How passenger rail was wounded, and how to fix it
The New York Times is a fine newspaper, but it has its blind spots. Its reporting on energy is often incomplete or downright wrong. The latter sin was not in evidence when it finally reported on the popularity of Amtrak. What’s frustrating is what the article left out or left unsaid, which makes it harder to achieve some results beyond our transportation system frozen in 1965 (and we had more trains then).
From the article:
Amtrak set records in May, both for the number of passengers it
carried and for ticket revenues — all the more remarkable because May
is not usually a strong travel month.
But the railroad, and its
suppliers, have shrunk so much, largely because of financial
constraints, that they would have difficulty growing quickly to meet
the demand.
And:
The problem is that rail has shriveled. The number of “passenger miles”
traveled on intercity rail has dropped by about two-thirds since 1960,
and the companies that build rail cars and locomotives have also
shrunk, making it hard to expand.
Only late in the story is a glancing reference made to Amtrak’s fate being tied to the whims of the federal government, and late late in the story the Times admits their boy crush President-elect McCain "was a staunch opponent of subsidies to Amtrak when he was chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee." Indeed he wants to abolish it.
Let’s fill in some of the blanks so Americans might have some options beyond expensive and congested driving, and airlines that treat passengers like cattle.
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