The Providence Journal
August 9, 2001

Stop starving Amtrak

The federal government continues to impose restrictions and demands on
Amtrak that Washington does not apply to other transportation. This is
unfair and foolish. With ever-greater highway and airport congestion, and
increasing concerns about pollution, we should be building up train service,
not tearing it down.

Federal funding for passenger trains is a joke: $361 million for Amtrak, $33
billion for highways and $14 billion for airports in this fiscal year. And
that figure doesn't include many billions in state and local funds for
highways and airports. No wonder Amtrak can't compete. The government
doesn't seem to want it to.

The treatment of Amtrak is very bad public policy, and gets worse and worse
as American gets more and more congested.

Thus, we strongly support the central concept of legislation in Congress to
let Amtrak raise $12 billion over 10 years for high-speed-rail corridors
around the nation. The government would give tax credits to bondholders,
relieving Amtrak of the burden of paying interest.

Considering that train service is intrinsically far less expensive to
subsidize than are airports and highways, this is only reasonable. And
building high-speed lines would draw many more passengers than current,
slower service (except, to some degree, for some of the new Acela trains in
the Northeast Corridor).

There are, it is true, some problems with this legislation. Because of the
inevitable role of pork-barrel politics, not more than $3 billion could be
spent upgrading the one existing (semi-) high-speed corridor, between
Washington and Boston, and not more than $3 billion in any individual state.
This flies in the face of the need to concentrate Amtrak resources in
densely populated areas where train service can do the most good.

On the other hand, political realities may demand that the money be spead
out more inefficiently. C'est la politique. Southern and Western solons go
along with such minuscule funding as Amtrak gets in large part because of
bribes in the form of train service to lightly populated places. Sadly, such
horse-trading is a price of democracy.

But Amtrak's enemies are still trying to eliminate even its laughably
inadequate subsidies. Every year, they look more absurdly small considering
the service's growing potential, especially in the crowded urban corridors
in the Northeast, California, the Midwest and South Florida. If true
European-style high-speed rail were to be introduced in all these places,
the country would benefit enormously, economically and environmentally.

Indeed, we will probably soon have little choice but to dramatically expand
Amtrak service, especially in the Northeast. Airport and highway congestion
are already often horrific.

The central problem in providing support for Amtrak has been the ridiculous
assertion that it must be run as a for-profit business while highways and
airports don't have to be. And yet passenger trains are needed public
infrastructure whose existence helps the private sector to prosper. They are
part of the "general welfare."

It is unfair and unwise to impose corporate-style profit requirements on
such an entity when we don't do it for airports and highways -- whose
environmental and economic drawbacks are becoming increasingly visible in
many places.

Amtrak's function is not to make money. It is to serve the public. The same
foolishness has been applied to mail service. The U.S. Postal Service should
be forced to run efficiently. But serving the public, not making a profit,
should be the goal. The idea is to provide a public service that lets
institutions and individuals in the private sector flourish.

There may or may not come a day when it is economically feasible for Amtrak
to be broken up into a group of regulated, inter-connected -- and
profitable -- private railroad companies. But meanwhile, Washington
officials must keep before them the main mission of rail passenger
service -- to be a crucial part of our transportation mix.


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