(The following editorial appeared on the Baltimore Sun website on May 26, 2010.)
BALTIMORE, Md. — The Northeast may be home to the most successful passenger rail system in the U.S., but it pales in comparison to its brethren in Europe and Japan. With highways and airports in the region likely to have capacity issues and greenhouse gas emissions an alarming problem for a nation that is so car-dependent, the need to upgrade the Northeast corridor is clear enough.
But before U.S. travelers can contemplate futuristic 300 mile per hour magnetic levitation trains or even the 150-200 mph trains found elsewhere, Amtrak and commuter rail systems between Maryland and Maine need something more basic: better reliability and capacity.
Ask any Amtrak rider. Unexpected delays are a major part of riding the rails, and around holidays or when weather grounds flights in the Northeast, getting a seat on a train can be exceedingly difficult. Credit decades of bare subsistence capital funding by Congress for leaving Amtrak serviceable but limited, particularly by bottlenecks in the corridor.
In Maryland, for instance, Northeast trains face the aging Baltimore and Potomac tunnel, where multiple tracks are merged to just two and trains can go no faster than 30 miles per hour as they chug underneath Bolton Hill and Upton in a mile-long masonry structure that turns 137 years old next month. Bridges over the Susquehanna, Bush and Gunpowder rivers are all notorious chokepoints for Amtrak as well. Even if we’re not ready to build the rail system of tomorrow, much can be done to maximize the one we have today.
Last week, transportation officials from 11 Northeast states, including Maryland Transportation Secretary Beverly K. Swaim-Staley, sent a letter to the Obama administration pleading for support to double the corridor’s passenger rail capacity. Amtrak, which carries about 14 million Northeast intercity passengers a year, already expects ridership to double by 2030 and quadruple by 2050.
The states want the Federal Railroad Administration to develop a master plan and environmental assessment for improved high-speed rail service in the region. Such a study would not only help define the cost of such an undertaking but the benefits in revitalizing communities, improving air quality, reducing emissions and dependence on foreign oil, reducing traffic and contributing to smart growth goals.
President Obama has shown far more interest in passenger rail service than his White House predecessors, having already committed $8 billion toward high-speed rail nationwide. But even that large an amount is a drop in the bucket compared to what creating a viable national rail network would cost — a project not unlike building an interstate highway system from scratch.
But enhanced passenger rail may be the region’s best transportation bet, nonetheless. With one-fifth of the nation’s population (and one-fifth its gross domestic product), the Northeast is an ideal candidate for genuine high-speed rail, and not just Amtrak’s Acela Express, a train that is capable of 150 mph speeds but spends most of its time at a less-than-impressive 100 mph.
With a master plan in hand, Congress might be willing to invest the needed billions of dollars in corridor improvements. To meet the kind of carbon-reduction goals needed to address climate change, lawmakers may have little choice. Compared to planes, trains generate as much as 90 percent less carbon per traveler. The Northeast would be a demonstration of what rail service might accomplish in other parts of the country.
In the meantime, Congress must be at least willing to provide sufficient funds to Amtrak this year to keep the system viable and not reduce service. In Baltimore, Amtrak should move ahead with plans to create a hotel at Penn Station and redevelop the adjoining Lanvale parking lot into a mixed use office/retail/residential complex. Both projects would help make the station the attractive and useful transportation hub it needs to be.