National Corridors Initiative

The National Corridors Initiative, Inc. 35 Terminal Road Suite 210 Providence, RI 02905 MA Office: 59 Gates Street, Boston MA, 02128 CT Office: 8 Riverbend Drive, Mystic, CT, 06355

Press Release - November 5, 2007 Voice: 617-269-5478 Email: jprepass@nationalcorridors.org James P. RePass President & CEO

NEW YORK CITY --- PARADE Magazine, at 34.7 million readers one of the largest-circulation news publications in the United States, published a cover story November 4 that, for the first time in the broader news media in many years, intelligently explained what has happened to our nation’s transportation system, and how we need to turn that situation around.

With the exception of The New York Times’ editorial pages, the news columns of The Wall Street Journal, and until recently only a handful of other general news circulation papers, few news outlets, print or otherwise, have understood or written about in depth the transportation crisis we have created, or successfully explained it.

The article, by author Peter Richmond, is one of the most important to appear in more than a generation of generally spotty or shallow news coverage of the American transportation crisis, outside of specialty or academic periodicals, in large part because of its broad reach. Until recent congestion became “gridlock”, general assignment reporters were usually only able to spend a small amount of time on any given subject, and could not become instant experts at everything they covered.

PARADE’S article was also unusually timely for a weekly newsmagazine, as the United Senate just this past week passed a multi-year Amtrak authorization bill of $12.4 billion. “American spent about 3.7 billion hours stuck in traffic last year, burning gasoline whose price had soared by 60%. At the airports, security lines snake endlessly, runways are choked, and delays are common. One recent study found that, between January and August 2007, one in four flights arrived late; 159 flights were kept on the tarmac for more than three hours in August. As a result, more than half of U.S. businesses augment commercial air travel with expensive corporate jets and charters. Isn’t there a better way?” asks author Richmond, who then writes:

“One solution is staring us in the face. Many transportation experts insist that the best answer to transportation gridlock is efficient intercity rail travel. Trains use one-fifth less energy than cars or planes. They run in bad weather. They’re business-efficient and tourist-friendly. Yet, since the early 1960’s–with the exception of the Northeast Corridor, from Boston to Washington, D.C.–railroad transportation in the U.S. has become largely irrelevant. For most Americans, train travel from city to city remains an afterthought. And for good reason: Our national rail system is inadequate, relying on aging equipment and a shrinking route-map. The system sorely lacks both financial resources and government support.”

Quoting the National Corridors Initiative in the next paragraph, PARADE relates: “The transportation funding mechanism is skewed toward highway construction,” says James RePass, principal executive of the National Corridors Initiative, a transportation advocacy group. “The game is rigged against rail.”

PARADE then goes on to analyze how America has fallen so far behind Asia and Europe: “Blame it on our love affair with the automobile and a historical antipathy of legislators for subsidizing the nation’s railroads. Our government’s disdain for trains began with FDR, who in the late 1930s turned his back on fat-cat railroad barons asking for federal handouts. Two decades later, President Eisenhower certified our commitment to cars when he built the interstate highway system.

The current administration has been particularly unfriendly. Amtrak, which is federally funded, received just $1.3 billion last year–the same as 25 years ago. Compare that to the $40 billion allocated for highways and the $14 billion for airlines in 2006. For the 2008 fiscal year, the Bush Administration proposed just $800 million for the railroad–a $500 million cut from 2007. In 2005, the President proposed pulling the plug entirely on Amtrak’s subsidy.

Later Richmond writes: “As our airways and highways have slowed down, demand for train travel has been increasing. In fact, Amtrak ridership was up for the fifth year in a row, reaching record levels–despite the fact that a third of trains arrived late last year. In the Northeast, since Amtrak introduced higher-speed Acela trains in 2000, the railroad’s share of 10,000 daily commuters between Washington, D.C., and New York City increased from 45% to 54%.”

“Train travel is the thing for a one-day business trip,” PARADE quotes Malcolm Edgerton, a Chicago architect who travels often from Chicago to Springfield on Amtrak for work. A recent trip, he said, “would have meant seven hours of driving, and I would have been exhausted. Instead, I left in the morning, did work on the train, got there at noon, did my thing, even had time to visit a museum. Then, on the way back, I drank Scotch in the bar car and traded stories with a salesman and another architect. The round trip was $40.”

Perhaps the best quote came from an Amtrak sleeping car attendant, “It’s not a nostalgic thing, like, ‘Let’s save the old choo-choo,’ ” insists Lou Drummeter, a sleeping-car attendant on Amtrak’s Washington-Chicago Capitol Limited for 20 years. “It’s a 21st-century answer to our transportation problems. People want an alternative.”

Editor’s note: For the complete article go to: http://www.parade.com/articles/editions/2007/edition_11-04-2007/A_Better_Way_to_Travel