(The following editorial by Dave Zweifel was posted on the Capital Times website on February 11.)
MADISON, Wisc. — It shouldn’t be a Democratic or Republican issue, but it keeps getting kicked around like a partisan football.
The “it,” of course, is passenger rail in the United States. Once again, it is a big loser in the proposed federal budget. President Bush apparently wants to pound the final nail in its coffin.
The budget he gave Congress this week takes a meat ax to Amtrak, eliminating the already paltry $900 million in Amtrak government support. All that Bush leaves is $300 million in assistance to commuter rail systems that connect with Amtrak trains. That $300 million is less than what we are currently spending in Iraq every 48 hours.
Once again, the mantra is that Amtrak has to somehow pay its own way, a requirement that our government makes of no other form of transportation. The United States has been spending tens of millions bailing out the airline industry, providing cheap loans and help with troubled pension plans, and subsidizing the nation’s trucking companies and auto drivers with massive road projects. While the administration wants to spend just $300 million on Amtrak, Wisconsin alone is in the process of spending $810 million-plus to rebuild a highway intersection in downtown Milwaukee.
How soon the politicians who lead this country have forgotten the lessons of 9/11. The savage attacks on the World Trade Center shut down air travel in America for days. Never before had the inadequacy of our rail system been so obvious as travelers around the country tried to make connections by train.
But instead of providing Amtrak with even a fraction of the help that it gave the airlines, the White House and Congress continued to nickel-and-dime Amtrak, forcing it to offer bare bones service and wait in line for freight trains to pass.
The pity of it all is that for the cost of a few miles of the interstate highway system, we could have a first-class passenger rail system that would attract more riders and actually come closer to paying for itself.
Wisconsin’s Secretary of Transportation Frank Busalacchi expressed his chagrin. Here in Wisconsin we’re at the threshold of providing viable passenger rail. The proposed high-speed link of places like Chicago, Milwaukee, Madison andMinneapolis could be a go if only the money were available.
A new station has just opened at Milwaukee’s Mitchell Field, improving the service on the already highly successful Hiawatha Amtrak train between Chicago and Milwaukee.
“The president’s policy approach and timing could not be worse,” Busalacchi said, adding that to ax funding now would put all these improvements in jeopardy.
The only hope is that Congress will come to realize how bad an idea Bush’s plan is. If not, America will someday regret not diversifying its transportation system.