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Public Transportation, an Entitlement?
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I know this is going to sound cold, but . . . <br /> <br />I think they ought to let Amtrak die. I say this, having used Amtrak and having also worked for railroads. <br /> <br />Once this happens, the freight railroads should no longer be shielded from any future responsibility for providing their own passenger service. The reason for Amtrak in the first place was the money-losing service provided by the freights. <br /> <br />Amtrak is their insurance policy against having to coordinate passenger service, which is much more difficult than rerouting a freight car. It could be argued that the competition between railroads was what subsidized Amtrak in the first place: those RR's with political clout saw the opportunity to divest themselves at government expense, and to pressure their competitors. This was similar to the establishment of the ICC, originally manipulated as a device to hinder one's competition, as is the theory behind antitrust legislation as a device to hinder more efficient competitors. <br /> <br />All of this hides the fact that freight RR's are capital-intensive and that there has been traditionally strong aversion to federal govt. capitalization of freight ROWs. The geographical benefits certain RRs have disproportionate to others makes it unlikely that a separation of infrastructure and operations will ever happen. The specialization to understand the logistics of moving heavy freight is localized and cannot be easily standardized, especially in difficult terrain. <br /> <br />If it does, expect to see major liability issues: Amtrak currently pushes liability onto the freights. With no infrastructure of their own, the freights could push liabilty onto the gvt., causing massive infrastructure funding issues to arise. <br /> <br />The lesson of Amtrak's long-distance operations over the freight RRs is that even though they are political pork by some estimates, they are the shield that the RRs need, to avoid govt involvement in route-setting freight trains. This is already happening with hazmat shipments, e.g. CSX rerouting in DC. If you decrease efficiency, you ultimately decrease security, since rail cars sitting around or being redirected takes more money away from the profit margin necessary to support infrastructure reliability (including security). <br /> <br />The fact is, the RRs are undercapitalized. Amtrak is the distraction hiding the problem. If the RRs think they will squeeze efficiency gains with no long-distance Amtrak, they are probably right. But this merely forestalls the inevitable, and delays solving the problem of how to fund long-term improvements with slow-return market investments that disincline shareholders. <br /> <br />The RRs no longer have redundancy built-into their route miles. The expansion of double and triple-tracking mainlines is what is necessary to keep passenger rail afloat and ontime, if it hopes to get through bottlenecks with freight. This is the result of years of disproportionate spending between transportation modes. <br /> <br />The yearly Congressional Amtrak "patch" just hides the bigger problem. Even if people want to ride trains, they can't do it if they don't get there efficiently, and they can't because the RRs they run on (with exception to regional services) are undercapitalized. <br /> <br />The argument against Amtrak about large passenger subsidies fails to consider that the subsidies are due to inefficencies of piggybacking passenger service on top of the freight rail network, which can be traced to problems with the network itself that no amount of corporate consolidation will solve. <br /> <br />Without the govt paying the freight RRs to run passenger service as part of a rail-expansion program, there is no way to get the kind of capital needed to revitalize the freight RRs. <br /> <br />All of the hiring and supposed expansion that you see on the RRs is really the beginning of the meltdown. They can't move trains without crews and track, and are simply responding to the maximization of the network which was caused by downsizing it below critical levels. There may be more business for the RRs, only because trucking companies cannot keep up with turnover rates. As for actually growing rail business overall, I contend that you can't grow it without having passenger service. <br /> <br />The public exposure and handling requirements for having passengers is such that it reinforces necessary freight network redundancy. <br /> <br />Amtrak's demise puts more pressure on the freight RRs to operate passenger service over govt owned NEC if they hope to increase their chances for seeing any money elsewhere for capitalization like they got from the land-grants when they were first chartered. The private operators and state-cooperation agreements will have to be channeled and absorbed through the freight RRs. <br /> <br />Let Amtrak die, create an irrevocable crisis, prove rail supporters right, and then get the funding to where it needs to go: the freight railroads. As the population ages and the babyboomers retire, the need for regional highspeed mass-transit will increase dramatically. This is inevitable.
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