Save Our Trains Michigan
Conductor
Published On Wednesday, May 17, 2006 2:34 AM
By MICHAEL S. DUKAKIS
To the editors:
Re “Plane Pain,” op-ed, May 10,
Emily Ingram tells us that the answer to inadequate rail passenger service in the United States is to privatize Amtrak just the way the British privatized their national rail system.
Unfortunately, Ingram didn’t do her homework. If she had, she would have discovered that British rail privatization has been a disaster, that, in fact, the British system has been substantially “deprivatized” after dozens of passengers were killed or maimed on the system, and that today, Britain is spending a lot more public money on its national rail passenger system than it was prior to privatization.
Moreover, Ingram doesn’t seem to understand that the American rail passenger system was privatized, and it went bankrupt. That’s why the Nixon administration created Amtrak. And the private freight railroads, which are doing well these days, want no part of a return to passenger service. They couldn’t make money on it when they ran it, and they would require massive public subsidies to return to the passenger business.
There is nothing wrong with Amtrak that a modest but consistent amount of capital investment couldn’t cure. Virtually every region of the country has detailed plans for major improvements in the Amtrak system if the Bush administration would wake up and understand that we desperately need a first-class rail passenger system in this country.
Story
The writer, a former vice chair of the Amtrak Board of Directors, is a former governor of Massachusetts and a former Democratic presidential nominee.
By MICHAEL S. DUKAKIS
To the editors:
Re “Plane Pain,” op-ed, May 10,
Emily Ingram tells us that the answer to inadequate rail passenger service in the United States is to privatize Amtrak just the way the British privatized their national rail system.
Unfortunately, Ingram didn’t do her homework. If she had, she would have discovered that British rail privatization has been a disaster, that, in fact, the British system has been substantially “deprivatized” after dozens of passengers were killed or maimed on the system, and that today, Britain is spending a lot more public money on its national rail passenger system than it was prior to privatization.
Moreover, Ingram doesn’t seem to understand that the American rail passenger system was privatized, and it went bankrupt. That’s why the Nixon administration created Amtrak. And the private freight railroads, which are doing well these days, want no part of a return to passenger service. They couldn’t make money on it when they ran it, and they would require massive public subsidies to return to the passenger business.
There is nothing wrong with Amtrak that a modest but consistent amount of capital investment couldn’t cure. Virtually every region of the country has detailed plans for major improvements in the Amtrak system if the Bush administration would wake up and understand that we desperately need a first-class rail passenger system in this country.
Story
The writer, a former vice chair of the Amtrak Board of Directors, is a former governor of Massachusetts and a former Democratic presidential nominee.