Guest Editorial by Dr. Adrian Herzog, Vice President, URPA, December 1997
Agreed, we as rail passenger advocates are all in this together, but what now? The loss of service on the Desert Wind and Pioneer is an inconvenience for rail advocates but a complete catastrophe in those communities where we asked the local community to invest in station improvements. The loss of some frequency will, of course, undermine support for Amtrak anywhere; the complete removal of service has the effect of turning off support and making neutral observers actively hostile to Amtrak funding.
This is the situation in the Southwest, where the political support for Amtrak is essentially ZERO, but the interests of states like Arizona in regional rail are rapidly growing. Now, should Arizona RPA ally itself with an Amtrak that has no political support, or with the emerging local forces that are in favor of regional rail? This is not an easy decision to make since we all were part of the creation of Amtrak, but politics being what they are, and Associations needing to work with local politics, the result has been a rapidly emerging alliance with local politics in support of regional rail in which Amtrak has actively taken itself out of the picture by:
- Indicating that they don’t do these things in places like Arizona while bidding against the UP for the contract to run Metrolink trains in L.A.
- Taking the only train they had out of Phoenix just before the next local pro-rail ballot attempt to pass a regional sales tax initiative similar to the ones in California.
In California, Amtrak has never been supportive of efforts to improve service. At no time have they made any significant dollar investments in our corridors. Infrastructure work on the LA-San Diego line, essentially double tracking 80+ miles of the line, is now in full swing with only extremely marginal and reluctant Amtrak participation. The bulk of the investment is from the State and from our local sales tax initiatives. The situation is even more stacked politically against Amtrak here. Due to Amtrak’s constant lack of cooperation with the cities and counties that own the corridor, the local political powers are eager to “get rid of Amtrak ASAP.” The UP and BNSF have already indicated that they will submit operating proposals to compete against Amtrak for the contract to operate Metrolink. Now, should we at RailPAC ally ourselves with Amtrak in this situation?
Amtrak has wasted the last 25 years during which they should have built a strong national political base. Asking rail passenger supporters to build this base, when at the same time they undermine it, is a bit difficult. Western rail passenger associations are in open revolt for a simple reason. We have gotten nothing from Amtrak except hostility and outright sabotage of our efforts. Amtrak must therefore be either reformed or replaced so that we have an institution that realizes that the game is not only to run a few trains, but to constantly work with local advocates and each and every community served so that politically every community from Boston to Laramie and L.A. feels that these trains belong to them and that they should support them with ridership, with political and financial support. It is the neglect of this fundamental rule of politics that has brought Amtrak to the present crisis.
Attacking Arizona RPA or URPA or RailPAC for distancing themselves from Amtrak without knowing the political reasons is counterproductive. Asking us to blindly support the current system is a waste of time.
