(The following editorial was posted on the Providence, R.I., Journal website on April 30.)
Since the creation of the Interstate Commerce Commission, in 1887, the United States has never had a coherent national rail policy. The commission was created in response to abuses by the “robber barons” who started the private railroads. With increased powers granted in 1906, it over-regulated the rail industry, which led to widespread unprofitability from the Depression on.
Amtrak was created to run passenger service in 1971 as a favor to both the railroads and their workers: The carriers were losing $1 billion a year in the passenger business, and unions stood to lose thousands of positions as bankruptcies proliferated.
Amtrak inherited decades of encrusted rules, regulations, inefficiencies and artificial costs. It has had an equivocal federal mandate resulting from a three-decade tug-of-war between those philosophically opposed to government subsidies and those — cities, states, politicians, employees — defending the status quo. With political influence, the status quo has usually won. But keeping lightly patronized trains in service is not strategic thinking — something that really hasn’t happened since Lincoln authorized the transcontinental railroad, in 1863!
What we now have is something akin to what President Kennedy called Washington D.C: “a city of Northern charm and Southern efficiency.” By the National Rail Passenger Act of 1970, except in the Northeast Corridor, Amtrak runs passenger service on privately owned freight railroads obliged to cooperate as a condition of being excused from the passenger business themselves. Today, these carriers range from reasonably accomodating to downright obstructionist.
Guilford Rail Systems — an amalgam of the Boston & Maine, Maine Central, Lehigh Valley and other short lines — must be judged among the latter. It fought the restoration of Boston-Portland service every step of the way, and has been in federal court trying to prevent Amtrak from increasing the speed of the trains, which returned in 2002, to 79 mph. Currently the top speed is 59 mph, which, with stops, puts the average Boston-Portland speed at 41 mph.
Guilford recently lost its case against the higher speed in federal court, but is expected to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. It still may be years before the 114-mile route sees trains running as fast as they did in 1966, when the Boston & Maine discontinued service.
The larger issue, of course, is strategic thinking, which no one at a policy level in government seems capable of. The Clinton administration got rid of an Amtrak president (Thomas Downes) largely because he had proposed to discontinue the one train serving Arkansas. The Bush administration is firmly in the cut-subsidies camp. Without strategic thinking, 21st-Century passenger service in America is nowhere near what it could and should be.