(The following editorial by Leo Morris was posted on the Fort Wayne Sentinel website on February 22.)
FORT WAYNE, Ind. — High-speed rail could be the future, unless the Amtrak debate kills the whole idea.
Fans of rail travel shouldn’t panic simply because President Bush’s new budget suggests eliminating the subsidy for Amtrak. Bush’s initiative is just the latest version of a game of pretend chicken perfected by President Reagan. The president pleases his conservative allies by proposing a $1 billion cut, knowing full well that Congress will put the money right back in.
But the proposal does offer the opportunity to refocus the debate over rail travel as but one component in the nation’s overall transportation strategy instead of treating it as an isolated enterprise that may or may not deserve all the federal money it gets. It’s a debate that has special significance for the Midwest in general and Indiana and Fort Wayne in particular.
“Since Amtrak is the only passenger service we have,” says Cheri Becker, executive director of Invent Tomorrow and a board member of the Indiana High Speed Rail Association, “losing it would have a huge impact on what we’re trying to do.” Certainly, the infrastructure needs upgrading, “but at least it’s there.” And, “as we learned on 9/11, Amtrak is the only alternative to air travel as a means of national transportation.”
The Indiana group is part of a nine-state coalition that makes up the Midwest Regional Rail Initiative, which would eventually like $7.2 billion in government funding for a 3,000-mile, high-speed passenger system hubbed in Chicago. Fort Wayne has been designated by the Federal Railroad Administration as an intermediary stop on the proposed Chicago-to-Cleveland route. The system is envisioned to directly serve 100 communities, with buses tying into another 200, encompassing about 60 million people.
Contemplating Amtrak’s connection to a possible high-speed-rail future requires a longer-range, more complex view than that being taken by many of Indiana’s politicians, who zero in on the immediate dollars-and-cents issues. Gov. Mitch Daniels says he won’t back efforts to save the subsidy, because “Amtrak costs Indiana taxpayers a fortune. Every time someone gets on an Amtrak train, it would be less expensive to buy them an airplane ticket and hand it to them.” Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh, on the other hand, has pledged to fight to save the federal funding because it would “preserve Beech Grove” and the $41 million Amtrak contributes to the Indiana economy through wages. The Amtrak maintenance facility at Beech Grove employs 1,000 Hoosiers.
The governor and senator are both right, but they’re only talking about Amtrak in the isolated sense.
Certainly Amtrak is expensive. Federal taxpayers have provided $29 billion since Amtrak was created 34 years ago, including $1.2 billion for the current year. And the amount of subsidy will only increase. Joe Brancatelli, former executive editor of Frequent Flyer magazine, points out that Amtrak head George Warrington for years told Congress what it wanted to hear, that the system “was financially viable and would eventually be independent of federal subsidy.” However, his successor, David Gunn, has gone the other way, claiming “with perverse pride that Amtrak can never be profitable.”
But why must it be profitable? Compare the $1.2 billion in 2004 subsidies for Amtrak to the $133 billion in U.S. highway spending in 2001, of which more than 40 percent was not recovered from gas taxes. Does anybody demand that highways “make a profit”? And what about all the money the federal government spends on airports? Why do we say the government is “investing” in highways and air travel but “subsidizing” rail service? Either the federal government is deeply involved in the nation’s travel choices, or it isn’t. Obviously it is, so the appropriate question is what part rail travel should play in the overall scheme, not simply whether it should receive federal funding.
Certainly it is fair to question the way Amtrak is run now. Congressmen from all over the country, liberal and conservative, urban and rural, fight not only to keep Amtrak going but also to make sure their constituents get a piece of the pie. It is the epitome of pork barrel. Imagine a federal effort to keep a National Stagecoach Association going when the railroads came along. What is needed is not the false either-or of “keep funding delusional national rail service” vs. “cut the funding entirely,” but a sensible way to restructure Amtrak so it’s a logical part of a national transportation policy.
Such a way, ironically, is suggested by high-speed-rail advocates, notes Fort Wayne City Councilman Tom Hayhurst, another Indiana High Speed Rail Association board member: “One concept is that the federal government builds the tracks, with the actual rail service being provided by competitive vendors.” That’s not unlike the way the government already handles its involvement with air travel.
The danger, as high-speed-rail advocates see it, is that such considerations will get lost in the battle over Amtrak’s current status. Even the seed money for high-speed rail, to be sought this year, could disappear as Congress battles with the president on keeping the present system going. On the other hand, says Geoff Paddock, director of Headwaters Park and a member of the Northeast Indiana Regional Council, the controversy “could stir up a lot of passion. There are a lot of voices out here who see high-speed rail as the future, who realize what an impact this could have on our economy.”
No one has been able to board a passenger train in Fort Wayne since 1990, but a lot of people remember when they could and would like to again. Paddock may be on to something.