WASHINGTON — This is a good news-bad news story about riding the rails within cities and between cities, according to Roger K. Lewis, a practicing architect and a professor of architecture at the University of Maryland, in an editorial in the Washington Post.
The good news is that a light-rail revival has been underway in urban America for a couple of decades and promises to continue.
The bad news is that Amtrak, the nation’s provider of intercity passenger rail service, is on the verge of bankruptcy and a possible shutdown.
It’s also a story about contrasting attitudes toward rail travel on Capitol Hill.
Last week, Washington Post staff writer Lyndsey Layton reported that, in a meeting with the board of directors of the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.), an avid bicyclist, strongly urged Metro to build a light-rail system to supplement the Washington region’s heavy-rail, bus and vehicular roadway systems. Blumenauer understands that multiple transportation options are indispensable to achieving “smart growth,” no matter how one chooses to define smart growth.
Light rail is the contemporary term for a trolley car system, a familiar sight in the nation’s capital until 40 years ago. The technology has not changed much — electrically powered streetcars travel on steel rails — but today’s trams, often made of two or three cars coupled together, are more comfortable, carry more passengers and can run faster than vintage trolleys.
Because modern light rail is a surface system operating along existing streets, it doesn’t require spending millions to acquire rights of way. There’s no need to build costly tunnels and elaborate stations. Linked to bus and subway lines, plus ancillary parking garages for suburban commuters, a light-rail system is much less expensive and quicker to construct than a heavy-rail system.
As noted in Layton’s report, cities such as Blumenauer’s hometown, Portland, Ore., as well as San Diego and Salt Lake City, have built successful light-rail systems. Even transit-averse Houston is building a line paralleling its north-south Main Street to connect its central business district to destinations and neighborhoods being redeveloped south of downtown.
At present, Layton reported, 19 cities operate light-rail systems, with 43 new systems proposed or approved.
Fortunately, local governments in the Washington region as well as Metro officials are seriously considering light-rail options. In Maryland, planning is underway for a light-rail Purple Line from New Carrollton to Bethesda.
A light-rail line along Columbia Pike and Route 1 might be in Arlington’s future.
And the District has asked Metro to study the feasibility of three light-rail routes: a north-south line along Georgia Avenue, connecting Silver Spring to the Potomac River waterfront; a crosstown line from Woodley Park to the Minnesota Avenue Metro station via U Street; and an east-west line along M Street connecting Georgetown to the new convention center under construction at Mount Vernon Square.
But creating new, rail-based transit systems is tough in America’s car culture. The private automobile is still the travel mode of choice, both in Washington and throughout most of the United States. And many Americans continue to believe that a rail transit system should be economically self-sustaining, as if it were a business rather than a public service.
Last month in Cambridge, Mass., the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy sponsored a conference on sprawl and smart growth. John Landis, a professor of urban planning at the University of California at Berkeley, provoked his audience of journalists by repeatedly insisting that, when it comes to mobility and travel flexibility in most American communities, the auto can’t be beat.
Landis’s observations are confirmed by recent reports of data from the 2000 census, which reveal discouraging transit trends since 1990. In the District, the proportion of commuters using public transportation fell from 37 percent to 33 percent between 1990 and 2000, and the proportion of commuters who drove alone to and from work increased from 35 percent to 38 percent. Carpoolers dropped from 12 percent to 11 percent.
Meanwhile, Amtrak’s financial situation has gone from bad to worse. The Post reported last week that without a $200 million bank loan before the end of June, the entire Amtrak system will shut down in July, with disastrous consequences for parts of the country, especially the busy Northeast corridor. Citing Amtrak’s deficits and history of troubled management, some politicians on Capitol Hill are calling for, if not welcoming, Amtrak’s demise. Amtrak cannot get the bank loan it needs without the support of Congress.
Amtrak’s Northeast corridor operations reportedly are “profitable,” but its operations in many other regions are not.
Amtrak critic Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) argues that money-losing railway routes in much of the United States are maintained only for political reasons. McCain has indicated willingness to support Amtrak and avert a July shutdown if proposed management reform efforts, such as reducing the number of vice presidents from 84 to 20, are carried out by Amtrak’s new president, David L. Gunn. Gunn reportedly has also obtained commitments from a number of senators and representatives for a $1.2 billion appropriation in 2003.
But does this sound like a coherent national transportation policy in action?
All of this paints a rail transportation picture full of contradictions.
Intra-urban light rail seems to be increasingly feasible, politically and financially, yet people seem to be driving cars more and using mass transit less.
At the same time, the nation’s potentially vital intercity passenger railway service could be days away from shutting down, yet Northeast corridor railway ridership and revenue have risen substantially, especially after Sept. 11.
Will the United States ever be able to create an integrated, adequately funded network of urban and regional rail transportation, a system comparable in scope to the vast interstate highway system that catalyzed and gave often undesirable shape to metropolitan growth over the past four decades? Why not use rails rather than roads to direct and concentrate growth during future decades?
Protecting the environment and conserving energy make the argument for investing in railways instead of roadways even more compelling.
Recall that much of the motivation in the 1950s for building the nation’s interstate highways and urban freeways was the Cold War and national defense. Perhaps today’s need for new thinking about defending the homeland against terrorism will likewise motivate us to think differently about rail infrastructure. Perhaps we finally will understand that providing both urban and regional rail transit is, like national defense, an essential public service whose ultimate benefits more than justify its costs.