Problem #27: Rail in the US

Problem #27: Rail in the US

Rail travel- passenger and freight- has taken a big hit in the US over the past 60 or so years. For passengers, private cars- typically carrying only one occupant, the driver- have become far more popular than any form of mass transit, including commuter rail. Over longer distances- that is, outside of the northeast corridor- air travel is far faster than rail. For freight, while long haul freight continues to move by rail, much of it is via truck and air.

The latter fact, though, gave me an idea this afternoon. Historically, the main- if not only- reason that railroads like the Pennsylvania and New York Central carried passengers at all was that the Federal Railroad Administration required them to do as part of the condition for issuing them a license to carry freight. Freight was where the profits were, but passengers were the loss leader.

My thought is this: rather than breaking up Conrail and selling it to CSX Transportation and Norfolk Southern, it should have been merged with Amtrak. Then, as part of its requirements to run freight, it could have been required to maintain and upgrade the nation’s rail network.

Consider this: the main reason that Amtrak is able to run Acela- which is, incidentally, purely mid-speed rail by any world standard, hardly high-speed- on its Northeast Corridor tracks is that the Pennsylvania Railroad did a complete systems upgrade… in the 1930s. That tells us two things: first, that the PRR was really good; second, that we really need to upgrade our rail network.