January 17th, 2007 at 2:02 pm
The Washington Post reports that legislation sponsored by Senators Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) and Trent Lott (R-MS) has been introduced that would give Amtrak $3.2 billion over six years.
(Include the standard constitutionality argument here. 
)
As a frequent traveler though, I question the effectiveness of long-distance passenger rail service. There are reasons this service isn’t as profitable as freight rail, and we should let the market work itself out here.
On Amtrak.com, I found that Columbus, OH, doesn’t seem to have a station. Cincinnati is as close as I can get. So after I drive to Cincinnati (rental car?) to catch a train to Houston, I find that a route from Cincinnati to Chicago to Longview, TX, to Houston takes about 23 hours. Continental or Southwest gets me to Houston from Columbus in 2½ hours on a direct flight.
Apples and oranges, one might say. Fine. Using a very common route, say, Chicago to Denver, the direct train route is 18 hours. The fare is $92 one-way as of today. United takes 2½ hours to get there for $245 tomorrow. That fare gets cheaper with 3 weeks notice or more. Greyhound is another competitor, completing the journey in 23 hours, 39 minutes for for $114. That’s a lot of snacks to pack if you take the bus.
Common sense (and today’s results) tells us that rail is more competitive over shorter distances and shorter travel times. Rail is cheaper if it doesn’t have to provide meals and can pack more people in cars by letting them stand and sit in double-decker cars like on Chicago’s “El”. One doesn’t have to get to a train station two hours ahead of time and wait another half-hour getting luggage for one’s daily business commute.
Amtrak needs to go private. It needs to cut the long and unprofitable routes. If people are still riding the rails because of the nostalgia value, Amtrak can raise rates. If it owns lines, it should rent the lines out to freight companies. There are some signs that it is doing this already, but this $3.2 billion of taxpayer expense won’t incentivize Amtrak to get the job done.
January 18th, 2007 at 1:03 pm
Yes, trains should be privatized, first of all. That said, I really wish this country had a better rail system. While in Europe, my husband and I could never have gotten to all the places we did without a rail system. I was able to visit Munich, Cologne and Salzburg easily and relatively inexpensively. Not to mention our college group used trains to get to most of our “field trip” sites, and to travel from Berlin to Hamburg to Vienna, the places we “lived” in.
Ironically, the several times we visited my husband while he was on a consulting gig in Chicago, my daughters and I never used the rails once. For one thing, we lived in a suburb outside of Cook County, but close to my husband’s place of employ. Rail service did not go out that far. Secondly, the rail system into Chicago is made for business people, and priced accordingly. For my daughters and I to travel into and out of Chicago for one day was more expensive than driving in and paying parking, plus gas, wear and tear on car, etc. Lastly, the bus systems didn’t seem to go close enough to where we wanted to be, like the Museum of Science and Industry. Hiking two blocks in Chicago in the winter with two little kids would have been wretched.