In the wake of the Philadelphia Amtrak crash, my Zocalo co-panelist Tom Zoellner pens a Washington Post op-ed bemoaning the sorry state of Amtrak, due to federal policy:
So don’t blame Amtrak for the mess. Blame history and the law. If Americans really want anything more from their passenger trains besides a future of lumbering banality — besmirched by a few dozen derailments and a handful of passengers killed each year — the 1970 law must be amended to guarantee a healthy level of federal support, clearly prioritize passenger trains over freights, take posturing by Congress out of the equation, double-down on advertising and capturing new customers and lay down dedicated tracks outside the Northeast Corridor. The current Passenger Rail Reform and Investment Act of 2015 doles out what amounts to more starvation rations: a paltry $7 billion over the next four years, which means nothing is going to change. Amtrak needs to stop becoming a symbol of American incompetence and start leading the way in an era of fuel shortages and highway congestion.
He compares rail in the United States to rail in Europe:
Americans who vacation in Europe are frequently struck by the professionalism, convenience and reach of the continent’s rail network and ask a very good question: Why can’t we do that here? How can a nation whose industrial power was built by the railroads be left with a starving system that might embarrass former Soviet bloc countries?
The one big difference Tom doesn’t note though is that European cities are much closer together than many U.S. cities, outside of the northeast corridor of course. Given the vast size of this country, passenger rail has a hard time competing with airplanes for many trips. Rail is best suited to cities that are too close to fly but too far away to drive conveniently.
But Tom’s larger point is correct: you get what you pay for. And in the case of Amtrak, regardless of the cause of this accident, prioritizing freight over passengers and starving the train budget means we’re not getting enough.
So says Tom Zoellner, my co-panelist at last month’s Zocalo event on public transit in LA and author of the engaging book Train. In Tom’s San Francisco Chronicle op-ed, he notes that Amtrak actually does by law have priority over freight, but that it’s not enforced in practice:
Big carriers like BNSF, Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern are required under a 1973 law to make way for Amtrak trains. Yet the freights often treat Amtrak not like a visiting royal but a drunk party crasher. Dispatchers habitually make passenger trains wait for the “hotshot” trains carrying coal or liquid crude, even though the federal law says clearly: “Amtrak has preference over freight transportation in using a rail line, junction, or crossing.”
A potential Amtrak renaissance is buried in that one sentence — which should carry the force of law because it is the law — but is currently a meaningless blandishment because the Surface Transportation Board has no staff or incentive to crack down on Fortune 500 companies with political clout. Amtrak tried to get confrontational about this in 2012 when it complained about the Canadian National Railway, only to bring on a year and a half of talks that went nowhere. A more recent complaint against Norfolk Southern is also likely to end with murky outcomes and frustration.
He recommends that we tweet our congressional representatives with the hashtag #Amtrak2step. I will follow through. Amtrak is a low-cost alternative to more expensive forms of transportation, including high speed rail. Beefing up that service while we wait decades for better options should be a priority, and it starts with putting freight trains back in line as the law requires.
On Monday night’s Zocalo event, the topic of buses vs. rail came up. After I explained how the two modes of transit should work together to speed mobility, moderator and Train author Tom Zoellner commented (somewhat jokingly) that “no one ever wrote a song about a bus though.”
This is a subject Tom has some expertise in. In his book, he describes how the romantic nature of train technology has inspired many musicians. From Gershwin finding the beat to “Rhapsody in Blue” on a train to “Midnight Train to Georgia” (originally “Midnight Plane to Houston”!) to 2 Live Crew, trains figure repeatedly in our musical hits. There’s even a rock band called Train.
But after the event, Tom and I realized there are in fact some songs about buses, although admittedly they lack the romanticism of train-based tunes. In fact, most of them seem to be about tour buses. Examples include Turn The Page by Bob Seger, Philosopher’s Stone by Van Morrison (video above), and “Stay” by Jackson Browne. Bon Jovi famously called his tour bus the “steel horse I ride” in Wanted Dead or Alive.
Beside the tour bus genre, there’s Aretha Franklin’s “I Say a Little Prayer for You” and perhaps the all-time winner “Magic Bus” from The Who.
Are we missing any others? I would love to hear other nominees.
As a reminder, I’ll be speaking tonight at 7pm at the Zocalo forum in downtown Los Angeles. The free event will feature me and Tom Zoellner, author of Train. We’ll touch on the history of Los Angeles as a railtown, the development of Metro Rail and Metrolink, and the future of rail transit with high speed rail. Registration and more information can be found here.
Meanwhile, you can read some interesting advance commentary on the subject from some local transportation experts. Zocalo compiled their responses here. While I basically agree with everything that was written, I particularly liked Juan Matute’s sign-off:
I write this from a bus that travels from Santa Monica to Downtown Los Angeles in 35 minutes, quicker even than the future Expo Line. This serves as a reminder that getting our existing buses out of traffic is the quickest, most cost-effective means to bring high-quality transit to the greatest number of Angelenos.
Hope to see you tonight!
