Amtrak
Well, Amtrak is back in the news again, which gives me the opportunity
to put my two cents in regarding our national rail system.
Amtrak has been set up to fail for quite some time, now. It is the only
form of transportation in this country which is called a failure because
it can't pay for its own infrastructure. Every other form of
transportation in this country has its infrastructure subsidized by
federal, state, and/or local governments. C'mon, kids! Let's see how:
Cars and buses drive on roads. Roads are built by federal, state, and
local governments. They are maintained by state, and local
governments. They are neither built nor maintained by Ford, GM, Daimler
Chrysler, Toyota, Honda, VW, BMW, Mitsubishi, Daewoo, Kia, etc. Or
Greyhound, Yellow Cab, trucking companies, etc., for that matter.
Planes take off and land at airports. As far as I can tell, airports
are built and maintained with funding from local governments who feel
that an airport will help their economic prospects. (Am I wrong?
Please let me know.) Furthermore, pilots are not generally trained to
fly by the airlines, but by the Air Force. Airports are not built, and
pilots are not trained by American, US Air, Northwest, Delta,
Continental, etc.
Yet Amtrak is expected to be self-sustaining while being responsible for
its own tracks and stations and operators. It's simply not going to
happen, just as it wouldn't happen if we made GM responsible for
maintaining our roads. They would do the same thing that the government
is telling Amtrak to do: maintain highly traveled routes in urban and
suburban areas, and decomission little-traveled rural routes across
country.
After 9-11, I thought that funding for Amtrak would finally be freed up
because, well, you can't fly a train into the side of a skyscraper.
Besides, people were afraid to fly, and train travel doesn't use as much
Middle East fossil fuel as plane travel does. It seemed like a sane,
economically sound idea whose time had finally come.
Well, we all know how well sane, economically sound ideas have fared
over the past 22 or so months.
8:05:36 AM 
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