Carbondale on the map.

"If the funds aren't available for the train, students will have to find other avenues," he said.

Sharee Langenstein is one of two Illinois Republicans on the GOP's National Platform Committee. She said the party's focus is opening up the tracks to competition by cutting government subsidies.

"The point is that Amtrak needs to be solvent in and of itself. We shouldn't have government interfering in private business," she said.

Of course the future funding of Amtrak likely depends on who wins the presidential election. And students don't want any of those routes to change.

"It'll cause a lot of problems," said Robinson.

Local 6 reached out to an Amtrak spokesperson who said the agency would not be making a statement about the Republican platform.

Nationally over the past eleven months, Amtrak ridership is up more than three percent.