WASHINGTON — United Airlines’ declaration of bankruptcy this month is clearly not just another corporate casualty: It is the canary in the coal mine for a whole sector of our economy — long-distance travel and tourism. Long-distance travel in this country is broken, reports a editorial by Hank Dittmar in the Washington Post.
Reeling from the blow our nation suffered on Sept. 11, the public is now finding out that our airlines already were sick. US Airways and National Airlines already had filed for Chapter 11. United followed when it could not secure a federal loan guarantee. All this has occurred despite a post-Sept. 11 federal bailout and federal subsidies of airports and air traffic control.
This crisis, while exacerbated by Sept. 11, has long been coming. Ever since deregulation, the airline industry has operated at a net loss. In fact, United would have to fill 91.2 percent of its seats — a whopping 20 percent more than normal — just to break even.
Amtrak is on the ropes as well. In July it came within days of a system shutdown until Congress, the administration and the passenger railroad negotiated a bailout. Both the administration and Congress have made it clear that when Amtrak’s annual budget is hashed out next year, they’ll give it only enough money to keep it limping along. Amtrak’s public subsidy is a tiny fraction of that offered to highways and aviation, and the combination of fares and subsidy doesn’t begin to pay the cost of railroad retirement, deferred maintenance and capital costs. The nation’s freight railroads are doing a little better, but they don’t make enough money to upgrade their aging tracks and track beds.
The only long-distance travel system that seems to be doing well financially is the interstate highway system, which enjoys both an off-budget trust fund that pays for road repair and construction and the benefit of having consumers pay directly for the vehicles that take them from town to town. But trouble is on the horizon here, too. Highways don’t pay for their environmental and public health costs, and efforts to combat air pollution and global warming by improving automotive fuel economy will lead to lower revenues from gas taxes, threatening the funding source for road upkeep.
Long-distance transportation systems are a public necessity — in fact, they are critical infrastructure for homeland security. They support our economy, preserve our basic
freedom to travel and provide for the strategic security of the nation. These benefits are not entirely private, and we have learned that the private sector cannot shoulder the burden alone. Transportation systems never earn back the cost of capital; they are subsidized worldwide. The public sector needs to commit to making the transportation system work better, and Congress and the administration have a golden opportunity to do so in 2003.
For the first time in history, the separate laws that govern aviation, rail and highways all come up for renewal in the congressional session beginning next month. This happy coincidence offers the country the opportunity to bring together aviation, passenger rail and intercity bus into one networked system, in which air travel would take care of longer trips, while high-speed rail and high-quality intercity bus service would handle trips of 100 miles to 400 miles.
Such a system would mirror the approach being taken in Europe, where one can fly into Amsterdam, Paris or Frankfurt and transfer to a high-speed train at the airport. It offers the opportunity to preserve airport capacity for the more profitable longer trips and to link more of America’s small cities into the airport hubs such as Chicago and Atlanta.
Finally, such a smoothly integrated network would give us the chance to improve the strategic and economic security of intercity travel by creating a system that is more resilient, more robust and less vulnerable to disruption by the kind of attacks that occurred on Sept. 11, 2001.
There are many obstacles to the adoption of an interconnected and networked approach to intercity travel. The individual modes of aviation, rail and highways jealously guard their autonomy and can be expected to see any integration as a challenge to their turf and their money.
But the public is not an obstacle. Poll after poll shows dissatisfaction with the current state of affairs, and strong support for an expanded high-speed rail network. Indeed, despite Acela Express’s technical problems, which are a byproduct of both financial instability and a flawed design, rail service continues to draw passengers in medium-distance routes from 100 miles to 300 miles.
In the 1950s a popular Republican president, Dwight D. Eisenhower, saw the chance to bring together strategic security and economic well-being in a far-reaching transportation scheme called the National System of Interstate and Defense Highways. That system, with its shared public and private responsibility, has served us well for 50 years. Now, with the emergence of a global network economy, it is time for a popular Republican president to propose the transportation system for the next 50 years.
When Congress convenes, President Bush should introduce legislation creating a National Interstate and Defense Transportation Network, bringing our separate air, rail and highways modes together into a resilient, interconnected network for this new century.
The writer is co-director of Reconnecting America, a coalition working to reform the U.S. transportation system.