America is waiting for faster trains

By John Robert Smith, 10/13/2001

AMONG THE MANY lessons of Sept. 11, it is clearer now more than ever that
the United States must have safe, viable transportation options for its
people. Those who suggest that rail makes sense in only a few regions and
that the Amtrak railway system should be broken into many places are wrong.

While Amtrak has worked hard to become a strong third leg of a balanced
transportation system, it isn't easy when it must operate without
predictable levels of federal investment in infrastructure and must also
balance the conflicting congressional mandates of achieving operational
self-sufficiency while serving a national system.

One of the core principles shared by the majority of leaders in this debate
is the maintenance of a truly national - as opposed to just regional -
transportation system. Indeed, the High-Speed Rail Investment Act has been
endorsed by 57 senators, 184 members of the House of Representatives, the
National Governors Association, the US Conference of Mayors, and dozens of
business and community groups precisely because passenger rail service is in
the national interest.

The Senate minority leader, Trent Lott, has been a staunch supporter of a
national passenger rail system because it is wise transportation policy, not
a political ploy.

For more than a decade, Mississippians and taxpayers from other parts of the
country have sent their money off to modernize the Northeast Corridor. If
high-speed rail is only in the interest of the densely populated Northeast,
then it should be totally funded by that region.

But on the contrary, this is a national investment from which we all can
learn and profit, especially as similar high-speed corridors are built in
other parts of the country.

Critics are wrong when they say that high-speed rail makes sense in only a
few regions and that Amtrak is unwise to spend its ''limited political and
financial capital'' on 11 high-speed rail corridors around the country. In
fact, those projects are driven by the states themselves - 38 of them - and
Congress has made it clear that high-speed rail projects with strong local
backing are the ones that will get federal dollars.

Should the citizens of our largest cities be the only ones with access to
advanced rail transportation? Or, instead, as we connect metropolitan cities
by high-speed rail, shouldn't we also serve less populated regions along the
routes, just as our interstate highway system connects urban centers and
feeds into them from suburbs, small cities, and rural areas.

As for dividing Amtrak into pieces with different masters for infrastructure
and operations, this approach was tried by the British in recent years, and
it has brought only embarrassment, failure, and bankruptcy.

Internally, Amtrak separates operations from infrastructure and high-speed
rail development. But creating separate federal agencies to own
infrastructure and oversee train operations and spinning off large chunks of
the national network to the states would only create a bureaucratic snarl
and accomplish nothing.

Passenger rail needs a national trust fund or similar mechanism to ensure
adequate, predictable levels of federal investment in infrastructure.
Passenger rail is the only US transportation mode that faces annual
uncertainty about its infrastructure funding. And no other mode is required
to turn a profit.

Just as Mississippi and other states have a right to be included in the
development of well funded, national aviation and highway systems, so do we
have a right to be part of the national development of a high-speed rail
network.

Proposals to break up Amtrak and limit rail investment to urban centers are
an unwelcome distraction from the task of building a truly national,
integrated transportation system - including high-speed rail corridors.

John Robert Smith is the mayor of Meridian, Miss., and a member of the
Amtrak board of directors.

This story ran on page A15 of the Boston Globe on 10/13/2001.
© Copyright 2001 Globe Newspaper Company.
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