Infrastructure finance authority and Great Lakes Basin RR...again.

I have published several posts on the subject of the Great Lakes Basin Railroad (GLB), so, before I get into today’s subject, I want to note that UPS, one of the world’s premiere package delivery systems, has now thrown its support behind GLB’s concept of a freight railroad bypass around Chicago.

The situation is fluid. Immediately after UPS signified its support, the Surface Transportation Board (STB) decided there were too many unanswered questions, among them exactly how many railroads oppose the project and details on who is financing the deal. The STB has given GLB until June 22 to correct these “deficiencies” in its application. GLB will fight providing its list of investors. Things will drag on.

Moving on to today’s main subject.

Last week, Senators Mark Warner (D-Va.) and Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) introduced a bill that would establish an infrastructure finance authority to assist state and local governments in the leveraging of private investments for infrastructure. It’s called the BRIDGE (Building and Renewing Infrastructure for Development and Growth in Employment) Act.

Despite the (intentionally) cheesy acronym, I’m in favor of this kind of federal intervention for several reasons. For one thing, I’m not certain that Congress, the FRA, the FTA, and the other A’s that have fingers in railroad infrastructure will ever agree on enough money to bring our passenger railroad systems into a state of good repair. On the other hand, this bill optimistically seeks to draw out $300 billion in private investments with $10 billion in government seed money.

As long as the feds limit their further intervention in the process to approving well-planned state and local projects the have lined up legitimate investors with no political power issues, this kind of kick in the right direction for local governments bodes well for the concept of transit oriented development (TOD) and the spirit of altruism-tempered self-interest that built America’s infrastructure during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Problems? Well, for one thing, this may not help Amtrak at all. Some of Amtrak’s owned infrastructure is within the purview of state or local government to contribute funding, and Amtrak is not averse to private investment, at least not on paper. Some of Amtrak’s state-run routes might benefit, again because the bill, as written, is assistance for state and local governments.

I’ve seen reports indicating that the Trump administration wants to handle virtually all infrastructure improvements similarly, even those needed for Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor. As much as it seems politically conservative to put the power to control infrastructure back with the states, I don’t think this does a lot to create a coherent transportation policy for the nation as a whole.

Just as in making individual states responsible for their own little parts of the air traffic system (different from privatizing the system), there’s no logic in making individual states responsible for their own little parts of a national passenger rail network. What will happen is that the Northeast Corridor and other state-funded corridor trains may continue (because they must) and long-distance interstate passenger rail routes will disappear.

The meager funding that Amtrak has always received from Congress has been just enough to keep it going all these years, but never enough to improve things significantly. Amtrak officials have told the lie that the Northeast Corridor is profitable for so long that just about everybody in DC believes it, so that funding will continue to be doled out by Congress, northeastern states will get a pass, and everybody else will have to figure out how to get from State #1, point A, to State #2, point B, on the increasingly decrepit Interstate Highway system or the increasingly user-unfriendly air transport system.

Privatization anyone?

On the other hand, maybe the BRIDGE needs to be built higher. An infrastructure finance authority for virtually all infrastructure, federally backed and adept at leveraging private funds for development, just could be the way to get us out of this Transportation Hell created by a do-nothing Congress and alternate-reality spewing transportation officials. I sure hope so.

©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.)