Last week, the Antiplanner attended a meeting about high-speed rail sponsored by the National Conference of State Legislators. One of the speakers represented Amtrak, and though she spoke for about 10 or 15 minutes, her entire presentation could be boiled down into one statement: “What Amtrak needs is money, money, and more money.” (Yes, she actually said that.)
This reminded me of a statement made by a representative of the New York City Transit authority last fall at a Federal Transit Administration conference about the deteriorating condition of older rail transit systems. Even though New York’s rail system is in much better shapes than the ones in Boston, Chicago, or Philadelphia, the official admitted (in the last slide) that “there will never be enough money” to bring New York’s rail lines up to a state of good repair.
Rail transit and high-speed rail have bottomless appetites for tax dollars, partly because they are politically driven rather than being funded out of user fees. But there is an even more critical difference between modern passenger rail and past transportation innovations.
