Larry Kaufman Clouds Rail Debate

The latest issue of Isthmus has a letter to the editor from Larry Kaufman in which he takes issue with Marc Eisen's "Gov. Walker's fateful decision on rail". Eisen laments Governor Walker's decision to reject federal money which would have extended Amtrak's Hiawatha line to Madison and paid for various maintenance work on the line generally.

Kaufman writes:

"The simple fact is that America once had an extensive commuter rail network but it was rendered obsolete by 20th-century technologies. For short trips, cars provide far more convenience and point-to-point connectivity than trains, and planes are much quicker (and cheaper) on long trips."

If Eisen was writing about intercity rail, why is Kaufman conflating it with commuter rail? Intercity rail is exactly what it says: rail between cities. Commuter rail, on the other hand, it rail connecting suburbs and outlying areas with urban cores. This isn't to say that people don't commute on the Hiawatha but, even as Kaufman concedes in his letter, the ultimate goal was to make Madison a stop on a lengthier route which would stretch at least from Chicago to Minneapolis.

This reminds me of the great victory that anti-rail activists scored when debating the federal grant. I have encountered many people - and not all of them were Walker-supporting Republicans - who reiterated the refrain that the money was to be used to introduce service between Madison and Milwaukee. This is misleading. The money would have extended the Hiawatha line to Madison meaning that the route would have run between Madison and Chicago. Yet I am convinced that many people didn't know this. I have encountered several people who thought that the service was strictly between Madison and Milwaukee. Even Mike Ivey, a business reporter for The Capital Time here in Madison got it wrong:

But that request came after Walker — following up on a campaign pledge — had already rejected $810 million the feds allocated last year to establish a Milwaukee-to-Madison high-speed rail line.

That $810 million dollars would NOT have established a Milwaukee-to-Madison high-speed rail line, it would have added a new stretch to the existing Hiawatha line and connected Madison to Chicago and points in between. To his credit, Mr. Kaufman gets it right in a comment on another piece by Eisen when he refers to the plan as "the Chicago-Milwaukee-Madison route".

Kaufman's letter is also flawed in another way. He says that rail was rendered obsolete by the plane and the car ("20th-century technolgies") and implies that rail is so 19th century. The problem is that the car is not a 20th century technology. Like the train, it was born in the 19th century. Furthermore, he neglects to mention a significant government intervention which led to the decline of rail, namely, the interstate system. Not only did it allow people to jump in their cars and go, but it also helped open the door for trucks to make significant inroads into long-haul freight transportation. Railroads lost a lot of business to trucks, not just cars. It was not simply the invisible hand of the free market via the march of technology which brought down passenger rail.

For all of Kaufman's bluster about the "basic facts" of the superiority of the car and plane, the Hiawatha broke its annual ridership record last year with the route providing 823,163 rides in 2011, a 4% increase over 2010. Indeed, Amtrak's fiscal year 2011 saw more people than ever ride its trains. Not only are more and more young adults choosing to forego getting their driver's license and getting a car, but apparently adults from previous generations are increasingly finding the train to be a superior alternative to driving.