Making It Happen: Political

Finding a workable plan to develop passenger railroad service has been difficult in this country. This begins with a crucial difference in how railroad infrastructure is funded and developed.

Unlike highways, airports and waterways railroads are owned and maintained by private entities. This has created a more stringent standard for measuring financial performance. It has also made the variety of taxes and low cost borrowing tools that are available to airports and highways unavailable to railroads.

As a result, railroads have not made the infrastructure investment required to run fast, frequent and dependable passenger trains feasible (nor fast freight trains, for that matter).

Policy makers in the 1960's were unable to come to grips with this problem and created Amtrak in 1971. Throughout its life, Amtrak has not been provided funds nor the oversight needed to provide an adequate level of service.

Since then, Amtrak has served as a diversion, an excuse to avoid the fundemental questions: What kind of railroad service do we want and how are we going to pay for it. The resluting stalemate has been difficult to break.

We need to create a program, structured like the federal highway and transit programs, which will finance the needed track and structures while protecting the interests of both the public and the owners of the railroads. It would also need to 1) Retain Amtrak as the national operator, 2) provide appropriate oversight, and 3) give states or other entities the opportunity to provide unique services.

The challenge has increased over the last several years since gas taxes have not been large enough to meet existing highway and transit needs. While finding a solution will be difficult, it is essential that we do so.

The Association has chosen to work through this policy stalemate with a three pronged approach. 1) Creating a big vision for what railroads can do for the region 2) supporting the continued "brick by brick" improvement of service at the local level 3) promoting the development of a model corridor to demonstrate the potential.