Congress' boost to Amtrak fueled by high gas prices, too much traffic
Chicago would be hub of nine-state, high-speed network
Jon Hilkevitch | Getting Around
October 6, 2008
Highway congestion, high fuel prices, dependence on foreign oil, pollution and global warming are creating perfect conditions for reforming stagnant transportation policies.
Is it any wonder that Americans are cutting back on driving and turning to trains in record numbers?
Congress got the message last week that the status quo, including an overreliance on the airline industry, is no longer acceptable for moving people around the state or across the country.
The awakening crystallized when lawmakers passed the Federal Railroad Safety Improvement Act by a veto-proof margin.
The landmark legislation, which the White House said President George W. Bush will sign, calls for almost doubling the federal funding provided to Amtrak—about $13.1 billion over five years.
Among other precedents, it authorizes $3.4 billion to create high-speed passenger rail corridors and provide rail capital-improvement grants to states.
The ambitious project proposed for the Midwest would cover 3,000 miles in nine states. All lines would radiate from a hub in downtown Chicago. The cost of a fully completed Midwest network is estimated at almost $8 billion.
"Finally people are waking up to the fact that we need to move people without their cars," said Richard Harnish, executive director of the Midwest High Speed Rail Association, an advocacy group.
Modern, comfortable, double-deck trains with wide seats and large windows would churn along at top speeds of 110 m.p.h. The faster trains would shave hours off trips, delivering passengers from one downtown to another hundreds of miles away.
Amtrak trains in most of the Midwest now operate at up to 79 m.p.h., although average speeds are much slower, especially around Chicago due to freight traffic.
Driving, which results in more than 40,000 fatalities a year, would take a back seat as a transportation choice, proponents say.
So, too, would air travel as consumers factor in the time it takes to go through airport security, the hassle of flying and the time spent traveling from outlying airports.
Travel times of almost 51/2 hours on Amtrak's route between Chicago and St. Louis would be cut to 3 hours and 49 minutes on a high-speed train, according to preliminary estimates.
In the past year, more than 501,000 rides were taken on Amtrak's Lincoln Service route between Chicago and St. Louis, a 284-mile trip, a 15 percent increase over the previous year. Some 1.2 million rides a year would be taken when the route is served by high-speed trains, according projections by the Illinois Department of Transportation.
In addition to the congressional action, the Federal Railroad Administration last week approved grants to Illinois to install train-control and cab-signaling systems on part of the route to facilitate high-speed trains.
A high-speed rail line between Chicago and the Twin Cities could be running within five years, according to U.S. Rep. James Oberstar (D-Minn.), chairman of the House Transportation Committee. The roughly eight-hour trip on Amtrak from Chicago to St. Paul would be cut to about 51/2 hours under the working proposal.
Planners envision the line running from Chicago up through Milwaukee, Madison, the Twin Cities and eventually Duluth, while separate routes from Chicago would extend east to Detroit, Cleveland and Cincinnati.
It's apparent there would be a strong market. Even today, with slow service and a poor on-time performance record, Amtrak finished fiscal 2008 last week with its sixth straight year of ridership growth.
The Midwest Regional Rail Initiative involves Amtrak and the nine states: Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Ohio and Wisconsin.
"A network of states produces much better results than each individual state going its own way," said Randy Wade, passenger rail manager at the Wisconsin Department of Transportation, which is coordinating the Midwest initiative.
"We now have a political network, too, comprised of at least 18 U.S. senators," Wade said, adding that high-speed rail projects would stimulate the economy by creating thousands of permanent jobs.
To keep up the momentum, the funding Congress authorized last week must be appropriated annually, and millions more added to the pot to pay for the 80 percent federal share of the high-speed rail projects.
Supporters such as Ross Capon, who heads the National Association of Railroad Passengers, likened the congressional authorization to issuing a "hunting license" to go after big game. While representing a start, it's not the same as bagging a moose.
What is needed to guarantee that the rail program continues to grow is for Congress to establish a rail title in the multiyear federal transportation legislation, Wade said. That would ensure that the passenger rail program benefits from the same steady funding that the highway and mass-transit programs receive, Wade said.
People who have been promoting high-speed rail in the U.S. for decades point to a convergence that cannot be ignored.
"Clearly the world has changed in the last year," Harnish said. "At the start of 2008, we didn't think there was a chance of this legislation moving. Having the runup in gas prices right before the Olympics has really opened up people's eyes. And the problem won't go away."
A 20 percent match by the states would be needed to help pay for the network, which is estimated to cost $7.7 billion, based on 2002 dollar estimates. About $6.6 billion of the total would pay for infrastructure, and $1.1 billion for new trains, officials said.
About 13.6 million passengers would ride the trains each year by 2025, according to ridership projections, and 90 percent of Midwesterners would live within an hour ride of a high-speed rail station.
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