Is this any way to run a railroad?

According to the National Priorities Project, Congress has so far appropriated $285 billion for the Iraq war. There is no end in sight. The war appears to cost about $90 billion a year, or approximately $1.7 billion per week.

Not so long ago, Norman Mineta, Transportation Secretary and apparently nonpartisan water carrier for whichever administration is in power, scolded Amtrak by explaining,
"We cannot save intercity passenger rail service by burying our heads in the sand and simply shoveling more money into a system that cannot help but fail." Doubtless, the Bush crowd, who like spending money only on war and the rumors of wars to come, were pleased at Mineta's fine sense of selective budget restraint.

In 2002, David Gunn, a railroad enthusiast by inclination and successor to the otherwise thankless job of running Amtrak, surveyed the decrepit rail system, the worn-out rolling stock, and the company's chronic shortage of credit, and told Congress he needed $2 billion to bring Amtrak into profitable operations, to modernize the system (to at least Third World standards, that is) and to place it on a secure financial footing. The Bush Admin grudgingly conceded they could cut loose with $900 million, which Congress subsequently increased to $1.2 billion. Predictably, Amtrak has continued to languish, and the day may not be far off when passenger rail service in the United States is confined to a few favored corridors near New York and Washington D.C.

Amtrak, obviously, is just the wrong thing to shovel money into. Granted, rail transportation, in part because of its superior coefficients of friction (steel on steel versus rubber on asphalt), and its capacity (when optimally run, that is, like they do in Germany and France) to maintain steady speeds over long distances because of a dedicated road, is far more efficient and less insane-making than driving cars and trucks. Further, railroads can be electrified and offer this additional possibility of reducing greenhouse emissions, for example, by running them on nuclear generated electricity or carbon-sequestered, coal-fired plants. There is a future in railroads, in other words, which cannot be said with the same certainty about automobiles. Railroads are a great investment opportunity for the United States, as they were once before, in the 1800's, when America (yes, this country) had more total miles of railroad, more railroad miles per capita, and even more railroad miles per land area than any other nation on Earth.

But we don't think that way. It's one of the many ways that Congress and the American two-party system have simply ceased to help. It's wrong to say they're "irrelevant," as is often done, because they do spend a lot of money. If you work for (or better yet, own) a defense contractor, their spending habits may please you. If you wish they would do something, anything, that would be of some tangible, material, discernible benefit for the mass of the American people -- well, the Swimmer hates to disabuse you of this cherished fantasy, seeing as how it maintains your interest in Congress's brave tackling of crucial issues like enabling Visa to hound you into bankruptcy court, but you're going to have to be patient, and like the refugees in the opening scenes of "Casablanca" who want to board that plane for Lisbon -- wait. And wait. And wait.