There Are Two Railroads Out There: Ours and the One You Imagine

"There are two railroads out there," said Amtrak President Alex Kummant in a Wall St. Journal article today. "There's the one we run every day, and there's the one everybody imagines is out there." Kummant was asked about a topic that I wrote about in the Valley Advocate: really fast trains that easily connect metropolitan areas, like they have in Europe.

In the story, Kummant is said to 'scoff at the idea of European-style high-speed service in the congested Northeast,' because it would require a dedicated corridor. Today's system is shared with CSX freight trains, and in parts the trains have to slow down to a snail-like 30 mph to get through a tunnel near Baltimore.

Despite the Amtrak President's dour outlook on my Euro-rail fantasies, the rail line has seen surging ridership, as much as 33% on the line between San Francisco and Sacramento. In the east, things are crowded, but there's a good hope for more funds to buy more railcars. A bill would authorize $3 billion in borrowing and channel $400 million in gas taxes each year to the railroad. Now that's progress.

Bikeways and Railroads Get Well-Deserved Funds

I read two pieces of good news yesterday and today that brighten my spirits. First was a story in the Wall St. Journal that said Amtrak will be given double the funding from previous years, and that Congress has just voted in a lopsided YEA to support spending much more on trains.

They've heard so much from their constituents about adding cars to crowded commuter trains and so many more people are taking the train now that flying is becoming more expensive, they finally have to do something. Granted, Amtrak is saddled with stupid union rules that make their employees the ones in charge, and the Bush adminstration has been fighting to change work rules to loosen up the hierarchy. But in spite of this, Amtrak is all we've got. So doubling th funding for this seems like a good idea to me.

The second piece of good news is that the Franklin county Bikeway is officially open. This connects with other bike routes running from the south and from the north and winds its way from the Greenfield Swimming area across Turners Falls, and onto an old railroad bridge into Deerfield. It's too bad the path ends there and for most of the rest of the way down to South Deerfield, it will be a shared path with cars. I guess taking that much more land is just too much money, it cost $2.8 million to build this 4 mile stretch.