CONLEY COMMENTARY (WSAU) – Joe Biden and I have one thing in common. We both love trains.
As a senator, while others fly back and forth to their home states, Amtrak Joe is seated comfortably on the Acela enjoying his one-hour high speed jaunt from Washington to Wilmington. His Amtrak experience is much different than mine. I’m usually in a sleeping compartment on the overnight, 18-hour, often late Lake Shore Limited from Chicago to New York.
Why do I bring this up? Joe Biden is the best friend Amtrak has ever had. The railroad, run by the federal government, is getting unprecedented amounts of money. And yet the on-the-ground operations at Amtrak are still an unreliable mess. The lesson is this: our federal bureaucracy is so clumsy, so lumbering, so ineffective, that even with effort from the highest levels of government – very little changes.
Joe Biden pushed through big railroad infrastructure projects. The Gateway Tunnels under the Hudson River are a ‘go’ after being blocked by then-New Jersey Governor Chris Christie. And the governor was right to object to his state having to cover any cost overruns, which are typically in the billions. For good measure, Amtrak Joe included funding for the Baltimore Harbor Tunnels, which date back to the civil war. New sleeping cars and long distance coaches are being ordered. Some portions of freight railroads that host Amtrak trains will get passing sidings and both-direction signaling.
Some projects are wastes of money. One harbor railroad will get three new battery-powered switcher engines instead of diesel models. Train service will be added between New Orleans and Florida – billions of dollars to carry about 250 passengers a day.
So, even with its best-friend-ever in the White House, day-to-day things at Amtrak are mostly the same. They still have a shortage of engineers and conductors; those who didn’t get COVID shots were fired. They have a shortage of equipment. The Chicago to St. Louis train – a five-and-a-hour hour trip – often runs without a snack car. It breaks down and they don’t have a spare. The new engines that have arrived in the past year have software problems and are unreliable. Passenger cars that are damaged in railroad crossing accidents take forever to be repaired, so trains run short. And most passenger trains are tenants… they lease space from freight railroads, where getting the tonnage from terminal to terminal is prioritized over moving actual people.
So if the President of the United States, a train guy, can’t change the status quo at Amtrak, what are your chances when you’re dealing with the Department of Labor, or Agriculture, or Energy, or Education? You’re at the mercy of a big, grinding machine. Meanwhile the train slowly rolls down the tracks. And you’re kidding yourself if you think someone is at the controls.
Chris Conley
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