Plum Crazy

Saving David Gunn
The controversial defenestration last week of Amtrak President David Gunn, a possible illegitimate action by its incomplete board, has significance for the entire country but even more so for the Tri-State Region.

In a region with so many transportation options, it's easy to forget that Amtrak service between Boston, New York and Washington is still the first choice for many travelers, particularly business travelers. Although Amtrak trains are expensive and often late, reading and working on one is still a better use of time than jumping hurdles to and from an airplane seat, or driving clogged highways. Improving inter-city train travel within the Northeast and Atlantic seaboard would be a significant economic boost to this region.

But with Gunn's forced departure, that challenge looks ever more difficult. The Amtrak board essentially fired Gunn last week without warning. Congress has challenged the deed, questioning whether the board had the authority to make such a decision. The reasons are complex, but they include the possibility that the board, which had three of seven seats vacant and two seats filled without the usual congressional approval, lacked a quorum. Sen. Frank R. Lautenberg of New Jersey said the board was retaliating for the Senate recently passing a long-term funding package that ignored President Bush's wishes to break up and privatize the nation's passenger railroad service.

Bravo to Sen. Lautenberg for speaking out, and for his work in shepherding a funding package through the Senate. Amtrak needs this kind of attention and more from our region's leaders, and not just those in Congress, if it is going to survive and thrive. While it may not be the first thing that comes to mind for his next term, Mayor Bloomberg should put Amtrak on his list of priorities worth spending some political capital on.

The problem with Amtrak is not its existence, but that it has been whipsawed back and forth by utopian visions of what it can achieve. Both the pro- and anti-train factions are partially to blame. What was good about Gunn, and so tragic about his forced departure, is that he had a coherent, reasonable vision of how to improve the nation's train service.

It says something about Gunn that the terms he threw around most with me in a lengthy interview in 2004 were "ties," "tracks," "ballast-deck bridges," and "catenary lines." Gunn, the former head of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, had an imminently practical vision for restoring and improving the nation's intercity rail service that was very similar to how he restored and improved subway and commuter rail systems in this region in the 1980s. He eschewed dreams of fancy European high-speed rail, or libertarian management schemes built on the virtues of privatization. Instead, Gunn focused on unglamorous tasks like repairing or replacing wrecked cars, crumbling tracks and ancient catenary lines.

Using tried and true technology, Gunn maintained that Amtrak could soon have trains whipping between cities within major regions at more than 110 mph. True, that's not the 200 mph of France, Germany and Japan, but it was a practical and affordable vision, Gunn said.

All that was needed for this was a healthy level of government funding. But here things stopped. For some reason, many rail opponents believe that building and maintaining a road, port or airport at government expense is fine, but to do so for a railroad is wasteful socialism. This obtuse and easily refuted argument has nevertheless repeatedly stalled Amtrak.

The irony is that more support exists across ideological lines for swift, dependable train service than ever before. People and politicians who actually live in the Northeast, mid Atlantic, Florida, Northwest, California Coast, and Gulf Coast deal with overburdened highways and beleaguered airports and are willing and even eager to spend taxpayer dollars for swift, dependable train service. It's no fluke that Sen. Trent Lott, a Southern conservative, and Lautenberg, a Northeastern liberal, have attempted to save Amtrak from the Bush administration's privatization schemes.

Sept. 11, 2001 showed more than anything the need for train service as both an alternative and a backup to air and highway travel. Since then, Amtrak's ridership has boomed even as, paradoxically, it has run into tougher political opposition. Right now, the federal government spends a bit over a billion dollars a year on Amtrak, or about what it costs to build a few cloverleafs. It's a tiny fraction of what the federal government spends on highways and air travel.

Gunn often said in speeches and interviews that he welcomed an honest discussion about the nation's transportation system and its funding priorities, because he thought rail service would hold its own in that debate. It's a great tragedy for Amtrak and its passengers, present and future, that that honest debate has not yet taken place. A good start would be placing Gunn back in his job as president of the nation's passenger railroad service.