August 18th, 2008 · No Comments

Not only did Amtrak not get it’s multi-year operations money, it is still waiting on 2009 operating subsidies, and a separate stand-alone appropriation to upgrade equipment to maximize the opportunity in front of it.

Some of that equipment will need serious refurbishing that can cost $1 million per rail car using 30-year-old shells of old food cars.

On the bright side, Kummant says the system does enjoy strong bipartisan support for annual increases in funding, and recent news coverage about Amtrak suggests that Congress is warming to this eco-friendly mode of travel.

Public policymakers aside, do Americans want more trains?

Grassroots train advocacy groups, like the National Association of Railroad Passengers and SaveAmtrak.org, suggest they do.

Rick Harnish, executive director of the Midwest High Speed Rail Association (MHSRA), says they absolutely do.

“Everywhere that we’ve invested in high-quality train service, people have ridden it in high numbers, so this is nothing new,” he says, explaining that public support encompasses intra-city commuter rail and long-haul passenger service.

While that’s always been the case, he says, what’s changed dramatically is that “we’re getting to a point where we can’t afford to do everything by car. So people are making that choice (to use trains) more frequently.”

Former Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis, backs Harnish’s view. Dukakis, who served on the Amtrak board, recently reported an enthusiastic round of applause for a short spiel he gave in Kansas about high speed rail. “There isn’t a part of the country that doesn’t want more rail,” he told the Boston Globe in July. Dukakis estimated in that interview that an initial boost of $3 billion could help bring Amtrak up to par performance, which is about what the U.S. is spending in Iraq in a week.

In Chicago, a city that could be connected to several other big hubs within three hours by high-speed rail, Harnish’s non-profit has been advocating for such a service for more than a decade. The MHSRA believes that high speed rail (trains traveling faster than cars, and up to 150 mph) would make train trips between cities competitive with air travel and put them out in front of car travel, time wise. On a high speed train, a person could travel from Chicago to Minneapolis, or Chicago to Pittsburgh, in three hours, which is a “game changer,” says Harnish.

These high-speed lines could be part of a full “grid-and-gateway network” of trains that brings together short-, medium- and long-distance trains to connect the entire country, from large cities to small hamlets, just like the passenger trains of days of yore – a vision that differs in scope from Kummant’s plan to focus on the 100- to 400-mile corridors connecting major cities.

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