Regionalists should detect a huge disconnect in Washington’s painful and protracted debate over Amtrak’s mega-debts, operating deficits, labor headaches, management and future. (See Peirce columns of June 30 and March 10 on Amtrak.)
All the posturing, from White House to Cabinet offices to Capitol Hill, has ignored an issue critical to the 21st century form and quality of life of life in America’s regions. It’s highway alternatives. Without transportation back-ups, increasingly grim congestion will engulf most American regions. We’ll have 60 million more Americans by 2030. Research for our Citistates reports indicates that dozens of square miles of space per metro region will be demanded up just for added parking — not to mention new freeway lanes — between now and 2020.
Rail networks promise the most promising new capacity to relieve mounting gridlock (and winglock). We’ll need them most to connect downtowns and airports and major suburban destinations in 250-600 mile corridors from the Northeast Corridor to Florida, the Midwest to California. We’ll need to tie them to commuter rail and light rail networks within our major regions. And to serve new population nodes via transit-oriented development.
Sure, that will cost multi-billions. So does all transportation. Regionalists have to speak loud and clear, display the vision others lack or hide. We won’t have successful, competitive regions without world-class, integrated, intermodal transportation systems. Rail’s a critical ingredient. Kill rail, or keep it on thin gruel rations, and we imperil our entire national future.
(The best source on what’s happening on the Amtrak and U.S.-wide rail front, with constantly updated reports, check the web site of the National Corridors Initiative, headed by James RePass.)