NJ Truthiness Watch — Amtrak Edition

Sunday’s editorial has the NJ wagging their wizened finger at Democrats for not embracing Rep. Mica’s idea of carving out the Northeast Corridor for a rail privatization scheme. Essentially, they claim that Democrats see Amtrak as a jobs program and ask:

Is Amtrak a transportation company or a jobs program?

This is, of course, a banal question and one that doesn’t even begin to frame the really serious issues surrounding this discussion. As for jobs, you can see by more detailed reporting that *both* Democrats and Republicans pay some lip service to the jobs provided by Amtrak.

What happens to the Northeast Corridor if it is meant to be privatized is the thing to worry about. Starting with the fact that Amtrak became a public passenger rail service 40 or so years ago *precisely* because the private sector could not keep it going because it was so unprofitable, there is nothing yet in Mica’s plan that demonstrates that the private sector can now do any better. And watch how this is being framed — as a “public-private” partnership, which, in the hands of today’s GOP means the funneling of your tax money to the pockets of their friends while you settle for cleaner rail cars or some such. Seriously, they are not privatizing ANYTHING if they still plan on spending your tax dollars on it.

What is wanted here is some detail on how this privatization scheme would work; how much tax money would be involved in this; how service would be affected; how HSR would be implemented (and how much it would cost and in what timeframe); detailed projections on how the system starts paying for itself and what happens to the rest of the system once you carve off the most profitable piece of it.

And this is really key — there are no major HSR systems on the planet that operate without government subsidies. But then, we don’t have any airports or interstates that don’t operate without some government subsidy, either. Why is it that we need rail to deliver financial performance that none of the rest of our infrastructure is asked to do? Frank Lautenberg notes:

“Last year, we spent more than $40 billion on highways,” he told the panel. “Over Amtrak’s entire 40-year history, we’ve spent just under $38 billion total. That’s worth repeating: Amtrak has received less federal money in its history than highways get in a single year.”

If anything, this system has been underfunded and meant to wither on the vine. And nor does it help that when Amtrak does try to shut down parts of the service that cost them too much to keep going (portions of the transcontinental routes), they get a great deal of pushback from Congresspeople who use this as a campaign opportunity — to tell the folks back home that they saved their (little used) train service.

You might, of course, point out that both Virgina and Maryland have contracted out to run their commuter rail services. Neither are being asked to plan, build and operate a High Speed Railservice. The company that has those contracts is Keolis Rail Services America, whose majority owner is Société Nationale de Chemins de Fer. Who is that, you ask? Why, that is the French government-owned company that runs the French national rail service. This same company was part of the team that built the French HSR service and operates that service to this day. (Right now, the SNCF has had some issues in Maryland — there is a law asking them to clarify their role during WWII in transporting Jews, homosexuals and others to death camps.)

But this discussion starts with asking why we would treat Amtrak differently than the infrastructure for roads or for airplanes or for ships and NOT with taking people to task for trying to save some jobs. Because Amtrak is fairly important to the economic life of New Castle County (at least) with more jobs (and more growth) at stake than the 1000 or so employed by Amtrak here, I would expect that Delaware’s newspaper would be more interested in figuring out the how and whys of a privatization scheme instead of scolding Democrats for wanting to save jobs. Which, of course, isn’t exactly all they have concerns about.