Funding for what, exactly?

While we we’re writing about scheduled railroading, a group of United States senators got together to push for Amtrak funding. The headlines would make you believe that they will be the benevolent saviors of Amtrak in the face of Trump budget cuts, but there’s another story here.

Before telling you this story, let me make it clear that I have always hoped to see Amtrak survive as a comprehensive national passenger rail service. Since its inception over 40 years ago, it has never been that.

By choosing to preserve multi-regional passenger rail service in the Northeast, at the expense of many other routes and services, Amtrak made itself the political darling of the most densely populated parts of America. California, after a few false starts, learned to build on that bias toward high population density and establish Amtrak as a California service, if not a comprehensive one.

It’s no accident that the more densely populated areas lean left, politically speaking. The means and methods of governing dense cities are much more a part of the socialist bag of tricks than of the America First, conservative, or even middle-of-the-road variety.

I’ve never been able to reconcile, for my own political viewpoint, why political conservatives have talked of trying to kill Amtrak at every opportunity, only to let it continue on life support (or less) all these years. They know as well as I do that a robust national passenger rail network could energize rural America in ways far more beneficial than the initial construction of the Interstate Highway system ever was.

Unlike the decentralization of myriad central business districts caused by the Interstates, passenger rail stations have always been central to established municipalities and conducive to location of new businesses near them.

Meanwhile, back to the group of senators. They are as follows: Bob Mendez and Cory Booker (both D-NJ), Charles Schumer (D-NY).

Those media outlets that have carried the story haven’t hidden the fact that these are East Coast senators from densely populated districts served by Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor. The coverage has downplayed the fact that these senators are not likely to be interested in Amtrak’s long-distance routes, or even in California’s routes. Their venues rely heavily on the fact that Amtrak owns and maintains much of the Corridor used by local New York and New Jersey transportation districts.

Were Amtrak to close up shop, the impacted state agencies would likely have to buy the tracks (a big capital expense) and maintain them (a big budget item) just so their transit districts could continue to function without enormous fare increases and/or loss of service. Not to mention, but I am, the Northeast Corridor is rife with long-ignored aging infrastructure of the kind that makes insurance underwriters seek mammoth premium increases.

Chicago, another bastion of liberal policy, would fare much better, since Metra, Chicago’s commuter agency, does not use any tracks owned by Amtrak, with the small exception of tracks within Chicago Union Station, an Amtrak owned facility.

What are the alternatives?

The first and most obvious is to defund Amtrak, cut all the way to the bone, and let those poor bastards on the East Coast form a new railroad out of the Northeast Corridor and figure out how to finance it and run it.

Although almost as drastic, a separation of the Northeast from Long-Distance may be better used as a survival tool to help Long-Distance remain viable. There’s a lot of political will out there in the hinterlands, and many who would like to see long-distance routes controlled by the majority of the service area, not by the endpoints.

Another alternative would be to convince the rest of the Senate and House to get off their no-subsidies-for-Amtrak high horse and design a comprehensive transportation plan, including funding for Amtrak, as I suggested in my second paragraph. It is just as likely to happen as Chicago is to vote for a Republican mayor in the next election. The Cubs are more likely to win two World Series in a row.

Any major restructuring of long-distance passenger rail is going to mean long, hard negotiations with the freight railroads. It is largely believed that Amtrak enabling legislation would no longer bind the freight railroads if Amtrak shuts down, and the freight railroads are in much better financial shape, and more politically powerful, than they were in 1970. So, a third alternative would be to shrink Amtrak to only the Northeast, or, at most, include California and Midwest regionals (three disconnected segments), and start a whole new railroad, or regional groups, for long distance, railroads that would buy the right to use track in a competitive marketplace that would include short lines and regional freighters who would like to bring their track up to Amtrak standards.

Next? Pets on a train…again

©2017 – C. A. Turek – mistertrains@gmail.com

(Charles A. Turek is a writer and novelist based in Albuquerque, NM. After four decades working in areas of the insurance industry related to transportation, he now writes on all aspects of American railroading. Charles is a political conservative but believes in public funding of passenger rail as a part of the federal government’s constitutionally conservative obligation to provide for defense and public infrastructure so that private enterprise may flourish.)