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As a regular passenger, I whole-heartedly support Amtrak. When I was a college student in a city with no Amtrak service (Decatur, Illinois), I lamented the fact that I could not walk to the old Waba***erminal downtown and catch the Cannonball or one of the other classic streamliners which zoomed right through the middle of Millikin University's campus in the 1960's. Instead of simply lementing it, I paid friends with cars to drive me to Springfield, Lincoln, or Bloomington to catch one of the three trains to Chicago whenever I went to visit my parents or to Alton to visit my girlfriend. As a result, I have seen the direct result of the half-baked attempt the Bushies and Blagojevich (Illinois' illustrious Democratic governor) have made to turn the Union Pacific single-track between Joliet and Springfield into a high-speed line for Talgo trains. The brand-new signal system got shorted out in a rainstorm and delayed the Texas Eagle I was riding for an hour. The only diamonds in Chicagoland not protected by an interlocking forces all trains to stop then proceed regardless of cross traffic. What about the talgo trains? They have yet to be ordered, let alone delivered. I can understand the situation. The freighters and the grangers hate Amtrak. Amtrak hasn't the funding to buy the equipment necessary to provide the new service. Washington doesn't care about trains that don't originate or terminate in their lovely city of ostentatious architecture and abundant pork barrel money. Regardless of the fees Amtrak pays to other railroads for paths on their mainlines, the railroads do not like having to deal with trains that require top priority, require higher standards for maintenance of way, and wear down their rails because of the ever-higher speeds Amtrak passengers desire. This is merely the dream of one young and feisty railfan who has spent too much time riding the fastest trains on earth, but please bear with me. Amtrak is flawed. Everybody from Bu***o Blagojevich to David Gunn know that Amtrak cannot continue to function as a viable alternative to road and air travel in its current form. The freight railroads and the Government grudgingly support Amtrak because it's "The devil they know." Killing Amtrak would cause political, economic, and social chaos in Washington and every one of the 500 plus Amtrak communities in the country. Washington would have to answer to Mayor Daley, Mayor Bloomberg, and the respective mayors of every other major city where Amtrak is a major source of employment. High speed rail will not solve the problem. High speed rail means the Freighters and Grangers must still sell priority routing to Amtrak. High speed rail means corners can be cut in infrastructure development. If I remember correctly, Amtrak's flagship Acela-Express trainsets only have clearance to bury the speedometer needle over less than 40 miles of its route. The rest of the time, it runs little faster than the old metroliner trains from the 1960's. High speed rail requires the construction of high speed lines or the upgrade of existing routes to high speed standards, both of which cost about the same as modern Interstate construction. High speed rail means running no faster than 79 miles per hour in large cities because of heavy population and pounding diamonds with other tracks. The solution I see as the most viable is a multiphase route-for-route replacement of existing Amtrak routes with Transrapid Maglev trains. I cannot say for sure, but I am fairly confident that a railroad would gladly allow the construction of elevated Maglev guideway on air rights over their mainlines in order to kiss Amtrak trains good-bye forever. If not, Dwight Eisenhower conveniently left wide green belts between the two sides of interstate highways that would do a great job of providing an already-federally-owned strip of land on which elevated maglev guideways could be built. The twists and turns of interstates are not a problem for maglev trains which can handle 10 % grades and tighter turns than standard railroads while maintaining a 300 mph speed. The fact that the green belt running down the middle of interstates is already federal property means that the acquisition of right-of-way is cheap and politically streamlined. The fact that building maglev guideways over existing railroad rights-of-way means that the route is already flatter and straighter than necessary for maglev trains means a smooth ride for passengers. For the PR guys, it's a quick sell. I have often looked out the window of the Texas Eagle and watched the train race the traffic on Interstate 55...and lose. Nothing advertises fast trains better than getting buzzed by one while driving on a parallel road. Furthermore, maglev solves many of the other problems lagging in the shadow of Acela's success. Maglev does not touch its guideway. Maglev trains cause the same amount of wear on the guideway at 300 miles per hour as they do at 20...none. High speed trains pound their rails to death, and the problem only gets worse as the speed limits are increased. Maglev has no wheels. Wheels were the cause of some serious accidents in Germany concerning their flagship ICE trains. Maglev has no Yaw Dampers. Yaw dampers were a major safety issue for Acela recently. Maglev does not use existing infrastructure. Although this causes the initial cost of construction to be higher, the end result is an uninterrupted network of maglev guideways, free of interlockings, bottlenecks, and competing freight traffic. No corners can be cut when building it. Replacing one Amtrak route at a time with Maglev will allow Washington to replace Amtrak with a system that is faster, more reliable, cheaper to maintain, and attracts more passengers. Due to the distances involved in the US, the high speed Maglev can attain makes it the only viable competition with airline traffic. With 300-mph top speeds, one-night transcontinental service is possible with real beds and real tables for dinner and breakfast. For regional travel, Maglev can compete directly with air travel times and give airlines the opportunity to focus on routes that only they can do...transoceanic flights and daytime transcontinental service. For the economists, consider how many jobs were created by the construction of the Interstate system. Consider the amount of economic stimulation the interstates caused. Every transportation system in the United States is clogged. The economy is suffering a stroke and a heart attack at the same time. The economy of this great country improves every time America has invested in a new transportation system from the Erie Canal to the first transcontinental railroad to the Interstate system to the air traffic control system. Building a nationwide maglev transit system will increase capacity on the freighters and grangers. It will necessitate the construction of domestic factories to produce guideway sections, trainsets, and support equipment. New jobs will be created nationwide, including skilled labor, ticket agents, train attendants, traffic controllers et cetra. Now that I have spent a fair amount of time on my soap box, I will say again that I support Amtrak. I support Amtrak because the plans I just outlined above are unlikely to materialize in the current political climate. I support Amtrak because it's all we have until a better alternative (maglev) comes to fruition. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a train to catch.
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