---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Wed, 27 Apr 2005 12:48:38 -0400 (EDT) From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Bush-Whack For Amtrak
Bush-Whack For Amtrak
By Kevin Murphy
The Slatin Report Wednesday Apr 27, 2005 http://www.theslatinreport.com/top_story.jsp?StoryName=0420Amtrak.txt
It's never been a secret that President Bush has little use for Amtrak. He has now officially proposed to end federal funding for the national rail service and replace it with regional, intercity rail lines run by the states. As a result, Amtrak may face its toughest challenge in 34 years.
But pulling the plug on Amtrak shows a wrongheaded commitment to roads over rails, an approach that promises to continue the problems that the car culture has brought us.
In purporting to explain the proposed defunding of Amtrak, Bush's transportation secretary, Norman Mineta, has said: "After 34 years of Amtrak operating losses and $29 billion in taxpayer subsidies, it is clear that the current model of passenger rail service is flawed and unsustainable."
It's true that Amtrak is flawed-the current disruptions in its Acela high-speed service in the Northeast, due to brake problems, is an example. But at the same time, the president's budget proposes $284 billion in funding for highway construction over the next six years. How did it come to pass that Amtrak's operations, and ability to correct problems, must be financed by ticket revenue while the national highway system is subsidized through taxes?
Which system, railroad or highway transportation, is unworkable? The current Amtrak model doesn't work, but the problem is the inadequacy of the funding. The Bush administration's response, to deny further funding, is counterintuitive.
The administration should give Amtrak more funding to improve infrastructure and extend service. This, after all, is the model that European countries have used successfully for decades. Having zipped recently from Paris to Avignon in southern France on the French national railroad's TGV in a matter of hours, it's hard to imagine how the European model could be considered dysfunctional.
On the other hand, it would be difficult to construct a less functional model than the one that has guided transportation policy and real estate development in the United States since World War II. The policies and programs that favored highway transportation and helped to bring about widespread suburbanization are headed toward eventual failure.
In an era of rising gasoline prices and the eventual exhaustion of the world's petroleum supplies, reliance on auto transportation is not only reckless, it could also be a recipe for economic crisis.
Nor is obtaining the fuel to run cars the only problem that comes with dependence on them. As residents of any metropolitan area can attest, traffic congestion around most cities is so extreme that commuters spend untold hours getting to and from work, time that could certainly be better used.
The specter of increasing traffic also presents the image of yet more American countryside marred by lanes of speeding cars, trucks, and buses, and ever more outlying areas carved up into exurban house lots. The environmental and economic costs of sprawl have been well documented. At the same time, the social, economic, political, and environmental consequences of global warming-due in substantial part to auto pollution-have also been projected. So why infuse billions and billions more into highway construction?
It is unfortunate that the car is associated with ideas like "freedom" and "liberty," words that George Bush uses liberally in every speech. But bringing Americans back to public transportation involves convincing them that it does not limit their options but frees them from the increasingly unpleasant prospect of car trips.
The much-abused Amtrak system offers extremely pleasant transportation, especially on the Northeast Corridor. Just the other day I rode from Richmond, Virginia to Washington, D.C., a trip that by car can take at least two and a half hours. When I think of that trip, I remember doing it with my four-year-old daughter in the back seat on a one-hundred-degree-plus day last summer. We sat in the car, stopped, in the broiling sun for at least an hour with nothing but Jersey barriers to look at while my daughter fidgeted. By contrast, the train traverses woods and fields and passed through historic towns. In Fredericksburg, the end of the line to Washington, there are not enough parking spots to accommodate the commuters wishing to take the train into D.C.
The Bush administration can't see over the steering wheel. By pouring money into highway construction, it pursues the very failed model it purports to want to avoid. At the same time, it turns its back on a model of sustainable development that has proved its viability over the course of centuries: city living, made possible by robust public transportation and offering an alternative to car culture.
Kevin Murphy is an associate professor of art history at the City University of New York Graduate Center and at Brooklyn College.
All material �2004, The Slatin Report
_______________________________________________________
portside (the left side in nautical parlance) is a news, discussion and debate service of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism. It aims to provide varied material of interest to people on the left.
For answers to frequently asked questions: <http://www.portside.org/faq>
To subscribe, unsubscribe or change settings: <http://lists.portside.org/mailman/listinfo/portside>
To submit material, paste into an email and send to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> (postings are moderated)
For assistance with your account: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To search the portside archive: <http://people-link5.inch.com/pipermail/portside/>
