ASK AND YE SHALL RECEIVE :

Amtrak : The little engine that couldn't. (Chris Suellentrop, June 26, 2002, Slate)

Amtrak should be dismantled for practical reasons, not ideological ones about the size and purpose of government. Our intercity passenger rail system works exactly the opposite way that our other systems of intercity transportation work, notes Anthony Perl, author of the book New Departures: Rethinking Rail Passenger Policy in the Twenty-First Century. With air travel and road travel, the government provides the infrastructure, and the private sector moves the passengers. The government runs the airports, and the private sector flies the planes. The government builds the highways, and the private sector handles the cars, trucks, and buses. But with passenger rail, we've got it backward. The government (Amtrak) runs the trains, and the private sector (the freight railroads) owns the rails, except in the Northeast Corridor between Washington and Boston. That creates a double whammy--the private companies don't have the deep pockets or the interest in maintaining the infrastructure needed for a viable passenger rail system, and the government doesn't have the market incentives to be entrepreneurial or customer-focused. The result is a lot of decrepit tracks and routes that respond to political, rather than consumer, demands.

The other day we were wondering why the railroads elicit such hostility from folks who are perfectly willing to acknowledge a legitimate role for government in maintaining a transportation system. Here's a partial explanation. Looks like the reaction may be different, in part, because the system is structured differently. (Though one suspects the fact that trains are more important to the inner city and roads and airways to the suburbs may play a role too.) So why not get government back in the rail end of things and out of the actual train-running end of things? Posted by Orrin Judd at June 30, 2002 7:54 PM