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Flag Stops: A Time of Great Expectations
Monday, June 15, 2009
Congress figures out how to pay for better transportation, ample discussion of the future of American travel and urban geography, and why train travel actually does make sense. All that and more in this week’s roundup of reports, reactions and ruminations on passenger rail and transportation policy.
Chairman James Oberstar (D-WI) of the House Transportation & Infrastructure Committee is set to release his plan for this year’s much-anticipated transportation reauthorization bill on Wednesday. The question now is how, not if, federal surface transportation policy will veer from the status quo. One of the few most effective potential funding sources, however, has seemingly been taken off the table, but there are good reasons not to discount the idea of using the General Fund. Meanwhile, some members of Congress are finally starting to connect the dots between transportation and the climate bill.
We are still working to gain cosponsors for two bills that set good policy objectives, and you can help!
From Southern Pines, North Carolina’s daily newspaper, The Pilot, comes a sympathetic op-ed on Amtrak from the former editor of Passenger Train Journal, also a former Federal Railroad Administration economist. He explains why the national passenger railroad hasn’t been able to satisfy the expectations of politicians and the public, and why we now have an opportunity to get it right. “Expecting great things from Amtrak,” he aptly observes, “is like expecting a Triple Crown win from a horse that has not been fed,” but “with adequate and intelligent investment,” Amtrak can redeem itself.
Also advocating the aggressive pursuit of high-speed passenger & freight rail: the man who headed the Federal Railroad Administration under George H.W. Bush. Gilbert E. Carmichael calls the next-generation rail network “Interstate 2.0.” Steps Carmichael would like to see taken first include a 25-percent tax credit for private railroads to build new capacity, state construction or leasing of high-speed track on existing rights-of-way, and upgrading the electric grid in preparation for railroad electrification.
A detailed, behind-the-scenes report in yesterday’s New York Times Magazine underscores just how much the success of passenger rail in the near future, in the eyes of politicians and much of the traveling public, will ride on the degree to which the Golden State achieves its desired outcomes. The head of Alstom Transport told the autor, “If California is a success, ... I believe it will be the showcase [of next-generation passenger rail in the US]. But if it’s not working well? In the end it could be a failure for many years for this idea in the U.S. So it has to be very carefully done.” Our friends at TFA rightly point out that the author seems uninterested in incrementally improving existing service, essentially asking travelers (like himself) to bear with Amtrak as it is until CAHSR is complete.
A Wisconsin newspaper editorializes against the reestablishment of Amtrak service between Milwaukee and Green Bay. Their objections (and our responses):
If gas prices tripled and quadrupled, train travel might make sense. (Such increases are almost inevitable, so why not be prepared?)If traffic and congestion were stifling, train travel might make sense. (It is in many areas, and will only get worse at the rate we’re going.)
If we could easily get to wherever we wanted to go after getting off a train, train travel might make sense. (Which is why we are pushing for better transit connections within cities as well. Besides, most Amtrak stations have rental cars and taxi services on call.)
If trains were fast enough to overcome all their other inconveniences, train travel might make sense. (110 mph train operation is imminently achievable with existing infrastructure, considerably faster than one can safely and legally drive.)
If we somehow no longer cared about the freedom to drive wherever and whenever we wanted to, train travel might make sense. (Our definition of freedom includes the right to travel to more places without having to drive there or worry about parking. As the population ages, and as more people become interested in reducing their driving for a myriad of good reasons, more people are looking at transportation this way. There’s also the freedom to enjoy the trip and arrive recharged.)
Finally, once you average out all the expenses of owning, maintaining and insuring a car, plus the costs to society from traffic accidents and tailpipe emissions, it becomes difficult to say that driving is “easy, convenient and cheap.”
Richard Florida, a writer on economic geography warns that the current economic crisis means “the end of a whole way of life.” He argues that the United States’ ability to maintain its economic prowess in the years to come will depend on the ability of its urban megaregions to attract a “creative class” of professionals doing high value-added work that cannot be outsourced or done by machines, who “generate and transport ideas” instead of goods. “Positioning the economy to grow strongly in the coming decades will require not just fiscal stimulus or industrial reform; it will require a new kind of geography as well, a new spatial fix for the next chapter of American economic history.” This new geography will be built off of an efficient transportation system that will allow these megaregions to provide a high quality of life for large numbers of people. Building and operating the rail and transit networks that will drive the new economy will mean even more jobs to be had.
Today, we need to begin making smarter use of both our urban spaces and the suburban rings that surround them—packing in more people, more affordably, while at the same time improving their quality of life. That means liberal zoning and building codes within cities to allow more residential development, more mixed-use development in suburbs and cities alike, the in-filling of suburban cores near rail links, new investment in rail, and congestion pricing for travel on our roads.
One traffic-clogged American boomburg is looking towards a more livable future, staking its hopes for manageable growth on a soon-to-come subway line. On the other side of the Atlantic, new rail lines anchor French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s vision for a more integrated, sustainable Paris metro area.
George Will is at it again. This time, he is citing Amtrak’s red ink as a reason why the government would be a poor manager for bankrupt General Motors. Let’see. Amtrak’s federal grant last year was $1.3 billion, of which roughly 2/3 was capital investment and debt service. Last year, GM alone lost $31 billion—that’s the subsidy from shareholders. Then there’s the various government subsidies to auto makers and users, ongoing and emergency, and to highways and aviation. The total federal grant to Amtrak buys (on average) about 10 miles of highway. Furthermore, Will’s assertion that “Legislators treat [Amtrak] as their toy train set?” is an insult to those of us who actually use those “toy” trains to get to real places.
LCL: A Canadian economic development forum touts intercity rail as a solution to traffic woes and a “more civilized” way to travel, yet also “a tall political order;” despite some setbacks, the taxpayer money invested in Orlando-area commuter rail has not been wasted, as critics claim; city leaders in Dubuque, Iowa, get a can-do attitude towards Amtrak service to Chicago, which seems to be only a few years away; and Oklahoma hopes to get its piece of the Obama high-speed rail pie.
—Malcolm Kenton
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