Nation must commit to passenger rail travel

[roody]

The Buffalo News : Opinion
Sunday, June 8, 2008

Nation must commit to passenger rail travel
Douglas Turner



WASHINGTON — Of all the presidential prospects, Sen. John McCain appears the least likely to lift Amtrak out of the long, waking nightmare it has endured for decades. Amtrak has no more dedicated foe in the Congress than McCain, R-Ariz.
The GOP’s likely nominee is also the least likely to care about a national transportation policy. The absence of such a plan is at the heart of why motorists and airlines — and now grocers — are gagging at the price of fuel these days.
Republican President Richard
M. Nixon, prodded by adviser Daniel Patrick Moynihan, created Amtrak as a national passenger system in 1971. That was the last time any president did anything for rail travel.
Later, Republicans led by McCain decided Amtrak should make money. It had to thrive, they insisted, without the huge government
subsidies that he and other “conservatives” give the airline and trucking industries.
The subsidies are pay-back for the huge campaign gifts these industries channel to incumbents.
Struggling along on relative spoonfuls of federal cash, Amtrak is still the way that people of modest means, and people who can’t fly or drive, get from one downtown center to another.

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http://www.buffalonews.com/246/story/350203.html

[Warren Stupidity]

1. I could take the train to work!

Only we ripped up all the train tracks and converted the rail beds into bike paths. Why did we do that?

[Leopolds Ghost]

4. Don't ask me... but some of them were pretty slow twisty and windy.

Let's re-use the tracks in urban areas and build new, improved high-speed
tracks elsewhere. We build new highways on empty land all the time. :shrug:

[Captain Hilts]

2. Idiots don't realize how airline subsidies vastly outweigh that for rail. nt

[But....]

3. Needs to be started now!!!

It would help with so many problems.:bounce: