Word: amtrak
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...late Monday it was evident that immediate crisis will be avoided: panicked lawmakers from New Jersey and New York, horrified by visions of stranded commuters pounding on their doors say they've extracted a promise from President Bush that Amtrak will get its money. There will be no shutdown...
...that's a real shame. Because there's nothing Amtrak needs more than a good swift kick in the corporate butt. An unprecedented commuter crisis? Fantastic: the news media will be crawling all over that story, and Amtrak will have nowhere to go. Americans will finally get the message: yes, folks, this is your national rail system, incapable of maintaining train service even on one of its only profitable routes. Isn't it pathetic? Aren't you proud...
...Which might not be a bad thing. A shutdown wouldn't be nice for the people who couldn't make it to their offices, but we could always just take the $200 million that Amtrak wants and hand it out to these commuters. Take a paid vacation, on Uncle Sam. It's June. We could all use a couple weeks...
...Then Amtrak should be forced to take a good hard look at its operations - rather than just pocketing still more of the taxpayers' money - and figure out if it is still a viable business. (My hunch is the answer to that question is no; not many viable businesses ask the government for $1.2 billion in funding while providing very few people with very little service.) Amtrak's defenders argue that airlines and highways get massive subsidies each year, far more than Amtrak receives. Yes, and highways and airlines, while far from perfect, happen to work: They get people and goods...
...Amtrak doesn't. It has had 31 years to get its act together, during which it has hogged the rails with trains that seemingly get slower by the year. Even the most unmotivated 31-year-old knows there's a time when asking parents for huge allowances for no particular reason becomes totally unacceptable. Or, to put Amtrak's conundrum in a different, perhaps less emotional light, consider this: if you had a car that only ran when it felt like it but required a huge and nearly constant outlay of cash, would you keep it? Let's hope that...