(inquisitive music) - [Journalist Voiceover]
Long-distance passenger routes in the U.S. may be
riding on borrowed time. Amtrak wants congress to untie its hands and allow it to cut its
longer, unprofitable routes, essentially halting service
to rural communities. The company's management
sees opportunity for profits and longterm growth in
shorter distance travel. - Shorter haul, inner-city
service between big city pairs. It's the way of the future. - [Journalist Voiceover] In
the next year, U.S. lawmakers need to reauthorize Amtrak's funding. Members of congress are
coming under pressure to preserve cross-country rail services. - I'm afraid we're position
rural America to fail. - We're beginning our journey
from New York to New Orleans. We're riding Acela train
down to Washington first. - [Journalist Voiceover] Acela's part of the northeast corridor. It runs frequently and usually on time connecting business travelers between Boston, New York, Philadelphia
and Washington D.C. It's profitable and Amtrak sees it as a model for future growth. According to a government commission, keeping the northeast corridor
in a good state of repair will cost $42 billion. And Amtrak wants congress to also invest in new service between
cities that by train would be fewer than four hours apart. - Dallas and Houston, for instance. - [Journalist Voiceover] We
spoke with Amtrak's executive in charge of strategy. - Amtrak's view is we've
got a big opportunity in these shorter distance corridors. The less that say,
300-mile distance corridors where we see a lot of our
population growth occurring. - But is there an appetite in congress to be spending more money on Amtrak? - Congress does recognize that
trains can play a bigger role and to get there, we have
to invest in our assets. - You're talking even larger investments? - I am. Over time we're gonna need
to invest more than we have. (train whistle blows) - [Journalist Voiceover]
The question now is whether it's executives
plan to also ask for money to maintain long-distance trains. In Washington, we board The
Crescent Line to New Orleans. - Pretty narrow hallway here. I guess this is home. It's a little smaller
than I was expecting. Oh, this is a folding sink? Look at that. Is this the toilet? - [Journalist Voiceover] As we
ride south through Virginia, our dinner reservation is called. - What temperature would you like? - Medium, please.
- Medium? - [Journalist Voiceover]
Meals are included in the ticket price. - Better than what you get on an airplane. - [Journalist Voiceover] Our
junior roomette, one way, costs around $500, $250 a person. Coach seats start at around $100. Most Crescent passengers spend the 26-hour D.C. to New Orleans
journey in this section. Around 2:30 a.m., we stop in
Charlotte, North Carolina. Last year, this city had the fifth-largest increase in population in the country. - We have one train a day that shows up on a 2,000-mile journey. Maybe it shows up in
the middle of the night, maybe it shows up on
time, maybe it doesn't. - [Journalist Voiceover] Amtrak
says chronic, long delays aren't its fault. Outside the northeast corridor, its trains ride on rails
owned by freight companies. It's battling some of these
companies in the courts for priority right-of-way. It's freight fight not withstanding, the company's leadership says it's current long-distance services don't
serve enough of a purpose to justify the financial losses. - It' 8:30 a.m., we
just arrived in Atlanta, well, a station that's on
the outskirts of Atlanta. This sleeper train is
the only passenger train that services this city. There's a 100-year-old woman
who just got onboard the train. - I've always wanted to ride a train. - [Journalist Always
wanted to ride a train? - [Journalist Voiceover]
Annie Grissom is celebrating her centennial year by taking a day trip to Montgomery, Alabama. - What are you gonna
do when you get there? - I'm gonna eat. - (chuckling) Your just going for lunch? - Yeah. - Do you fly on planes? - Uh-uh. They're too high. - (chuckling) It's too high. - [Journalist Voiceover] Other
passengers say that for them, this is no joy ride. - I'm too old to drive. - What about the bus? - It's seats are too
close, it's too congested. - You're seeing a microcosm
of the type of people that depend on long-distance trains. Their quality of life would diminish without this option. - [Journalist Voiceover] John Roberts is a former chairman of Amtrak's board. He's now the head of
Transportation for America, an advocacy group for
transportation infrastructure. - You see a lady that's 100 years old, you think she'd be making
that trip by car or flying? - She's going from Atlanta to Birmingham. Let's say you had more trains going between Atlanta and Birmingham. She'd have more options. - More trains before Atlanta
and Birmingham is a good idea. - She doesn't need the
Crescent if you had that. - There are people sitting here
going to Slidell, Louisiana. So a train just to Birmingham doesn't get them to Slidell, Louisiana. - It sounds to me like you're saying the current leadership of Amtrak doesn't consider rural
America to be a priority. - I think that would be fair to say that they don't understand
the needs of rural America. - [Journalist Voiceover] In
response, an Amtrak official says the company believes in rural markets and wants to be relevant
in every one of them. Roberts helped mobilize
congressional opposition last year to Amtrak's proposal for part
of its Southwest Chief line to replace train service with buses. Company executives said
the measure was necessary in order to avoid costly infrastructure upgrades and repairs. But senators from western
states said, not so fast. - Would you ever consider
the northeast corridor being shifted to buses? - [Journalist Voiceover]
Amtrak backtracked, promising to keep the Southwest Chief running through the end of this year. - The effectively said, no,
we are not going to replace trains with buses. - They did and we respect that. I think that we didn't
fully have a conversation about the future of the network. - [Journalist Voiceover]
In Meridian, Mississippi, about three hours north of New Orleans, Roberts invited us to get off at his stop. When he was mayor of this city in the 90s, he said he led the effort
to get this station built. - It tells our guests and
our citizens who come home, you've come to a special place. - [Journalist Voiceover]
He wanted us to see Meridian's revitalization. - See, the question isn't whether the Crescent or any other
train is profitable, the question is, does it bring value to the cities that it
serves along that line and is that value significantly more than the very modest amount that it takes to operate that train. - [Journalist Voiceover] In the mid-2000s, Meridian restored its grand opera house. Roberts, again, credits the train. - What does that have to
do with this opera house? - [Roberts] This opera
house existed because of the rail connection we had between Atlanta and New Orleans. - Amtrak's not talking
about abandoning the south. To the contrary, it would like to have more than one train a day
stopping in cities like Atlanta. - Atlanta is sort of the poster child of what I'm talking about here. When you think about all of the corridors, Atlanta-Macon, Atlanta-Charlotte, Atlanta-Chattanooga-Knoxville,
Atlanta-Birmingham, none of which are served
effectively by Amtrak. - [Journalist Voiceover] Company
officials aren't saying yet whether they want their future network to include smaller cities like Meridian, but if Amtrak gets its
way, cross-country routes, some more than a century
old, may be split up. - I can't guarantee results. What I can guarantee is that at Amtrak, we're doing all we can to
make these things happen.
Edit: Woot! Silver!
For those who may feel that Amtrak should abandon its national-network trains, I have some thoughts for you to consider.
Congressional appropriations for Amtrak is siloed into separate categories for the long-distance trains, as well as the North East Corridor, and various other categories. Removing service for the long-distance trains dose NOT automatically mean that the money gets reallocated to other services. It just means that the government starts to wonder why it's paying for trains it's not getting.
Congress specifically pays for different services, and it would take just about the same amount of effort to start paying for targeted corridors with or without retaining the long-distance routes, since you still need to find new, separate source of money, or change up the appropriations format. That's not to mention that what congressional support Amtrak has often hinges on the fact that politicians can curry favor with those rural areas specifically because of the services.
If Amtrak stops running the trains to rural areas, what congressional support Amtrak has amungst more conservative politicians is likely to dry out, and thus, rather than freeing up funding, Amtrak will likely just loose it all together. Possibly to subsidizing airlines or coach operators to try and pick up the service slack.
The current system is a bare minimum of service. Many areas getting that bare minimum are exactly the kinds of places that should be getting the bare minimum, if not even a bit more really. It just so happens that we've also tied much larger service areas into that minimum because everyone is on the way to each other. Trying to act like the rural and smaller cities that get train service at the same amount as larger cities are the problem is just petty, and reeks of crab-bucketing.
Particularly given just how little we, as a nation, actually subsidize Amtrak. Particularly given how much more national rail service we could rather easily afford if we weren't stuck in a constant national death cycle of 'cut taxes and cut services'. Particularly given how much economic activity we could spur with some proper investment.
Even if every penny from the long distance subsidy ($1.3 Bil. in 2018) were reallocated to corridor trains, it would still take decades to implement anything even approaching a proper final product. Hell, the NEC alone needs $38 Bil. to reach a state of 'good repair', and that's before you start even trying to upgrade it to proper high-speed rail.
That said, as a nation, we HAVE THE WEALTH to more than fund an incredible national rail network that still includes these long-distance trains, as well as more corridor services, as well as higher and high speed rail. We just have to get out of this damned anti-tax, always-austerity mindset that we've been tricked into treating as the default. That goes for many other government services as well, but that's another topic for another place.
Rather than making this a false-dichotomy between the long-distance routes and corridor services, we should be fighting for more of everything.
A lot of these lines are operated as a political gesture. Some definitely have scenic or historic merit.
But it's really a shame to have those types of operations joined at the hip with a profitable business -- the NEC -- at the expense of the latter. We need to be able to invest more in the places where rail is working.
One sleepy rail line per state (a lot what we're talking about with this unprofitable lines) is going to do nothing to reverse rural decay.
I remember taking one of their lines that ran from Chicago to Seattle. Never gonna be profitable, but really cool experience.
It feels like our trains are built to fail. I take amtrak from Milwaukee to Chicago sometimes, but it has no advantages over taking a greyhound (besides being cleaner), and is a lot more expensive. Back when I lived in Maine, I never took the train to Boston, because the bus was much faster. I cant imagine trying to take a multi day trip via train
High Speed Rail... That's literally what we need for long distance travel. 200+ mph speeds between major cities with stops at smaller cities...
Or is aviation and auto still lobbying against that?
Since when is transit supposed to make a profit?
Why is it either/or? In Europe, there are frequent local commuter trains, hourly medium distance HSR trains, and daily long distance sleeper trains.
Why can’t we have nice things in America?
Couldn't help but think of Human Transit and the contradiction of public transits two main goals: 1) Serve all parts of the community, 2) Maximize ridership within a fixed budget. As usual, I think the best solution is a compromise between the two goals but that can be easier said than done, especially when there is political pressure from both sides.