OFF THE TRACK

...But this year, under pressure to reduce Federal spending, the appropriations committees may make cuts in the mass transit program...

...Rogers E.M...

...Unbelievably enough, the Administration has asked for an 8 per cent increase in the highway construction budget for next year — up to $8.6 billion — while calling for a 43 per cent decrease in Amtrak's service...

...In 1956, Congress established the Highway Trust Fund, a massive, self-perpetuating bank account that continually recycles gasoline taxes into interstate and other Federal-aid highways...

...When the coalition's public-interest lobbyists came before Congress to argue their cause, however, they were confronted with a lobby many times its size and easily equipped to defeat its opponents...

...He has also conveniently chosen to ignore the huge subsidies provided to the airlines, the waterway users, the truckers, automobile drivers, and bus operators...

...In the meantime, it is important to stop funding competing transportation systems and to pool our Federal transportation money in one central fund that can be applied to meet local and regional needs...

...One thing the local traffic reporter is not about to do, of course, is get on the air and start exhorting commuters to leave their cars at home...

...The ICC was founded, after all, at the request of the then-powerful railroad industry, which was eager to regulate its level of profits through Government-sanctioned rate-setting cartels...

...Thanks to laws enacted during the 1960s and 1970s, capital is flowing into urban mass transit systems...

...Abandoned by the mass transit operators, they made little headway, and today, despite increased funding for urban mass transit, the Highway Trust Fund is still alive and thriving...

...And with all the money saved in auto-related accidents, the city could scale down its emergency health care system and recycle its funds into transit improvements...

...Whitaker, the determined rail buff better known by his New Yorker byline, E.M...

...But doing away with the ICC — however desirable that step may be — won't suffice unless the ICC is replaced with some form of national transportation policy designed to be more responsive to society's larger goals...

...It was before the automobile made its vast inroads into urban America, and long before the Federal Government became wedded to the interstate highway system...

...During those first crucial years, Amtrak's board of directors included one private railroad chief who liked to ridicule Amtrak publicly as a concept akin to the stagecoach...

...There is no question that the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) has failed in its mission to serve the public good...

...In its haste to cut Federal spending for social programs, Congress is reducing subsidies for Amtrak and mass transit...

...Egged on by Amtrak's many critics in the airline and intercity bus industries, transportation policymakers are finding it increasingly difficult to argue Amtrak's cause...

...The Federal Urban Mass Transportation Administration supplies grants for bus systems, trolleys, subways, and the like, but those funds must be matched with local investments in operating subsidies and sensible transportation planning...

...Let's imagine, for a moment, what that might be like...

...President Carter's major thrust in the railroad revitalization field is a proposal to deregulate the industry...

...Those few ecclesiastical, turn-of-the-century train stations still in existence are reminders of an age in which America's dependence on trains inspired something closely akin to worship...

...history when a plan like this might have become a reality...

...sure to remember the streetcars...

...Today there are about 114 million cars on U.S...

...If it all were not so comical, you might turn over and go back to sleep...

...there isn't a railroad system in the world today that runs for profit...

...So the Highway Action Coalition teamed up with the mass transit lobby to fight for a general transportation fund...

...And once new transit systems are in place, they can make an impact only if steps are taken to penalize those who insist on commuting by car...

...streets and highways...

...The environmentalists knew this was hardly a solution — it doesn't make much sense to express national transportation policy in terms of competing trust funds — but politically the environmentalists were naive...

...As Snell wrote, "Diesel buses have 28 per cent shorter economic lives, 40 per cent higher operating costs, and 9 per cent lower productivity than electric buses____In short, by increasing the costs, reducing the revenues, and contributing to the collapse of hundreds of transit systems, GM's dieselization program may have had the long-term effect of selling GM cars...

...Only a generation ago, railroads bound much of the country together, linking jobs, prosperity, and growth in one vast network...

...His position reveals the worst sort of hypocrisy — unfortunately, the kind of hypocrisy that has historically infected the nation's transportation A transportation checklist For the names of groups concerned about auto pollution, contact the local chapter of the American Lung Association...

...The only major source of support for Amtrak comes from the railroad unions, whose workers have a vested interest in the system...

...Parking restrictions, bus lanes, and tough transportation controls can play an important part...

...Between 1956 and 1976, the Trust Fund funneled a phenomenal $90 billion into Federal-aid highways...

...and countless billions to purchase and refine oil...

...During one particularly poignant scene, the hero hops on a trolley in a steamy New York slum and escapes clear to Boston by way of one connecting line after another ("transfers: five cents...

...It was at that stage that the city had ample opportunity to buy up the transit line and operate it — at a loss if necessary — in order to discourage more commuters from driving to work...

...From reading various newspaper reports, they have learned only that Amtrak is losing money — more than half a billion dollars a year in operating subsidies — and yet we still don't have a reliable, efficient passenger rail system...

...According to an investigation by the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC), the New Haven earned $5.7 million in 1955, the year before dieselization began...

...Stunned by Amtrak opposition from a Democratic Administration, many members of Congress are quietly conceding that it may be time to dismantle the system and let cars, buses, and airplanes assume final, full control...

...It was back in the days when mass transit was so integral a part of our economy that private interests were battling over relatively small pieces of the pie...

...A streetcar system, set up along the main arteries, would leave just enough room for bicyclists...

...For more information about how transportation affects air quality, write Environmental Action, 1346 Connecticut Avenue N.W., Washington, D.C...

...When a New Deal law forced them to divest one or the other utility, many opted to abandon their trolleys...

...Indeed, in many communities the streetcar company and the local electric utility were owned and operated by the same corporate interest...

...His point was well taken," Whitaker recently noted...

...Out of an annual national transportation budget of $14 billion, Amtrak is asking for $760 million — hardly enough to warrant the attack of a transportation chief who ought to be conoerned more about mass transit and less about the future of the trucking and automobile industries...

...One out of every six working Americans depends on the oil-aulo-tire consortium and has a job at stake when it comes to funding freeways...

...On the side streets he would put minibuses to work picking up commuters and taking them to transfer stations...

...The buses were poorly made, expensive to run, and just plain unappealing for many urban dwellers...

...Off the track How America lost a sane transportation system Deborah Baldwin The small suburb where I grew up wouldn't be half the size it is today if it hadn't been for the old New Haven Railroad, which used to lumber in and out of town each day, rain or shine, on schedule or off, bearing its load of commuters...

...20003...

...All on-street parking would be outlawed to make room for mass transit, and anyone foolish enough to try to drive into town would find parking lots closed for business during rush hour...

...Needless to say, Amtrak has not been the success story many rail buffs hoped it would be, and sadly, few Americans understand why...

...The auto makers and road builders profited, while the rest of the nation learned to love buying and driving cars...

...Pure fantasy, right...

...In 1970, Congress established Amtrak, a quasi-governmental passenger rail service...

...There are innumerable symptoms of poor planning at both the Federal and local levels, but probably none is so revealing as the rise of the "traffic adviser...

...They retained control over many of Amtrak's labor contracts, knowing the full costs of featherbedding and expensive work rules would be passed on to the taxpayer...

...Its production of diesels was entirely rational in terms of profit maximization," Snell wrote...

...Today, despite oil shortages and all the rest, nothing has taken its place...

...Since 1921, the United States has spent $500 billion on highway construction...

...But significantly, a second major assault on the Trust Fund, this one in 1978, proved even less successful than the first...

...Amtrak's new passenger cars were sleek and modern enough, but they continued to travel over the same aging railbeds — for the most part still owned and operated by the private railroads — that had helped turn passenger trains into a national joke...

...Frimbo, likes to tell the story of one railroad lawyer who burst into his office the day Amtrak was founded to crow, "President Nixon has signed the death warrant of the long-distance American passenger train...

...During the early 1970s, citizens across the country began to rise up in defiance of a system they knew no longer made sense...

...Readers concerned about the future of Amtrak can join the National Association of Railroad Passengers at 417 New Jersey Avenue S.E., Washington, D.C...

...During my college years I traveled between home and school on the Penn Central, never certain whether the Sunday train would get me to Philadelphia in time for Monday morning classes...

...By 1961, the year the New Haven declared bankruptcy, the ICC, somewhat belatedly, condemned General Motors for contributing to the railroad's collapse and recommended that its new owner, the Penn Central, look into the possibility of re-electrifying the line...

...It's not enough to replace the upholstery or clean up the dining cars: The train has to leave and arrive at convenient times and with enough frequency to offer travelers the kind of flexibility they can get from driving or flying...

...In Washington, D.C., one of the major streetcar operators also owned suburban real estate, and he contributed not only a streetcar line but a beautiful new bridge across Rock Creek so his clients could commute in style...

...Last year Congress endorsed an increase in funding for mass transit...

...They began to block freeways and demand alternatives...

...A "fair share" program would grant all individuals — car owners and transit advocates alike — coupons to use or sell at will...

...Then, through a combination of carrot and stick, alternatives must be built in their place...

...Another early board member was head of the nation's largest private intercity bus company, whose buses operated in direct competition with Amtrak...

...An intense, rapid-fire announcer — sounding every inch like a brave war correspondent — shouts over the chopper's engine that traffic has blocked up Bladensburg Road and Route 101...

...But amid this ambitious series of programs, one important thing is missing: national transportation planning...

...The decline of the Toonerville Trolley was vastly accelerated when the nation's largest automaker, General Motors, entered the picture...

...We still have an opportunity to make a commitment to transportation policies more sane than those we have had in the past, but that opportunity will not be realized unless we organize at the grass-roots level...

...All across town, you can't help but think, thousands of revved up commuters must be absorbing the "traffic advisory report" and simultaneously surging toward that one main road left into downtown which now — alas — is no longer open...

...All that changed, of course, with the arrival of Henry Ford, who also plays a part in Ragtime's dramatization of early Twentieth Century America...

...Many members of Congress agreed to fund Amtrak only under pressure from the private railroad industry, which was losing great sums of money carrying passengers...

...Now, however, even that support is waning...

...As the Trust Fund grew fatter, it became easier and easier to pour still more capital into highway construction — and literally impossible to divert money into the railroads and transit systems that the nation needed so badly...

...According to a 1974 study by Bradford Snell, then with the Senate Antitrust Committee, GM, Standard Oil of California, Firestone Tire, and two other suppliers of bus-related products contributed more than $9 million between 1935 and 1958 to just one of several holding companies in order to convert electric transit systems in sixteen states to GM bus operations...

...even with reduced service, Amtrak still must pay to keep up the rails and stations and employ a large staff...

...policymakers...

...Left out of his rhetorical stance is the fact that no transportation system, here or abroad, operates at a profit...

...Local taxpayers now subsidize the automobile in countless ways ranging from the cost of providing parking spaces, traffic police, and road repair to the indirect costs of poor land use and pollution-related disease...

...As a sop to the public-interest community, Adams has asked Detroit to "reinvent" the car along more energy-efficient and environmentally sound lines...

...One of the most promising ways to get started in the right direction is gas rationing...

...Members of Congress should be asked to put a moratorium on highway spending and to use the money saved on mass transit instead...

...The system, indisputably, was designed to self-destruct, with each of its elements perversely aimed at proving decent passenger service a thing of the past...

...Working alongside them is a small but tireless citizen's lobby, the National Association of Railroad Passengers, whose membership at last count came to a mere 8,000...

...Concerned that not enough people were leaning toward dependence on GM products, the company and several allied interests in the tire and oil industries quietly began to buy up streetcar companies with an eye toward replacing them with GM buses...

...Given the energy situation, it is difficult to understand why President Carter has turned against Amtrak, or why his Transportation Secretary, Brock Adams, is allowed to blast Amtrak as an idea whose time has passed...

...Adams argues that his 43 per cent reduction would only remove about 8 per cent of Amtrak's passenger service from the system, since he is attacking those routes that carry the fewest passengers Using this sort of reasoning, the Postal Service might ask to be relieved of all its rural delivery obligations, since the most densely populated and hence most profitable elements of the postal system would remain intact...

...Here again, however, the nascent mass transit constituency was too small to persuade Congress...

...Second, as compared with railroad electrification, dieselization was substantially less of a threat to car and truck transportation...

...And, of course, they are consuming a lot of energy that might be better applied elsewhere...

...Environmentalists regained their optimism when the 1973-74 oil embargo underscored the need for mass transit...

...Few of them believed Amtrak would bring about lasting change...

...During the early part of this century, for example, it was not unusual for competing railroad and streetcar companies to spring up in the same area...

...After a long and difficult battle, Congress finally agreed to "open up" a small part of the Trust Fund for urban mass transit...

...It wasn't the streetcars alone that fell victim to GM's dieselization drive...

...the rest of the system stayed in place...

...Without it, getting to work would be that much worse...

...In order to resurrect the system, and others like it that were balancing on the brink of collapse during the 1960s, the railroads needed capital — and a great deal of it, since equipment, once it has deteriorated, is far more expensive to replace than it is to maintain it all along...

...Not only has the Trust Fund managed to outlive its usefulness, but it has compelled all levels of government to fund separate, interconnecting networks of roads...

...Instead of monitoring the traffic, our adviser would be in charge of controlling it...

...Only a tiny fraction of that service had survived into 1971, and 70 per cent of that remnant was now to be expunged...

...The traffic lights would be timed to keep the streetcars moving with due speed...

...But while many roads were stopped, at least temporarily, freeway fighters were unable to force major structural changes in the system...

...There were all the auto dealerships, gas stations, and rubber, asphalt, and oil manufacturers who had linked their futures to the road-building industry...

...There were the humbler intercity streetcars, too, although none of them remains today...

...according to one Congressional investigation, many railroads managed to receive incentive payments for service that was still sorely inadequate...

...D.B...

...In a few short decades, however, the modest Model-T has become something altogether different, and America's love affair with the automobile has grown old and decadent...

...In its typically fumbling way, Amtrak tried to reverse the railroads' priorities by offering "incentives" for decent service...

...But it remained a kind of glorified travel agent: The private railroads, under contract to provide the actual service, stayed at the helm...

...More important, the system's potential for saving energy and reducing pollution can't be realized unless the trains are full...

...New to the world of passenger trains, they were ill-equipped to identify and provide the kind of service non-airline travelers crave...

...He would be given a certain sum of money, along with figures on the number of people commuting into town, and he would be instructed to transport people with the greatest efficiency and least amount of waste...

...Since there would be few cars to crash into one another, the police force could be redirected toward pedestrian safety and bike patrol...

...While few communities recognized the need for publicly owned transit systems until the private operators declared bankruptcy during the late 1960s, now that many bus and transit systems are locally controlled, they are finally getting the kind of political and financial support they need...

...Along with mechanisms for national transportation planning, we need some means of coordinating transportation policies with steps to reduce energy consumption and to protect the environment...

...We must knock out the subsidies favoring narrow special interests over the general public interest, if for no other reason than because they were predicated on an inexhaustible supply of cheap oil...

...But there is no doubt that the company's activities had a lasting impact...

...In their wake they leave congestion, pollution, and crazy-quilt landscapes scarred by shopping center strips and fast-food hangouts...

...By 1956, GM had convinced the New Haven to convert to diesel and the railroad's end was in sight...

...As kids we used to love going to the station, and in our excitement we easily overlooked the dilapidated locomotives, the trains' dirty, worn seats, and their cracked, dingy windows...

...Apologists for the Highway Trust Fund like to say the system is paid for through "user" fees, and hence operates free of outright subsidies...

...When the trucking industry began to gain preeminence, thanks to construction of the multi-billion-dollar interstate system, the ICC turned its sights to the trucking monopolies and granted 'We still have an opportunity [for] . . . action' them the same kind of Government protection from "free market" pressures...

...The demise of the passenger railroad system was far more complex, of course, than the simple matter of GM conning the railroads into using diesel-powered trains...

...Given the Administration's position, it is perhaps not surprising that the greatest support for mass transit is found at the local level, where citizens are finally waking up to the true costs of subsidizing the automobile...

...They are crowding into downtown areas and piling up on interstate entrance ramps...

...42 billion to maintain airways and airports and to subsidize the airlines...

...If we make the needed investments now, transit systems will be much healthier in the years to come...

...Amtrak bought some new equipment and began to experiment with a helter-skelter array of marketing schemes, fare structures, and scheduling options...

...During those same years, state and local funding for roads climbed to $248 billion...

...But the notion of publicly owned mass transit seemed exotic to city leaders of that day...

...Within Amtrak headquarters, meanwhile, the convoluted managerial hierarchy included many former airline executives who had been brought in to "modernize" the system...

...By then, of course, it was too late, and before long the Penn Central also gave up trying to make the railroad solvent...

...At the local level, citizens must begin to organize around the need for mass transit — not only because it saves energy but because mass transit can relieve downtown traffic congestion and generally make cities more pleasant places to live...

...The Trust Fund was, in a sense, our first national transportation program...

...By 1959 the company was losing $9.2 million and carrying far fewer passengers and carloads of freight...

...Amtrak's schedules are often inconvenient, and the trains rarely depart or arrive on time...

...There were the state highway departments, for example, which were deeply loyal to the Trust Fund concept...

...Like so many Federal initiatives, Amtrak was set up not to replace the old system but to struggle along beside it...

...Members of Congress should be urged to reject this ill-conceived notion by establishing one central transportation fund that can be applied according to local and regional needs...

...Years ago such an animal did not exist...

...Secretary of Transportation Brock Adams hopes to perpetuate competition among various transportation systems by setting up separate trust funds for each mode...

...His plan would allow the private freight carriers to cut back service in areas where they are not making money, without giving any thought to alternatives that could do the job in a more economical and socially responsive manner...

...Quickly, he would deploy a fleet of buses to key areas outside the city...

...Washingtonians gradually realized they could drive over the bridge just as well, so it wasn't long before the streetcar company began to lose money...

...The Trust Fund, though, is a peculiarly American institution...

...It didn't work...

...My brothers and sister also attended schools conveniently linked to home by train, all of us subconsciously certain, no doubt, that to move much further afield would be to break the umbilical cord that bound us together...

...In Washington, meanwhile, the notion of national transportation planning is still taboo...

...Left out of their calculations are the enormous "invisible" costs of land destruction, lost property taxes, road repair, environmental pollution, energy waste, traffic control, and all the rest...

...But relatively few travelers are about to hop on board an Amtrak train so long as they believe they can travel more quickly and at less cost on an airline or turnpike...

...The Trust Fund was rationalized at the time as a "national security" measure — a rationalization that must seem, even among the most ardent highway enthusiasts, ironic in light of America's ever-increasing dependence on foreign oil...

...The auto lobby was powerful enough in its own right — GM, after all, is the largest corporation in the world — but the auto makers had plenty of friends, too...

...Ask CONTACT to supply you with the names of other activists in your area...

...Passenger service had been losing money since World War II, but Congress obstinately directed Amtrak to make the system run "for profit...

...20036...

...CONTACT, a recently established coalition of groups attempting to block urban freeways and to increase the role of citizen participation in transportation policymaking, can be reached at 1740 Dumbarton St., McLean, Virginia 22101...

...A number of things must be done at the national level...

...It is time to educate taxpayers about these costs and to rally behind transit systems that will discourage city residents from traveling by automobile...

...But railroad officials, convinced they would eventually lose out to competition from the intercity buses, trucks, and automobiles, hesitated to apply much more than slapdash improvements...

...The best proposal so far is not the one introduced by the Carter Administration, which would distribute coupons only to those who already own vehicles, but a "fair share" system that would give each adult American an equal number of coupons to use or sell at will...

...It was designed as an outgrowth of public policy, but it left management of the system predominantly in private hands...

...It was in 1973, for example, that the Highway Action Coalition organized a nationwide campaign to put the Highway Trust Fund out of business, hoping to replace it with a general transportation fund that could provide capital for locally designated alternatives...

...A diesel locomotive, for example, lasted one-half as long, did one-third the work, and cost three times more than an electric locomotive...

...But today, if you are a typical urban dweller, you're likely to be lying in bed listening to the morning radio when suddenly the station switches to the thundering sound of a helicopter circling overhead for a bird's-eye view of the city below...

...When polled about their attitudes toward Amtrak, the vast majority of Americans say they favor an upgraded system...

...The story of the Trust Fund fight is mirrored in countless battles before Congress as various special interests gamble for increasing levels of Federal subsidies without wanting to do away with some subsidies altogether...

...Like all regulatory agencies, it has ended up as a servant of the industries it was created to oversee...

...This would allow trucks and automobiles — through their reliance on the Highway Trust Fund — to continue to play a leading role in the nation's transportation picture...

...With little incentive to reverse all those years of neglect and, in many instances, outright contempt for the riding public, the railroads failed to get Amtrak trains in on time...

...He is described as a serious, determined man, a tinkerer turned capitalist, and his cheap, durable Model-T as an appropriate technology for its day, an apt invention for a young nation in love with personal freedom and mobility...

...In light of current oil shortages, support for Amtrak can only be expected to increase...

...The mass transit lobby, it seemed, had swallowed its pride and gone along with a compromise proposal to set up two trust funds — one for mass transit and the other for roads...

...But the traffic advisory, for better or worse, is an important city service in many areas of the country...

...It's much easier to tear down Amtrak, of course, than it is to come up with ways of getting it back on track...

...In 1935, for example, the New Haven and Hartford Railroad was turning a nice profit as one of two electrified railroads in the country...

...Any rail buff who has read the historical novel Ragtime is Deborah Baldwin has researched and written about national transportation problems for Environmental Action magazine over a period of several years...

...First, dieselization would vastly increase locomotive sales...

...Those long lines around the gas stations are a warning and a call to action...

...Adams's gas rationing program is similarly unacceptable, because it would base the distribution of coupons on vehicle registration...

...During these same years, the Government was investing vast sums in the highway system...

...and when the Penn Central went under, Con-rail was set up to take its place...

...right now, in areas of the country where trains travel empty, Amtrak is squandering more energy per passenger than the average automobile...

...This may save money in the short run, but over the long haul it will cost taxpayers more...

...During the Nixon-Ford era, Amtrak was kept alive by various members of Congress who were determined, at least, to keep trains operating in their own districts...

...If the plan worked, there would probably be enough transit passengers to warrant an investment in high-speed equipment...

...We don't have it now, we never have had it, and unless we take the necessary steps now, we are not likely to have it in the near future...

...But there was, in fact, a short period in U.S...

...The collapse of private rail service and privately owned transit systems has proven how expensive it can be to make long-overdue repairs...

...Those goals are fairly obvious...

...Under guaranteed contracts to provide service, however lacking it might be, the railroads focused their energy on their freight customers, where service remained in the realm of free enterprise...

...Nowhere has this trend had more profound impacts than in the history of Amtrak...

...It was the worst sort of lemon "socialism" conceivable: Angry taxpayers were being asked to pour money into a losing system while private operators took none of the risks and reaped all the benefits...

...And since few travelers opt for Amtrak, the system's overhead costs are disproportionately large...

...21 billion to develop and maintain waterways...

...The company made diesel engines for locomotives, too, and, according to Snell, encouraged the private railroads to buy GM diesels instead of the vastly 'It wasn't the streetcars alone that fell victim to GM's dieselization drive' more desirable electrified engines made by GM competitors...

...He would sweep automobiles off the primary roads altogether, so that the buses could move with the least impediment...

...Over the past decade, as the drastic impact of the automobile has slowly penetrated our consciousness, the Federal Government has made faltering attempts to create alternatives...

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