Realistic thinking, more citizen involvement needed to revamp American passenger trains

One of the conclusions I arrived at in my column reflecting on the political aftermath of the fatal derailment of Amtrak train 188 in Philadelphia last month is that both the lack of adequate and reliable funding for American intercity passenger trains and Amtrak's institutional problems seem to be two sides of the same illness, and that both problems continue to reinforce each other. Several articles, columns and blog posts written since have caused me to ruminate further on this idea.

David Z. Morris argues in Fortune Magazine: “A truly private Amtrak, tasked with providing returns to stockholders, would be legally obliged to abandon nonperforming rural and interstate lines. The real question, then, may not be whether Amtrak should be profitable, but whether America wants long-haul passenger rail at all.” If that truly is the question at the heart of the debate surrounding what America’s passenger train future should look like, and it may well be, then the consensus answer, at least since 1970, has been a tepid, almost silent “yes.” The federal government has provided just enough funding and policy support to maintain a bare-bones national passenger train network that serves most of the country with only one train a day in each direction — sometimes fewer even than that — but nevertheless connects coast to coast and border to border. 

In spite of repeated calls from among its ranks to stop subsidizing passenger trains by those who fail to acknowledge that every mode of transportation is subsidized, Congress has always stopped just short of voting to do away with the national passenger train network. Perhaps its members, and the few constituents who share their opinions with them, recognize that decimating the national network would not only make many Americans less mobile, but it would also harm part of our national character. Yet lawmakers, even those who have backed the status quo and higher levels of support, are shy about proclaiming this preservation as an achievement, and only very few have the courage to be honest about what it would cost for us to have a train network even half as robust and extensive as those that most in Europe and Asia enjoy. 

Is this merely a case of Americans wanting to have something without paying for it? Or is it Americans’ true consensus position that the level of intercity passenger train service that is currently available is sufficient? That it’s fine for Amtrak to continue to limp along as a merely sufficient national railroad plagued by institutional inertia, with a less-than-ideal negotiating position vis-a-vis its host railroads, unable to undertake a massive replacement and augmentation of its aging fleet? And is it truly Americans’ consensus that one quasi-governmental corporation should have distinct advantages over other companies that are capable of operating and maintaining intercity passenger train services if given the necessary institutional and financial support from state and federal governments? 

Perhaps Amtrak itself would benefit from having to compete with other operators for contracts to run various routes, as long as the funding were in place to keep the route operating regardless of circumstances. Too many who argue that Amtrak should be privatized operate under the fictional notion that privatizing passenger trains means they will no longer require subsidies. If we could all agree that the idea having passenger trains without paying for them is a fantasy, and that we should have passenger trains, then maybe we could have a productive discussion about competition within the industry and whether Amtrak should remain an advantaged monopoly operator. There are plenty of opportunities to give taxpayers more bang for their passenger rail buck, but the goal should never be to eliminate subsidies altogether — lest we also be willing to eliminate subsidies for highways and aviation.

Of course, the current arrangement may simply reflect the most that is politically possible given the comparative clout of the various interest groups involved and citizens’ limited engagement with their representatives on this issue given that infrastructure in general is not a sexy topic. My fellow Trains correspondent Fred Frailey suggests that only a crisis is capable of shaking Amtrak’s Etch-a-Sketch hard enough to erase residual resistance to change. American history includes a plethora of examples of sweeping, salutary policy change that was suddenly made possible after a calamity brought the issue to the fore. While I hope that we can forge a path towards the expansion and improvement of American passenger trains without a crisis, should one occur, leaders who can manage the crisis well and achieve positive outcomes from it will be sorely needed.

In the meantime, nothing will improve so long as the same industry insiders and gladiators from advocacy organizations continue to be the only voices in the room when Congress and state legislatures are debating transportation and rail policy. If each of us, as citizens who appreciate what railroads do for the country and want to see both passenger and freight rail succeed — regardless of which side of whatever philosophical fence you sit on — took the time to persistently make our desires known to those we elect, perhaps some of the cobwebs could be cleaned out and modern trains could finally assume their rightful place as a centerpiece of 21st-century American transportation.