DENVER — If Amtrak got subsidies equal to those given to the highway and aviation sectors of transportation, it could develop high-speed corridors to rival those in Europe and Japan, said former Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis.
The Rocky Mountain News reports that Dukakis, vice chairman of the Amtrak board of directors, is an advocate of high-speed rail, which he thinks can bring profitability to Amtrak.
The 1988 Democratic presidential candidate who lost to President George Bush spoke Friday to a luncheon group of the Denver Forum at the Oxford Hotel.
“We haven’t even begun to treat rail the way we treat highways and airports,” he said.
While airport and highway improvements are heavily subsidized from federal trust funds filled with taxes and charges on fuel and fares, America has let its magnificent rail network rust, he said.
Private railroads abandoned the passenger trade 50 years ago when the United States opted to build interstate highways to subsidize auto travel and the trucking industry, and to carve out an aviation network with federally controlled airspace and highly subsidized airfields, Dukakis said.
While the federal government annually gives $33 billion to highway projects and $12 billion to airports, it gives Amtrak $331 million.
Amtrak would like to expand the corridors where its runs the Acela Express, the high-speed train between Boston, New York and Washington. City pairs such as Los Angeles-San Diego, Seattle-Portland and others are ripe for high-speed rail competition with airlines, Dukakis said.
One-third of the flights from Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport, Dukakis said, are to cities within 350 miles. A high-speed rail alternative is competitive when you factor in the airport travel and waiting time, he said.
Dukakis didn’t offer much in new service for more remote cities such as Denver, but he said Amtrak has to continue operating such long-distance service as the California Zephyr, the Chicago-San Francisco train that makes daily stops in Denver.