Amtrak: Dan Zukowski

Amtrak's Problem Solved

Amtrak now has the two most powerful lobbyists in Washington on its side: the newly-inaugurated president and vice president of the United States.

When I began this blog four years, to counter the Bush Administration's attempts to dismember the national passenger railroad, I started with the premise that "Amtrak has a communications problem." I pointed out that "there is no strong national voice speaking in support of Amtrak." Only a few small, underfunded rail enthusiast organizations and the stepchild attention of environmental groups carried the flag for passenger trains -- constituencies easily ignored by most conservative Republicans.

In Washington, legislation is written by lobbyists, and as a government-owned corporation, Amtrak had no access to K Street firms. Now, the sitting president and vice president not only chose to ride into town on an Amtrak train, but they both referred to Amtrak in their acceptance speeches at the Democratic convention. Pennsylvania Avenue is a better address than K Street.

Now, let's see if they walk the talk. The first sign is not encouraging: transportation as a whole is only mentioned in a single paragraph under "Additional Issues" on the new White House Web site.

Amtrak has never had any more than lukewarm support from the White House. Nixon agreed to create the National Railroad Passenger Corporation in order to placate the freight railroads, and it wasn't expected to survive more than a couple of years. President Carter tried to severely curtail long distance service, Reagan tried to kill Amtrak altogether, and Clinton merely left the life support machine plugged in. President Obama and Amtrak Joe both support the national passenger railroad, and see it as part of the solution to energy efficiency and congestion mitigation. But there will be strong competition for federal dollars, even in an era when the printing press is running 24/7.

The previous administration's attack on Amtrak seemed particularly short-sighted to me at a time of rising oil prices and global warming. Moreover, it would have been an egregious waste of a national asset. We're talking dollars here, folks.

Amtrak is a unique and undervalued asset. By law, it is the only passenger railroad which has statutory authority to operate over the nation's network of freight railroads. It owns locomotives, cars, stations and shops which have a monetary value so long as there is a railroad to run. To have simply shut it down would have been to tear up taxpayer dollars.

With two big supporters in the White House, Amtrak now has an opportunity to prove itself. It needs funds to overhaul and upgrade equipment and service, but in a market economy, it can only be of value if it provides convenient, reliable, safe transportation at a competitive price.

This Train is Bound for Glory

Today's Amtrak train taking President-elect Barack Obama and Vice President-elect Joe Biden to Washington was meant to evoke the historic ride to Washington, D.C. by Abraham Lincoln for his inaugural in 1861, but the story is more complex than that.

Lincoln was the target of an assassination plot by secessionists. As recounted in PI Magazine (February, 2005), the assassination was to take place at the station near Baltimore or on the railroad car while the train was en route. Complicating matters, the Baltimore chief of police was known to be a secessionist sympathizer. The Pinkerton Detective Agency, then making its name as the leading railroad detectives in the country, was hired to protect the incoming president. Among his bodyguards was a 28-year-old woman, Kate Warne, who is regarded as the nation's first female detective. According to PI Magazine, "Mr. Lincoln shed his tall hat for a shawl and small hat," and disguised himself as Ms. Warne's sick brother. He made it safely to Washington.

The railroad line Mr. Obama traveled today pre-dates the Civil War. This 1858 lithograph, reproduced from the book, "The Pennsylvania Railroad: A Pictorial History" (E.P. Alexander), reads in part, "Notice to Colored People: All Colored People (Bond or Free) wishing to travel on the Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore Railroad, will be required to bring with them to the TICKET OFFICE, President Street Depot, some Responsible White Person, A Citizen of Baltimore, known to the undersigned, to sign a bond to the Company before they can proceed." Today, we can reflect on how far we as a nation have come.

The Pennsylvania Railroad's New York-Washington line has long been a route of senators and members of Congress. Many presidents rode these same rails before the airline age. It has also been the route of Pullman porters, most of whom were African-American. It was a Pullman porter, Edgar A. Nixon, who first had the idea of a bus boycott, and the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters that helped fund it. The Montgomery, Ala. boycott helped lead to the end of the despicable Jim Crow laws.

Today's simple train ride by the President-elect is not just symbolic of Lincoln's ride into Washington, but symbolizes America's journey as well. It is a journey we have all taken together, sometimes sliding backward, more often moving forward. It is a journey that tells us, with deference to Woodie Guthrie, this train -- and this nation -- is bound for glory, this train.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident...

"that all men are created equal."

(And women of course.)

The promise of the Founding Fathers has been realized.

The Electric Election

They told me the line was four hours long when I finally found the beginning of it this morning in Norwalk, Calif. The Los Angeles County Recorder's office is the only location for early voting for all 4.1 million registered voters in L.A. County. I had arrived at 8:30 a.m., just 30 minutes after the scheduled openinf, but the line already stretched around the building to the makeshift voting tents. Luckily, I soon found out that, since I had already filled out my absentee ballot, I could just go ahead and drop it in the box.

I was almost disappointed not to stand on line with the others who were casting their ballot. The feeling was electric. Whole families waited on line. Everyone was smiling, or seemed to, happy to be a part of something monumental. We have for too long had too low a voter turnout, which has enabled a vocal minority to control the nation's agenda. Not this year.

To see Los Angeles turn out in such numbers early on a Saturday morning, when we're usually sleeping in, was to see America's second largest city come together as a community; a community determined to make its voice heard. To me, it was also that point on a long journey when you come around the final bend in the road to see the destination you have looked forward to.

Forty years ago, I was a high school freshman in the Bronx, swimming in a politically charged pool of hope and tragedy. Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy had been assassinated. America's cities - New York among them - were seething with racial tension. A war raged in Southeast Asia and buildings crumbled in our own urban centers.

Political discussions were commonplace at our dinner table, and at those of my aunts, uncles and cousins. My father was a union man. He led strikes, helped organize and fought for better wages and working conditions, all to make a better life for our family.

So it was in that atmosphere that during high school, and later in college, I joined demonstrations in support of civil rights and the stillborn Equal Rights Amendment. It was a mystical time, a spiritual time, a cosmic time. It was a time not long after the big bang of Brown vs. Board of Education and the fundamental justice of the Civil Rights Act. It was also the beginning of our nation's inevitable and necessary journey to a new globally-informed, inclusive universe.

The destination is in sight, but we are not there yet. Not until we can wake up on Wednesday morning to the redeeming words, "President-elect Barack Obama."

California High Speed Rail: Wrong Plan at the Wrong Time

Amid market upheaval and an uncertain economic future, California voters will be asked to authorize almost $10 billion in state borrowing next month for a poorly-designed and financially risky high-speed rail network. That's equal to the $10 billion in borrowing from future lottery revenue needed to reduce further budget shortfalls starting next year. More perspective: the California Legislative Analyst's Office (LAO) projects the annual cost of servicing the debt on the high-speed rail bond at $647 million. That's more than the $510 million Gov. Schwarzenegger had to cut from this year's budget to make ends meet. Those cuts impacted programs to lower prescription drug costs and provide financial aid to elderly renters and homeowners. The money has to come from somewhere, folks.

I've surprised some with my opposition to the California high-speed rail plan, but there's a simple explanation: I can read a business plan. And this one is full of holes. We are supposed to believe that an 800-mile rail system through densely populated urban and suburban areas, national forests, mountain passes and high deserts can be built in 20 years for $40 billion. Heck, we've been trying to get the L.A. subway completed for 15 years, and that's only eight miles. The reality is that the high-speed rail project will take twice as long to build and cost two to three times as much as we're told. Proposition 1A will turn out to be a subprime mortgage on a sprawling, unfinished state-owned toy-train McMansion.

As the Pasadena Star-News wrote earlier this week:

We don't buy into the utter nonsense of the knee-jerk opponents who would be against this proposal no matter what. They call Proposition 1A "pork on a train" - but that's what they call any government expenditure whatsoever. A state that can't in good times invest in itself is a dying state.

But, the newspaper goes on to say:

Right now, though, when we need to find ways to simply balance our budget in order to pay teachers, keep health clinics open and operate other essential services, we're going to have to wait to get aboard this train.

I've been a leading advocate of passenger rail and public transportation, but this is the wrong plan at the wrong time for California. According to the state's LAO, "Over the past 12 years, the authority has spent about $60 million for pre-construction activities." What we've gotten from that, mostly, is a fancy Web site.

It's time to go back to the drawing board. Here is a way to move forward:

1. Start small. Plan for a route such as San Francisco - Sacramento or Los Angeles - San Diego (and not via Riverside) which has a ready market of intercity travelers and can be built at far lower cost. Show success, then build out a statewide system if it makes sense.
2. Engage private enterprise. The proven model in our country's history is for government to assist or undertake transportation infrastructure development and then allow private industry to operate it. California, with whatever federal assistance can be obtained, should fund the infrastructure and then contract with an operator to own, run and maintain the trains. The state should charge a fee to cover ongoing capital needs, and should enter into a long-term contract to encourage the operator to make investments in rolling stock, services and personnel.
3. No work should be undertaken on the project until a preliminary contract is signed with an operator. California taxpayers shouldn't be left holding the bag.

In the 19th century, we saw eager entrepreneurs ready to build railroads, spurred on by federal land grants. In the 20th century, we saw fledgling airlines and young trucking companies jumping at the chance to build transportation businesses as airports and Interstate highways were built. Here in the 21st century, we need to see private enterprise raise its hand. Unless there's a business case to spend billions of taxpayer dollars to build the California high-speed rail network, we should stick to Southwest Airlines.