(The following editorial appeared on the Albany Times-Union website on October 14.)
ALBANY, N.Y. — Now here’s a quaint thought. Imagine President Bush, leaving Washington and heading back to Texas — by train.
Truly, the soon-to-be-former President would be a most welcome passenger, and not just because of the timing and the direction he’d be heading. The final days of the Bush administration really are good ones for a national railroad that’s so often been overlooked by too many presidents and congressional leaders.
Mr. Bush, who once threatened to shut down Amtrak, now plans to sign a bill, passed by Congress late last month, that calls for $13 billion to be invested in passenger rail service over the next five years. (Sen. Barack Obama, along with 73 other senators, voted for the legislation, while Sen. John McCain voted against it.)
The bill calls for $1.3 billion a year to be made available to Amtrak for replacing tracks, building tunnels and maintaining normal operations. That’s an increase of about $300 million. The money would have to be allocated in separate budget bills, but that’s not expected to be a problem.
It’s still not enough to make railroad service in this country the alternative to highway and airline travel that it should, but it does suggest that a corner has been turned without slowing the train to a more typically sluggish pace.
The idea of train travel hasn’t seemed so attractive in years. For that, you can extend part of the thanks to a few months of $4-a-gallon gasoline. This was a summer when people were driving less and taking trains and buses more. In July, motorists logged 9.6 billion fewer miles than they did the same month a year earlier, while Amtrak ridership was up 14 percent, to an all-time high. This summer was also, unfortunately, when a deadly commuter train wreck near Los Angeles reminded the country yet again of the importance of rail safety.
What’s growing ever fainter in the ongoing discussions about Amtrak is the rather absurd notion that Amtrak be weaned off government subsidies and be required instead to be the only railroad that makes a profit.
Here’s Jim RePass of the National Corridors Initiative, a Boston-based rail advocacy group, hailing a commitment to longer-term funding that Amtrak’s supporters have been fighting for since 1971 — almost as long as Amtrak has been in existence.
Amtrak president Alex Kummant talks about the two railroads America has — the one it actually operates and the one the public imagines is out there. Mr. Bush’s valedictory train ride could be remembered as the one that made that gap noticeably narrower.