30 November, 2010

Waiting On a Train by James McCommons

With our governor-elect vowing to deny Madison intercity passenger rail service, something we haven't had in decades, I thought I’d finally read James McCommons’ Waiting On a Train which I’d bought this past spring when he was here in Madison speaking at the library.

While McCommons makes no bones about his desire to see passenger rail in this country flourish once again, the book isn’t a simple screed inveighing against the likes of Scott Walker. It is part travelogue and part investigation into exactly how Amtrak came to be what it is and what its future may hold.

Over the course of eight parts McCommons travels the rails to cover the entire country. Well, as much as Amtrak allows. Each journey begins with an overnight bus ride from his home in the UP down to Milwaukee where he catches a Hiawatha to Chicago’s Union Station. And from there he travels to a different part of the country. On board he meets the people who use Amtrak and those who serve the passengers. At his destinations McCommons interviews government officials, heads of citizen groups that promote rail, and the heads of some freight rail companies.

It is almost a mantra of the people McCommons talks to that Amtrak was created to fail. In 1971 the federal government came up with the service to relieve the railroad companies of the burden of passenger service which, for the most part, was a losing proposition in the post-war era. It has limped along ever since its inception struggling to get funding from Congress. At its birth Amtrak was seen by many as an intermediate step in ending passenger rail in this country completely burdened, as it was, by the mandate to become profitable, an albatross never hung around the necks of roads and airports which are government subsidized to nary a complaint.

For the most part, Amtrak’s trains run on rail owned by freight rail companies and we learn that the performance of any given route has a lot to do with Amtrak’s relationship with the freight carrier. In Longview, Texas McCommons meets up with an Amtrak employee named Griff Hubbard. They discuss why the Texas Eagle has such poor on-time performance. The train runs on track owned by Union Pacific and Hubbard relates a tale of speaking to a UP executive about cooperating to improve the train’s record. The exec said, “You know, Griff, you just don’t get it. And maybe you guys will never get it, but we just don’t care.” UP certainly comes across as the villain here. They wouldn’t even talk to McCommons.

Other freight carriers were more willing to both talk to McCommons and work with Amtrak and the states. D.J. Mitchell of Burlington Northern Santa Fe met McCommons and told him that his company cares. Passenger trains on his rails are customers just like someone paying to have tons of coal shipped by them. BNSF is a good partner with passenger rail in California and Washington because it’s good business for them. Such partnerships, especially in states willing to put money on the table, lead to routes with frequency of service as well as on-time performance.

Perhaps the saddest chapter for me was the one about Madison. McCommons detrained in Milwaukee and first stopped in Waukesha to chat with Matt Van Hattem, an editor of Trains magazine. (See, there are pro-rail people in the Republican stronghold of Waukesha.) From there he went to Madison. Here he spoke with state rail chief Randy Wade and, via conference call, Frank Busalacchi, Secretary of the DOT. They paint a very positive picture for passenger rail here in Wisconsin with plans to get service to Madison and, in general, resurrecting passenger rail in the country. But, with Scott Walker set to move into the Governor’s mansion, any plans to expand passenger rail here in Wisconsin are all but dead.

On his journeys McCommons meets and describes the people who use Amtrak. There's a student from Milwaukee who took the Hiawatha to Chicago for a job interview and a university professor from Japan heading from Denver to Boston to do research; there are commuters who ride the train instead of driving or flying as well as people who are out on vacation or going to visit family. All kinds of people use Amtrak. In a few decades this country will have countless more people like those McCommons encounters and our current transportation infrastructure won't be able to handle them all. Instead of having the government subsidize the construction of ever more roads and airports, he suggests we invest in rail.

Waiting On a Train has many lessons for people who are serious about contemplating whether they want their tax money to be invested in rail. All too often anti-rail advocates refer to trains as "choo-choos" and say that no one will ride them. Such people might be surprised to see who does in fact ride them today and what Amtrak lines are successful and why. (Hint: frequency of service is very important in attracting ridership.) Plus there are stories of how passenger rail service has helped communities around the country. Pro-rail advocates would do well to read about the success stories in the book that are public-private partnerships. Everyone needs to come together to make rail work. Another take-away here is a quote from John Robert Smith, mayor of Meridian, Mississippi and a Republican: "Most politicians use the verb 'invest' when they discuss highways and airports, but when it comes to passenger rail, the verb of choice is 'subsidize'."

As I said above, Waiting On a Train is a good look at Amtrak's history and its present. No matter which side you're on in the rail debate, the book provides a lot of great information and dispels many rumors that are being bandied about today.

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