Word: railings
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...many rail enthusiasts, the coming debate is long overdue. "Sept. 11 highlighted an existing problem: we don't have a balanced transportation system," says James RePass, president of the National Corridors Initiative, a nonprofit pro-rail group. "One of the reasons we have government is to do things we need that private business won't. No transportation system in the world really makes money...
...That doesn't mean that Amtrak, a creature of pork-barrel politics, is the right entity to revive rail travel. Burdened by the conflicting missions of providing comprehensive nationwide service and making a profit, Amtrak has failed at both. Now many experts are concluding that Amtrak as we know it will probably have to be scrapped--perhaps to be replaced by semiprivatized, regional passenger-train networks...
...Both airlines and highways have dedicated sources of federal funding: gasoline and ticket taxes. Until rail gets its own lifeline--like an extra penny of federal gasoline tax, which would bring in more than $1 billion a year--Amtrak may have to continue "fighting for table scraps," as CEO George Warrington puts...
...Members of Congress have proposed a host of bills to fix that, by giving Amtrak and the states anywhere from $20 billion to $70 billion in tax-exempt bonds and loan guarantees. But despite a diverse coalition of passenger-rail supporters, from Senate majority leader Tom Daschle to his Republican counterpart Trent Lott, it's unlikely that Amtrak will control all the funding or that it will survive much longer in its current form...
...passenger-rail market is still too small and fragile to have multiple carriers enter routes between cities, as the airlines have. But separate regions that have already formed high-speed corridors could open up their service contracts to competitive bidding--as many now do with commuter service--from a scaled-down Amtrak or private companies that operate commuter and passenger-rail services around the world, such as Connex and Herzog. "We see potential there, and we'd like to see opportunity," says Jim Stoetzel, a vice president at Connex North America, a division of France's Vivendi, which runs passenger...