Save Our Trains Michigan
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If a dangerous hurricane threatens New Orleans this season, the city will evacuate some residents on Amtrak trains.
That makes sense. Passenger rail is an efficient way to move people, especially on trips of less than 400 miles.
With terrorist and natural disaster threats, and gas prices at $3 a gallon, the United States needs an affordable, reliable rail system more than ever. Yet as Amtrak this month celebrates its 35th birthday, it faces a dangerously unpredictable fate.
The Bush administration tried to zero out Amtrak funding in 2005, and Congress had to fight to restore $1.3 billion. Last fall, the Amtrak board fired railroad president David Gunn, despite his widely admired efficiencies and managerial reforms.
This year's dollar-and-cents battle looks less ugly, but Amtrak still faces a long haul.
President Bush claims that he wants to wean the country from its oil addiction. So why is he campaigning to dismantle this key alternative to highway travel? Bush proposes downsizing Amtrak, devolving funding to the states, or breaking it up. Those strategies won't help; they'll do harm.
It's true that, despite efforts to improve Amtrak's structure and funding, "we have a system that limps along, never in a state of good repair, awash in debt, and perpetually on the edge of collapse," as former Transportation Department Inspector General Kenneth M. Mead told Congress last September.
If a dangerous hurricane threatens New Orleans this season, the city will evacuate some residents on Amtrak trains.
That makes sense. Passenger rail is an efficient way to move people, especially on trips of less than 400 miles.
With terrorist and natural disaster threats, and gas prices at $3 a gallon, the United States needs an affordable, reliable rail system more than ever. Yet as Amtrak this month celebrates its 35th birthday, it faces a dangerously unpredictable fate.
The Bush administration tried to zero out Amtrak funding in 2005, and Congress had to fight to restore $1.3 billion. Last fall, the Amtrak board fired railroad president David Gunn, despite his widely admired efficiencies and managerial reforms.
This year's dollar-and-cents battle looks less ugly, but Amtrak still faces a long haul.
President Bush claims that he wants to wean the country from its oil addiction. So why is he campaigning to dismantle this key alternative to highway travel? Bush proposes downsizing Amtrak, devolving funding to the states, or breaking it up. Those strategies won't help; they'll do harm.
It's true that, despite efforts to improve Amtrak's structure and funding, "we have a system that limps along, never in a state of good repair, awash in debt, and perpetually on the edge of collapse," as former Transportation Department Inspector General Kenneth M. Mead told Congress last September.
