(The following editorial by Dan Webster was posted on the Salt Lake Tribune website on August 14.)
SALT LAKE CITY — It’s easy to pick on an overnight staple. While most Utahns sleep each night, two Amtrak trains make their way through the state in each direction between Chicago and the San Francisco Bay area. So it’s safe to assume that there is little constituency among those who work or travel in the middle of the night.
The Salt Lake Tribune says it’s time to get rid of the long-haul routes. In a simplistic editorial (Aug. 11), the newspaper said it costs taxpayers too much to subsidize. In reality, all travel in this country is subsidized.
The paper’s editorial writers suggest people in the West and Midwest prefer air travel. Airlines receive huge tax incentives from state and local airport authorities to serve certain markets. Midwest and Intermountain West communities are always looking to entice major airlines to serve their local airports. But even when they do, sometimes the fares can be more than the cost of a shuttle or bus ride to a major airport hundreds of miles away.
Actually, much of the travel in the Intermountain West and Midwest is by automobile over heavily subsidized highways. Those roads are not paid for just by taxes on fuel at the pump. They are paid for by tax dollars from several sources including the general fund, bonds, property and other taxes. It was ironic that the editorial came in the same week President Bush signed a multi-billion-dollar highway spending bill.
News section headlines the same day of the editorial warned of a coming shortage of jet fuel.
At a time when fuel prices are skyrocketing and fuel shortages are reported, we should not be eliminating Amtrak. We should, as former Sen. George McGovern proposed last June, be “building . . . the world’s finest, safest, fastest, most energy efficient and environmentally clean railway system in the world.”
The National Association of Railroad Passengers’ research paper two years ago concluded, “Federal investment to modernize the nation’s rail system will return substantial public benefits in a relatively short time. Investment in rail will add needed transportation capacity, provide high quality transportation choices, stimulate significant technological advances, increase energy efficiency, save human lives and reduce the negative impact that the growing demand for transportation has on air quality and the environment.” See http://www.narprail.org/cms/ index.php/resources/more/ mpt/
When every aircraft in the skies over the United States was grounded after the attacks of 9/11, it was “standing room only” on Amtrak. There just weren’t enough railroad cars available to handle the demand for travel.
Doing away with these long haul trains will save very little money and have a very negative effect on rural communities.
I’ve taken Amtrak from Salt Lake City to both California and New York. But it has also taken me to Grand Junction and Glenwood Springs, Colo., on business. On one trip I met a man from Price who got on in Helper heading to Salt Lake City for business. These smaller towns are served well by an inter-city rail line despite the stories of trains being late. Returning from Glenwood Springs one night we arrived early into Salt Lake City.
Not long ago Greyhound, the nation’s only major bus line, cut service to many cities across the country, including Utah. Many communities now have no commercial transportation available to them.
For the sake of transportation choices, national security, rural America and the environment, we need to improve and expand Amtrak. Not dismantle it.
Dan Webster is a resident of Salt Lake City and occasional Amtrak customer.