(The following editorial appeared on the Times Record News website on July 14.)
WICHITA FALLS, Texas — On a recent trip to Chicago, a Wichita Falls husband turned to his wife in the seat next to him, tapped his beer bottle to her tea glass and said, “This is the way to go.”
For the family of four, this was the only way to go.
And the husband wasn’t driving with an open container of alcohol, only sitting back and enjoying a 23-hour trek north.
With gasoline surpassing the $4 mark before the Fourth of July, a trip on Amtrak would be the only way this family could take a quick holiday without quickly wiping out their savings.
A one-way ticket for each of their young children was only $55. The family would have collectively spent that much on junk food at the rest stops between here and Chicago.
To see the country on $55 — $110 for the adults — is a bargain, definitely compared to what a couple of tanks of gas would have cost.
The family experienced the trip with wide-eyed wonder, at the scenery passing by them, the trip-back-in-time details of train travel, and the rhythm the rails. They were not the only ones enjoying their first Amtrak adventure.
The train cars seemed to be full of families seeking another option to travel. In fact, Amtrak has noticed a dramatic uptick in passengers recently.
The month of May was the biggest month in the history of Amtrak, the Washington Post reported, with total ridership up 12 percent over last year. Ticket sales are also up, by 16 percent.
Half of the increase, a spokesman told the Post, can be linked to the rise in gas prices.
And Amtrak is approaching its fifth-straight year of record passengers, USA Today reported.
Consumers are trying their best to make do, to tolerate the rising price of gas by looking at other alternatives. Passengers can’t invest in alternatives as easily as they can change their habits, shifting from cars to motorcycles, carpooling, riding their bikes or, for long-distance travel, answering the call, “All aboard.”
All may not be able to jump aboard if President Bush makes good on his threat to veto an Amtrak funding bill, one that would continue the government’s investment in the public railways.
A House appropriations committee last month voted to boost Amtrak’s federal funding to $1.4 billion, reported USA Today, a slight increase from the $1.3 billion the government approved five years ago, the last time funding came up for a vote.
A Senate panel voted to keep the funding as it was, at $1.37 billion. Bush, who stressed that the government-funded transportation company should be more cost effective, proposed cuts that would reduce funding to $800 million, a 40 percent cut from the previous allocation.
Surely the president wants the nation’s gas pump-weary drivers to have another option for travel, options not affected by the uncertain future of oil prices.
Surely he wouldn’t want a nation completely dependent upon oil for travel.
Amtrak’s increase in ridership proves that travelers have sought alternatives.
You want energy alternatives? Rail travel has already been invented.