Rising gasoline prices are prompting more Americans to seek out transportation alternatives.
In Europe a high-speed rail network links seven countries already. But Amtrak only has 632 usable cars in the whole country.
Unfortunately, John McCain’s hostility to Amtrak over the years blew any chance of building a modern, effective passenger rail system before the price of oil hit record highs:
In 2000, when he was chairman of the Senate Science, Commerce and Transportation committee, McCain killed $10 billion in capital funding for Amtrak. He denounced Amtrak as a symbol of government waste, claiming, “There’s only two parts of the country that can support a viable rail system – the Northeast and the far West.”
He made these claims though Amtrak investment had the support of several notable Republicans. Senator Trent Lott of Mississippi warned that Amtrak “is guaranteed and doomed to failure if we don’t give it an opportunity to succeed. If you don’t have modern equipment, if you don’t have the new fast trains, if you don’t have a rapid rail system, it will not work.”
Tommy Thompson, the secretary of Health and Human Services during President Bush’s first term, was Amtrak chairman when McCain blocked the funding. Thompson said, “The traveling public are sending a distress call to escape our nation’s endless traffic jams and airport gridlock.”
How much better off would we be if we had invested $10 billion in upgrading Amtrak’s equipment eight years ago?
Click the link to read the whole column by Derrick Jackson. While Barack Obama has co-sponsored a Senate bill to increase investment in passenger rail, McCain’s website has no mention of rail in the transportation section.
We can’t afford to let McCain screw up our transportation policy any more than he already has.
If you are interested in passenger rail, I highly recommend these diaries by Daily Kos user BruceMcF:
America, as it turns out, was Made for High Speed Rail.