If you live in the United States, you are well aware of just how inadequate our non-car transit is: chances are, you’ve walked along a highway at least once, been frustrated by inadequate bus schedules or tried to walk somewhere only to find that you need to cross five lanes of traffic.
And then one goes abroad, or at least hears about what there is abroad. In Europe it is possible to get from Edinburgh to Warsaw, Rome or Seville and not set foot in a car, and do so in a reasonable amount of time. Indeed, going abroad always leads one to ask the question, “Why can’t we have this here?”
The question is, then, how does one go about fixing public transit in the U.S.? It is a daunting, almost Herculean task, to reassemble the network that was once the envy of the world and the pride of a nation. It is perhaps easy, owing to its daunting vastness, to simply write off the task. What I aim to do here is to sketch the means by which the hurdles of public transit — the physical plant, public ownership and funding — can be dealt with. I’m specifically discussing trains here because that is easier. With proper funding and time, we can, in fact, improve the system.
The immediate questions at hand are numerous. I, of course, assume that such transit is necessary — a fact beyond necessity of explanation — and that Amtrak, an entity poised for the fixing of public transit, is the most facile avenue for achieving this goal. Amtrak focuses on inter-city rail rather than commuter rail, and was formed precisely because private industry either failed to provide that service at worst, which is why Amtrak exists in the first place, or actively destroyed it, as is the case with the General Motors Conspiracy.
Further, passenger economics have evolved to the point where it is necessary for such a rail company to operate at a loss in order that those vital services might be provided. In the interest of ensuring universal inter-city access, it is true that some lines would not be nearly as profitable, but their provision nonetheless allows affordable freedom of movement where cost would otherwise prohibit that. As support for this, I would like to submit the cost of an Amtrak ticket on the northeast corridor, which can cost as little as $26. By comparison, the cost of gasoline alone — notwithstanding the risk of accident, fatigue, snacks, lost productivity or tolls — can easily be up to $55, and the inclusion of those other costs can cause that number to increase dramatically. From those inter-city stations, there is a ready necessity for bus services to circulate people to and from the station, as well as within the city.
Privatization of those assets has been broached, but we would be best advised against doing so according to the lessons of the privatization of Soviet assets in general. But also, and more pertinently, according to the lesson of the privatization of British rail, which saw stark decreases in affordability and safety. It is in the interest of affordability that passenger rail remains a federally chartered company like the United States Postal Service in the sense that we spend our taxes on affordable, reliable transportation just as we do for an affordable, reliable mail service. Furthermore, a national rail service builds on the economy of scale that railroads perform so admirably, and having multiple passenger carriers would only waste resources on duplicate service.
The projected cost of building up American high-speed rail infrastructure to modern standards is projected to run into the trillions of dollars, an eyewatering amount. This overlooks several aspects, though, including already existing infrastructure and the base necessity that service be regular and reasonable. It is not absolutely necessary that every line, for instance, run at 300 miles per hour with maglev trains. But it is necessary, for the support and expansion of intercity rail to that end, that a regular funding stream be established. A sufficient avenue for this would be a small gas tax. A two-cent national gas tax, when accounting for lost demand, would generate perhaps $20 billion over 10 years, which is Amtrak’s entire budget in the same period. A 25-cent gas tax, which is less than the regular fluctuation in gas prices, would generate $300 billion over 10 years, more than adequate to at the very least establish that baseline service.
But, secondly, that gas tax provides an incentive to drive less, and therefore make that change to public transit which would, in turn, slash national carbon emissions. This would improve air quality immensely, as well as allow cheaper transportation to take up less space, allowing the environment to recover.
Last week’s From The Desk discussed the necessity of third spaces. Affordable transportation is a crucial aspect of that: principally by promoting population density which can allow those spaces to more easily pop up, train stations represent one of those low-margin, high-lingering facilities (though, I must note, there is work to be done on this: see one of my prior articles on Penn Station’s hostile architecture). Even buses and trains themselves can serve as a third space, and while the monetary cost is significant, the benefits far exceed anything that can be quantified with money.
