Congress: Take a look at
California.
Reprinted from the March 2002 issue of Railway Age,
http://www.railwayage.com/A/xpov.html
By Eugene K. Skoropowski
The new session of Congress is presented with perhaps the best
opportunity to make intercity rail passenger service a
more-meaningful component of our nation's transportation system.
While the tragic events of Sept. 11 clearly
show the need for what the military calls "adequate
redundancy" in our transport system for national security,
the reasons to preserve, expand, and modernize the nation's
underfunded passenger rail system are far more basic.
A reasonable person would conclude that if the airlines can walk
into Congress and get $15 billion overnight, plus whatever is
spent on airports and the air traffic control system, then surely
a billion or two annually will not bankrupt our government. Such
an investment may just prove what we have found out in
California: Americans like passenger trains and want more
of them.
We have had decades of massive public subsidies to the nation's
highway system, and similar largess to the aviation industry and
to our waterways and ports. These funds have been provided for
"the public good." At the same time, our private
railroads opted out of the passenger business largely because the
aging passenger system needed massive capital investment and the
railroads could not raise the needed capital in the private
marketplace, due to the competition from the government in its
"free" capitalization of every other mode of transport.
In May 1971, two-thirds of the nation's passenger trains went
away. What was left was a skeletal system, consisting of a fleet
of aged, mostly unreliable passenger cars, dilapidated stations,
and, in many instances, deteriorated track. This cast-off
collection was transferred to Amtrak to "save"
passenger service. Somehow, the concept that this new creation of
Congress could become profitable was engendered, even though no
other form of transport could exist without massive public
subsidies.
The real miracle is that the nation's rail passenger system has
survived at all, and in far better shape than it was in 1971. No
business, private or public, can survive without investment of
adequate capital funding and provision of an operating revenue
stream. While continuing to pour billions of public dollars into
alternate modes, only the nation's rail passenger
system was measured by a standard of profitability-a standard
that never entered into the vocabulary of the requirements for
any other mode.
Government provides fire, police, library, and other services to
Americans for the public good, and no one requires them to be
profitable. So exactly what relevance does profitability have to
provision of a national transport service? Amtrak was formed to
provide the American public with a service, and should be
measured by its accomplishment of that mission and funded
accordingly.
That's how the state government in California regards passenger
rail, and that's why Caltrans (the state DOT) has moved so
aggressively to develop and fund new services-with freight
railroads like Union Pacific as partners. Congress has a golden
opportunity to right the past wrongs regarding our national
passenger rail system. If it wants a successful example of how
things can be done, it should give California and its
public/private partnerships a serious look. Critics will bewail
the $25 billion Amtrak has been provided since 1971. They
overlook what Amtrak has accomplished in rebuilding the old
system, and what subsidies are given other transport modes.
All things considered, looking at the national passenger rail
system and the new, modern trains that replaced all the rolling
junk of 1971, Amtrak has done a remarkable job during the past 31
years. Much more can and should be done to expand services and
increase train frequencies and speeds. Some of this can be done
in cooperation with the freight railroads, as has
been done on the San Jose-Oakland/San Francisco Capitol Corridor
with UP. Some of this will call for new publicly-owned tracks to
permit time-competitive speeds in corridors like San
Francisco-Los Angeles. All this will take capital and an
adequate, ongoing stream of operating funds.
Legislation for funding intercity passenger rail with much-needed
capital investment has been introduced in the last two sessions
of Congress by Republican and Democratic leaders in both the
House and Senate. Various bills have had numerous co-sponsors,
yet in the last two sessions of Congress, those bills died or
were tabled.
With Amtrak's future hanging in the balance, this is the time for
Congressional action-not inaction. What as an industry can we do
to insure that Congress doesn't once again push aside legislation
affecting passenger rail?
Eugene K. Skoropowski is Managing
Director of the Capitol Corridor Joint Powers Authority, which
operates the Capitol Corridor, a state-supported contract service
with Amtrak, in cooperation with Union Pacific.
