(The following article by Chip Jones was posted on the Richmond Times-Dispatch website on May 17.)
NEWPORT NEWS, Va. — The national transportation system is on a collision course with gridlock, the former head of Amtrak told a state rail advocacy group yesterday.
Unless the White House and Congress take bold action, “I think the country is in for a very rough, slow ride,” said former Amtrak chief David Gunn.
Addressing more than 80 members of the Virginians for High Speed Rail, Gunn and other rail experts said it probably would take something like the 1970 bankruptcy of the Penn Central Railroad to spark action in Washington.
For now, Gunn and others said, the country is not addressing core issues of funding and planning ways to ease highway congestion, such as improved passenger rail service.
“It will take some mobility crisis,” said James McClellan, a retired senior vice president for planning at Norfolk Southern Corp.
It might take gas hitting $6 a gallon, spawning demand for transportation alternatives, he said.
Gunn was fired in early November after Amtrak’s board said the debt-laden rail carrier needed “a leader with vision and experience.”
But he was praised for those qualities yesterday by the high-speed rail group, which includes business executives such as James E. Ukrop and other Richmond-area officials. Gunn was awarded the W. Thomas Rice Rail Renaissance Award for his public service.
Asked later about his gridlock prediction, Gunn predicted it won’t be “some cataclysmic meltdown.”
Instead, travelers can expect to see “wild variations” in travel times, whether by road, rail or air, Gunn said. Those swings already happen occasionally, but he said they’ll have to become “untenable. Then I think you’ll see the public put pressure” on federal lawmakers, he said.
Gunn bemoaned the state of physical infrastructure for highways, railroads and airports alike. “It’s going to have to be dealt with eventually,” he said.
For decades, he said, different groups from the Army Corps of Engineers to the road-building lobby — have held sway in Congress. “The key to this whole situation is to have some sense of leadership at the federal level,” Gunn said. “Everything has been done in isolation.”