Wake up, GOP? Amtrak’s growing ridership signals demand for passenger rail
(Source: Tree Hugger)
I saw this article below on Tree Hugger and felt compelled to share with you all. See my commentary in the Editor’s Notes section below.
Growing Amtrak Ridership On A Collision Course With Political Surrealism
The Hill reports that “Amtrak had more riders in March than it has had in any March in its 40 years of existence, the company said Thursday. There were 137,000 more Amtrak riders this past month, the company said, which was the 17th straight month of increased ridership. That puts the company on track to break its annual ridership record, which was 28.7 million last year, Amtrak said.”
Note: By the term “political surrealism” I mean that the railroads which once united America are being used as a “wedge issue” to divide the US politically. Don’t tell me ideological opposition to Amtrak and high speed trains is justified because ‘we’re broke’ and passenger rail should be privately owned, exclusively.
Editor’s Notes: As a nation, especially in the post-World War II era, the United States has identified itself as a world leader in innovation and as a business-savvy nation. Even during the toughest of times, a class of creative entrepreneurs and political leaders somehow managed to find ways to help innovate and keep the economy rolling, eventually leading the country to gain the top spot among world’s economies. This American entrepreneurship always was rooted in one thing – a keen understanding of the market demands for a product or service and effectively finding a steady supply to meet that demand. Time and again this demand vs supply model was successfully applied in the market by many savvy innovators and managers, leading to the creation of many successful business houses and millionaires/billionaires across the country.
All of a sudden now things are looking different. The America at the start of the 21st Century America looks much different than the one in the decades before. Now the business community seems totally out of touch with the market demand and the political class is not far behind, blindly groping around without any clue of what the people really want. With a country of 300+ million that is growing every day and the price of gasoline shooting through http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/08/government-shutdown-2011_n_846525.htmlthe roof with every war (overt and covert) launched in a different part of the globe under the guise of spreading democracy, the country and the economic engines are grinding themselves to a halt. The driver of this economic engine has always been the transportation industry and this industry seems to be on a shakier footing than ever. The rail industry that once dominated the country is now virtually shut out in favor of the motorcars and the highways lobby. Aviation industry is doing a much better job getting people around faster but the airports and the sector’s infrastructure are starting to show signs of fatigue. 
And along comes this great opportunity, in form of investment in high speed rail, and our political leaders are completely blowing off a golden chance to resurrect the American dominance by completely caving to party-line politics. There have been way too many arguments made for and against building a high-speed passenger rail network so I’m not even going to attempt bringing them here. All I want to add here is that we have a golden opportunity to encourage the business community to come forward and invest in meeting this demand from consumers. These ridership numbers from Amtrak are no less of an indicator for a growing demand for a service; unfortunately the government does not have the money to pay for building a rail service that can cater to this demand. So why not encourage the private sector to get involved in providing that service. If it takes a little bit of hand holding/encouragement (read as subsidies and tax reliefs), why not do that? Let the likes of Virgin, JR East, etc come in and set up shop.. Let them build the high speed rail network.. Give them the contracts to develop the lines, as well as the track /train sets.. Let them figure out the economics.. All the political leadership, esp. the conservatives, needs to do is to work with the U.S.DOT and the White House and make it easy for the players to come in and play the field. A lot of other nations have successfully done this and why are we not trying something that we have taught everyone in the world? For a nation full of smart people I am not sure why it is taking us so long to understand the strategic benefits of investing in this form of transportation.
In simple terms, we have a lot riding on the rails and we cannot afford to squander this opportunity to build a new industry, especially when there is a growing demand. Looking back at the end of the last century, the US government did its best to encourage private sector participation in the creation and development of a brand new industry in the Silicon Valley – Software/IT Industry, which helped establish the country as the market leader in the technology sector and has since spawned many products and services. It is not a stretch to say many of the advances we have made in the field of computing and technology would not have been possible without this joint private/public sector participation. So, why not replicate the same in the transportation field and encourage the private sector to come in and create a robust industry. It is not impossible and it is not going to be easy either! But hey, it is any day better than squabbling to score political points and fighting wars in foreign countries.
So, let me conclude by saying this – we don’t just need a new form of transportation but some new, fresh, outside the box thinking and political will to go with it.
So, are you saying we AREN’T broke?!
Are you saying America CAN afford to spend hundreds of billions of dollars we have to borrow from China to build trains that would never carry more than one percent of personal travel?
That’s remarkable. …remarkably dumb!
John,
I’m not saying we are broke.. the whole world knows we are broke (and let’s not get into the political situations that led us to this point). I’m saying that we have to be strategic about our investments, not tactical. We build toll roads when the states and other involved jurisdictions cannot afford to invest in the construction and maintenance of the infrastructure with their investments. The private sector is invited to build, operate and transfer (with long term leases) such infrastructure and they get to keep a portion of the profits for doing so. Why are we not doing that when it comes to rail? We tend to think only the Government needs to spend the money on building the rail infrastructure. Why can we not allow the private consortia to build and operate these rail lines similar to those of the toll roads? I think the government should play the role of a facilitator rather than an investor (but given the current political climate, anything the government does is viewed with so much suspicion and negativity).
I disagree with your argument that trains would never carry more than one percent of personal travel, the reason for that is because we don’t have the infrastructure currently in place to carry more than 1%. When you build new rail lines and operate more trains in these corridors, you can definitely expect the price of train travel to drop, making it much more appealing to a riders taking trips, shorter to medium distances (anywhere from 200miles to 400 miles). Spain and China faced similar situations on some of their heavily congested corridors and after building the train lines they realized a huge gain in train ridership in these corridors, so much so that some of the aviation routes are slated for a closure or finding it difficult to stay profitable due to drop in ridership. Check this out: http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/generic/story_channel.jsp?channel=comm&id=news/avd/2011/04/01/10.xml . At home, a great example of this is taking place in the Amtrak’s North East Corridor (even with its pricey tickets) – often times many of the trips are completely sold out between NYC and DC (experienced this personally a couple of times). If we add more capacity and haul more passengers at a reduced price point, I can assure you that a lot of people will be happy to forego their cars and consider taking trains.
Looking back a few decades, I’m glad that Pres. Eisenhower did not hesitate to think big when he proposed building the Interstate Highway System after World War II. It was dire economic times back then and the nation was still on a shaky financial footing, which is very similar to what we are facing now (or probably worse). But he still went ahead because he knew it was the best thing for the nation and will eventually lead to economic prosperity in the decades that followed. He did not view that just as a tactical investment (thought it generated a lot of construction jobs by the thousands) but as a strategic investment that will fuel the nation’s trade and commerce by ferrying goods and people faster to destinations.
I’m convinced that strategic infrastructure investments decisions such as building the rail network cannot be made just from a short term economic point of view. I wish we saved our dollars poured into fighting wars and spent the money on building a robust infrastructure. If we wait to build our rail network until a time when our financially stable, it might be too late. The nation’s highways as well as the aviation infrastructure are becoming way too congested and often bursting at seams in certain corridors. Unless we act now, we will be bleeding billions of $$ in time wasted in traffic for a good long time (FYI – It is estimated that the nation lost $115 billion due to congestion during 2009. This article below should help you understand why it is important we save this money and invest in building other infrastructure that can relieve this congestion: http://mobility.tamu.edu/ums/media_information/press_release.stm).