Amtrak Funding

I just read an article that says that the House just passed a veto proof Amtrak subsidy bill, and that the Senate version is also veto proof. The White House says it will veto it anyway, because it doesn't hold Amtrak accountable for costs. Ok, fair enough. Amtrak should do everything in its power to minimize costs and be as efficient as possible, but let's look at the big picture here. We need to expand passenger rail service in this country. Gasoline is over $4 per gallon, and air travel is going to get very expensive due to fuel costs. It's time to bring back the trains. The problem is, Amtrak is expensive, and that's because I personally don't think that the subsidies are sufficient. If they were, Amtrak would be an affordable alternative to air travel. It's not. I would like to see Amtrak increase service, and would also like to see the states encourage and develop their own inter city and inter urban rail systems to feed into the Amtrak network.

I'm not sure how many passengers can fit in a typical rail car, but if you have 10 or 12 car trains, you can move a lot of people. With electric engines, that means a lot of people being moved without the accompanying exaust from the same amount of people driving their own cars. One of the things Amtrak needs to do, however is to make long distance travel affordable. Right now you can ride a coach seat for the duration of a cross country trip, or you can get a roomette that converts into a first class priced bedroom. Bring back the old fashioned sleeper car where the berths pull down and the seats become beds with privacy curtains for a reasonable additional cost above the price of a coach seat. The shower can be down the hall.

In addition, it's also time for the cities and the suburbs to get away from expanding bus oriented public transportation unless there is no other reasonable alternative, and bring back the street cars and inter urbans of days yore. All urban and suburban public transportation services in our major metropolitan areas need to run 24/7 too.

I can hear some of my conservative friends saying now: "Chip, you can't be serious. As a conservative you are supporting the expansion of publicly funded public transportation systems?" Yes I am. It just makes too much sense. Gasoline is getting to the point where transportation costs are affecting the economy. When costs become too expensive, businesses suffer from loss of business, people lose jobs, and people end up on unemployment, which costs the rest of us money. Worse yet, the working poor, who make low wages because they lack skills and education, find that it is not worth it to work. Transportation costs are too much of an overhead. Therefore, they stay home and collect welfare. It's cheaper. What we don't need is a society where we have more people on welfare. There are too many collecting welfare now.


No public transportation system, short distance or long distance, can be affordable and convenient without massive public funding. It's a no brainer. Here in the DC area we have a halfway decent system called Metro. It's clean, it's relatively safe, and it's confortable most of the time. It has it's problems though. It's not all that cheap, and it's not all that convenient, unless you are living in the city. Expansion of service is slow due to not enough funding for expansion. This needs to be addressed. Build the lines and then encourage economic development along the lines, rather than doing it the other way around with busses.

There was a time when you had inter urban rail systems and trolley cars in the cities and close lying suburbs. Many cities are bringing them back, and the economic growth in those cities is tremendous. Expansion of bus service does not bring the same level of economic development as expansion of rail based public transportation. San Diego and Portland, Oregon proved this. Why? Because, rail travel is fun, and bus travel, for the most part, isn't. While I have nothing against busses and believe that they serve a very useful purpose, the middle class people that live in the suburbs and commute into the cities for work, would love not having to drive if they go back into the city at night for entertainment. They like trains and trolleys. They are fun. Riding a bus with 75 people, many of whom are standing for an hour on your way to work is no fun. With a trolley or light rail, you can add additional cars as needed to alleviate crowding.

Now comes the $50,000 question. How do you fund this? The federal gasoline tax is 18.4 cents per gallon. The average state gasoline tax is 28.6 cents per gallon, and in some areas, there are also county and municipal taxes. With fuel hitting over $4 per gallon, it would be stupid to increase fuel taxes. Most of the interstate highway system in this country is free, with only a small portion being toll roads. increase the amount of the system that is toll operated. That will allow less tax money that is used for expansion and maintenance of the highway system to be used. That money that used to be used for highways should be put into a lock box and used only for funding public transportion systems. You give generous tax breaks to offset the cost of tolls to trucking companies, bus companies, and individuals who need vehicles as part of their line of work. In addition, the actual activity of paying a toll makes people aware of the cost of transportation, rather than just slapping a higher amount on the gas tax and then have them temporarily grumble as they drive out of the gas station and get onto the open road.

Finally, in the high density urban areas, having major league traffic jams at toll booths will encourage people to get out of their cars and take the trolley or train. If they are going to be that stubborn and insist on driving, let them stew in their juices while the rest of us go zipping by in a nice air conditioned light rail, trolley, or train at 70 MPH. We are not taking away their right to drive. If they want to, that's fine. They can deal with the traffic and pay the toll. It's called freedom of choice.

I applaud Congress and the Senate for finally doing something right this term. Up until now they have been batting 1000 in screw ups. Let's use our brains to develop a viable transportation infrastructure for the future to get us off of oil that is sold to our wonderful oil companies (yea I know, you liberals hate them, but I love them) at extortion prices that fund tin pot dictators and terrorists. It will also take the wind out of the financial sail of power hungry billionaire Socialist commodities speculators and hedge fund managers. These anti-American messianic Monopolistic Capitalist Marxists, as opposed to Free Market Capitalists, are hedging against the dollar and artificially driving the price of oil sky high for their benefit and our detriment. These high dollar folks are trying to collapse the US economy for their financial benefit and to panic the American people into electing a Socialist government this coming November.

Most importantly too, this will relieve some of the pressure on our oil companies who are running their refineries at full tilt capacity. It will give them some wiggle room as far as meeting our fuel needs, which will decrease their operating costs and increase their profits. Yea I know that's a bad word...oil company profits. If you do some research, you will find that billions of dollars of oil company profits are being poured back into finding new sources of oil and the development of alternative energy sources. Last year Chevron alone spent over $40 billion in research and development of alternative energy sources...much more than the federal government did.

Yes, bringing back the trains makes too much sense to this conserative.