Certain public services are so obviously desirable that they are beyond debate in modern urban societies. The thought of doing without schools, parks, hospitals, street lighting and such could scarcely enter a civilized mind. The ever wandering human species recognized roads as obvious necessities soon after man began meandering across the earth. Later, mechanical wonders that aided travel were put in the same category. Today every ranking industrial nation nurtures the use of cars, buses and airplanes. Along with these, railroads are treated as indispensable in every well-developed country—except one.
The amazing exception happens to be the U.S., a nation that pioneered in railroading with more vigor and daring than any other in the 19th century. It also did so on a grander scale, binding an immense continent with tracks and producing trains of such magnificence that they moved Nathaniel Hawthorne to exclaim: "They spiritualize travel!" Most Americans once agreed, and even today travelers lucky enough to wind up on a good train find this way of traveling superior in every way to the fumes and peeves of the throughways and the sardine-can intimacy of the time-rupturing jet planes. Yet, in spite of the heroic past, the U.S. has let its passenger rail travel system fizzle and sputter down into a national embarrassment, Today service is scant, schedules are unreliable and amenities are often sparse. The equipment includes, in the forthright phrase of Amtrak President Alan Boyd, "a lot of junk." The situation might be called ridiculous if only in light of the universal recognition of the passenger train as the most expedient mode of moving large numbers of people from city to city. In an energy-short era, the railroad, fully exploited, offers the most fuel-efficient means of public transport.
The plight of U.S. passenger travel is downright humiliating when it is compared with the superb services of, say, Japan, France and Britain. British trains run so close to the mark that passengers carp about a five-minute overdue arrival. Japan's celebrated bullet trains, at up to 130 m.p.h., make the U.S. counterparts seem like earthworms. Naturally such service does not come free. Britain subsidizes its trains at a yearly rate of $728 million, Japan (with less than half the U.S. track mileage) at $4.1 billion and France at $930 million.
When Amtrak was created eight years ago there was hope for improved U.S. passenger trains, and there was even some progress. But now, with the country still needing to do a great deal better, it stands at the verge of deliberately doing worse. Reason: a Department of Transportation plan that would amputate 12,000 miles from Amtrak's 27,500-mile system. It would also wipe out some popular trains, including the Washington-New Orleans Crescent and New York-Canada Montrealer. This would be accompanied by slashes in Amtrak funds, forcing the company into offering truncated services at higher fares.
Though the plan would likely reverse the recent trend of growing ridership, Transportation Secretary Brock Adams insists that it is constructive. Still, he has pushed it in Congress mainly as a handy device for saving perhaps $300 million a year. Congress, which must reject or acquiesce in the scheme by May 22, has so far seemed woefully ready to let it go into effect without substantial changes.