.....But it seems that all over the country it is running into some major problems that if not fixed soon will lead to so much trouble for this much needed but often neglected mode of transportation that could help humanity with it's dependence on oil and help reduce the dangerous emissions that are surly leading to ongoing "global warming of our planet".I just finished reading a few interesting articles dealing with public transportation...in particular mass tranist trains...both inter urban comuter systems and the national train system known as Amtrak which I am a huge fan (and user) of.There is an ongoing issue here in Racine where they (some government officials) want to extend the Chicago system (METRA) to Racine and Milwaukee but it is coming up against a lot of blocks from becoming reality anytime soon. It would be called the KRM system (which stands for Kenosha, Racine, Milwaukee) and would extend commuter train travel through the entire southeastern Wisconsin corridor all the way to Chicago. Right now one has to drive down to Kenosha to get on the METRA to get to Chicago and though one of the Amtrak lines comes through Racine and Milwaukee and goes back to Chicago….it is much more expensive and for the average commuter that doesn’t make a lot of money-beyond their grasp-so…..who knows if this system will actually ever come to fruition. The future will tell. I seriously think that train travel will eventually be the preferred means of transportation in the distant future. Europe and other developing countries are beginning to think that way. It is just sad that our government hasn’t realized it yet. Someday I hope they will but by then what they could have been working on already will have to be done and we will be behind all the other countries that had some forethought about the whole thing.
Read on for the two articles which I have copied in their entirety from the New York Times Online edition.
_____________________________________________________________Stay on Track
Americans made 10.1 billion trips on public transportation last year, the highest that ridership has risen in nearly half a century. That’s good for congestion on the roads as well as the pollution that goes with it. But any mass-transit renaissance will come to a grinding halt unless a commensurate investment is made in upkeep and expansion.
As Libby Sander reported recently in The Times, Chicago’s elevated train system, known as the El, appears to be near a breaking point. The second-largest public transit system in America after New York’s is suffering from rising commute times as the century-old system deteriorates.
Public transit systems are financed through a combination of federal and local money, so parochial priorities play a big role in underinvestment. For instance, the Chicago Transit Authority’s financing formula hasn’t changed since 1983. But at the same time, the federal gas tax — which contributes money for public transportation systems as well as highways — hasn’t changed since 1993. That means it hasn’t even kept up with inflation in maintenance and construction costs, much less rising demand.
Part of the trouble with financing for mass transit is that the upfront costs always appear prohibitively large (for the next five years, Chicago’s regional authority is seeking $10 billion in state and local money) while the benefits are long term and extremely diffuse. As a result, projects often linger. Planners have been trying to build New York’s Second Avenue Line since the 1920s.
Worse still, when money is scarce it is insidiously easy to delay maintenance.
Once a system begins to break down, it can hurt the quality of life and economic growth of a city. And it isn’t just a problem for city dwellers. Buses and rail systems serve rural areas as well.
Government officials around the country should take heed of Chicago’s problems. Meanwhile, Congress should at a minimum bring the gas tax in line with inflation.
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Sidetracked Again
By STEVE HALLOCK
Carbondale, Ill.
HERE is an opportunity for the new Congress to demonstrate its commitment to energy independence, to environmental improvement and to standing up to special interests — all without raising taxes. Call it the Amtrak test.
No, this is not one more plea to throw dollars at an inefficient, unpopular mode of transportation for a minority of citizens who don’t like to drive or fly. Rather, the argument here is about strengthening Amtrak as an energy-efficient alternative to transportation systems threatened by terrorism (jet travel) or that use fuel wastefully (automobiles).
On a recent business trip by train to Pittsburgh from Chicago, I endured frequent delays of up to 30 minutes that stretched the trip from its scheduled nine and a half hours to 14 hours. Delays also caused the return trip to be five hours late.
The conductor blamed freight trains for the majority of these delays. The private freight companies that own most of the tracks used by Amtrak outside the Boston-New York-Washington corridor fail to yield the rails to passenger trains — despite a federal regulation that Amtrak is supposed to have “preference over freight transportation” in using tracks. According to an Amtrak spokesman, the only way for this to change is for the Justice Department, acting on behalf of Amtrak or under its own initiative, to file a lawsuit.
Such a suit is unlikely for a couple of reasons. First, there’s the Bush administration’s hostility toward Amtrak, as demonstrated in its continued substandard budget proposals and its call for privatization of the train service. And then there’s the wording of the regulation, which uses “preference” rather than “top priority” or “maximum priority.” This language is vague enough to stymie any successful litigation.
Meanwhile, Amtrak riders too often are pulled off to a side track when an Amtrak train encounters a freight train coming from the opposite direction and Amtrak’s engineer is ordered to wait for the freight train to pass.
Or when an Amtrak train gets behind a slow-moving freight train, the freight train is not required to pull off long enough for the passenger train to pass.
Here’s what added insult to the injury of one recent delay: as the train I was riding waited on a siding in Indiana for a freight train to pass with its delivery of trucks, I glanced at the flatbed and hopper cars as they rumbled by. They were empty.
The college dance major on the cellphone behind me was in tears. She urged her relatives to go ahead with their planned activities without her and she would meet them in Chicago later. Maybe.
Such delays have become routine. Last year, David J. Hughes, who was then the acting president and C.E.O. of Amtrak, told the board of the National Association of Railroad Passengers that Amtrak’s on-time performance on freight-owned tracks decreased 50 percent from 1999 to 2005. Last April, 54 percent of all system delays for long-distance trains resulted from “freight train interference” and “slow orders.” These delays give Amtrak a bad name.
Bipartisan legislation, sponsored by Senators Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey and Trent Lott of Mississippi, would give greater authority to the Surface Transportation Board for track-use enforcement, lessening the reliance on the Justice Department to remedy the freight problem. It also includes fixes for Amtrak’s financial and equipment woes.
The result could be a public train system better able to serve its customers by running on time and thus a train system more deserving of public and political support and of repeat customers — and a transportation alternative offering wiser use of fuel, because rail service expends less energy per passenger mile than cars and planes.
The obvious questions are these: Where is the sense in discouraging use of a means of transportation that is more energy-efficient and thus friendlier to the environment than the other two primary means of transportation? Considering the terrorist threat that the Bush administration always talks about, where is the logic in discouraging an option besides jets and motor vehicles?
The Lautenberg-Lott bill seems an obvious answer.
(Steve Hallock is an assistant professor of journalism at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale.)
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