(The following editorial appeared on the Staten Island Advance website on August 12.)
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — For decades, the federal government has focused myopically on just two forms of transportation — cars and airlines.
Airlines, which have struggled financially for more than two decades since the industry was deregulated, have been the beneficiaries of every tax break imaginable proffered by an ever-indulgent Congress.
Congress even managed to find a way to give the airlines a big windfall in the wake of 9/11.
And Congress has always loved highways. There’s nothing like a new or improved highway in a state or congressional district to get a lawmaker in good with the voters…and with the industry and unions involved in the construction. So Congress pumps billions into the nation’s highway network.
Meanwhile, Washington has given short shrift to rail transportation. Even worse, many members of Congress have expressed open contempt for Amtrak, the nation’s passenger rail carrier and said they’d be willing to let Amtrak wither and die on the vine for lack of anything approaching adequate funding. They insist that, unlike, say, the airlines, which have gotten lavish federal subsidies even amid mismanagement and poor customer service, Amtrak must basically survive on its own with skimpy help from Washington.
By contrast, passenger rail service is valued — and well subsidized by government — in other parts of the world and it thrives because of that respect. In Europe, passenger rail is seen as a critical public service that government must provide.
In the United States, however, passenger rail has always been the unwanted stepchild in terms of subsidies. Tax dollars spent on Amtrak have been denounced by many lawmakers who see it as money wasted.
That has translated into aging equipment, substandard infrastructure maintenance, frequent delays and the elimination of smaller cities from Amtrak’s scheduled stops.
There may be hope for passenger rail in America, however.
As airline service is cut (and scads of new charges are imposed on passengers) and the price of gasoline to fuel private cars has soared, more and more people are finding their way to Amtrak as a less costly, reasonably priced alternative.
The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday that the number of people riding Amtrak was up 13.9 percent this July over July 2007. And Amtrak’s passenger numbers are on a pace to set an all-time record of 28 million in 2008.
That’s the good news.
The bad news is that Amtrak trains are routinely overcrowded, especially in the Northeast Corridor, where the high-speed Acela Express operates between New York and Washington, D.C., the Journal reported.
More people take the train between those cities than fly.
Amtrak President Alex Kummant told the Journal: “We’re literally beginning to bump up against some of the capacity limits on Acela. We have basically no equipment left to start new services.”
And Congress has begun to notice.
Sen. Tom Carper of Delaware recently introduced a measure that would allow Amtrak to borrow nearly $3 billion to buy new equipment.
As important, his bill would funnel $400 million a year from the federal gasoline tax to Amtrak so it can purchase new engines and rolling stock.
Another measure now being debated in Congress would increase federal subsidies to Amtrak to $3.2 billion annually and that would be a multi-year commitment.
It remains for a House-Senate conference to work out the details, and some lawmakers are insisting that a new rail line between New York and Washington that can run at even higher speeds than Acela be part of the package. (Experts say such high-speed service, as seen in Europe and Japan, may not be possible in the densely populated Northeast.)
Amtrak will almost surely get more funding than it has ever gotten before because of the shift in Americans’ transportation habits. But even the amounts being talked about now will not be enough to make Amtrak a first-rate service.
Mr. Kummant told the Journal that it will take $3 billion to bring service up to desired standards in the Northeast Corridor alone. And billions more will be needed to improve and expand service throughout the rest of the country. As we’re seeing, it’s a worthy investment that should have been made decades ago.
Train travel is the most fuel-efficient and environmentally sound mode of transportation there is.
Many passengers say it’s also the most enjoyable, even with Amtrak’s current flaws. Nevertheless, it seems that there’s a new appreciation for Amtrak in Congress — an appreciation that has been directly driven by Americans who are “voting” in favor of Amtrak by buying tickets for the train. It’s time Washington caught up with the people’s good sense.