(The following column by Brian O’Neill appeared on the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette website on December 11.)
PITTSBURGH, Pa. — If America borrows hundreds of billions of dollars to create jobs but doesn’t change its core problem — a transportation system that rests on the shaky premise of cheap, imported oil — we’ll continue to slip.
Because when this global recession ends, there will still be more than 2.4 billion people in India and China, and the striving youth of Asia will still want to live like Americans, which means they’ll be reaching for the car keys.
A betting man looking at the over/under on $4 gasoline in the next five years should bet the over, because offshore drilling won’t be cheap and alternative fuels won’t be ready.
That’s a long way of explaining why I was so eager to talk this week with the most important quasi-government official you never heard of, Joe Boardman, newly appointed interim president of Amtrak.
All these “shovel ready” construction projects to jump-start the economy will do nothing more than maintain the bridges and highways we have. Amtrak, meanwhile, quietly waits with the existing technology to move the most people with the least fuel.
Mr. Boardman sees an electrified American rail system, both for passengers and freight. The passenger side is well-established in the Northeast, and he’d like Amtrak to move south from Washington, D.C., and eventually electrify an East Coast line from Maine to Miami.
Next up would be the routes from Chicago to Washington and New York. You don’t have to be a geography major to know that Pittsburgh would be in that latter path.
Money will dictate how much of this happens, and when. Thus far, few in government appear noticeably electrified about this way of weaning America from foreign oil. Congress did pass a five-year, $13 billion bill in October to upgrade Amtrak, but that now represents a tiny fraction of the overall stimulus plan.
On the other hand, Vice President-elect Joe Biden may be America’s most famous rail passenger, and his son, Hunter Biden, is vice chairman of the Amtrak board, so there hasn’t been a more train-friendly administration in Amtrak’s 37-year history. Mr. Boardman should reach some prominent ears when he says, “I want to talk about a greener, safer, healthier and more connected rail service.”
Amtrak has boomed in the past six years as airlines have ditched their shorter flights and travelers have looked for cheap alternatives. Riders got on or off passenger trains nearly 5.8 million times in Pennsylvania in the past fiscal year, up about 11 percent from the year before. Though Pittsburgh sees only three trains a day, ridership here was up almost 19 percent, with nearly 143,000 passengers beginning or ending trips at the Downtown station in fiscal 2008.
The trains could carry more people if they had the cars. I had last spoken to Mr. Boardman in September, when he was still working the other side of the fence as the head of the Federal Railroad Administration. I asked him why he was holding back millions of dollars in maintenance money — Washington bureaucrats still spoke in terms of millions back then — when more than 60 rail cars were idled and awaiting repair.
Mr. Boardman said then he wanted to see a rail plan, which he now has. He has released that money and the cars are being rebuilt in Indiana and Delaware, five at a time. But with potentially more money in a stimulus bill, a more ambitious plan might be needed.
The reach of Amtrak service probably won’t change much in the next five years, Mr. Boardman said, but service should improve. If a state wants to buy a new train, for instance, the federal government stands ready to pay 80 percent of the cost. (The state, however, would have to pay any operating subsidies, which will be difficult to swallow given the straits nearly all state budgets are in.)
I asked about the Steel City Flyer, the new luxury bus that Pittsburgh entrepreneurs have launched to zip to Harrisburg and tie in with the high-speed and frequent Amtrak service between there and Philadelphia. Mr. Boardman had not only seen the story on the bus, he’d sent a note to all Amtrak board members saying these are projects they should encourage. Public investments that lead to private investment are the best kind.
He acknowledged loose talk, though no particularly serious talk, of the beleaguered Detroit auto industry getting work building trains. In the 1970s and ’80s, General Motors’ Electro-Motive Division followed a Swedish design and built electric, toaster-shaped locomotives. They remain the workhorses of Amtrak’s eastern routes after more than 3 million miles apiece.
Mr. Boardman wants every evaluation of existing service to include ways to use less energy.
Americans should want any stimulus plan to include projects that leave our country more prepared to withstand the energy shocks sure to come.