As I was scanning my Facebook feed this evening, one headline jumped out at me: “The Triumphant Return of Private U.S. Passenger Rail.” Without checking the source, I was sure must be from the folks at The Onion, or perhaps their recent Upworthy-inspired parody site, ClickHole.
But in fact, the headline was sincere. It turns out it’s an article by Henry Grabar, a veteran writer at City Lab, describing a new plan to reinstate private rail service from Miami to Orlando. It describes the details of the plan, known as All Aboard Florida: starting in 2016, private trains will connect Miami, Ft. Lauderdale, West Palm Beach, and eventually Orlando, running at speeds up to 125 mph (205km/h), and making the trip in just three hours.
The plan would also coincide with a new residential complex built around the new Miami station. When discussing the merits of private ownership, Grabar has some sour words for Amtrak, America’s lackluster public passenger train service:
Conceived as a political escape valve to relieve freight companies of the burden of passenger service, Amtrak was never expected to succeed, says Albert Churella, a historian of the Pennsylvania Railroad. ‘It was made very clear to everybody — wink wink, nudge nudge — that in a few years we’re going to shut all this stuff down,’ he says. Amtrak has survived thanks to its political appeal and popularity, but not because it’s good business; it receives more than a billion dollars in taxpayer subsidies each year.
Sure, nobody likes subsidizing stuff. But can we really accept at face value the notion that the end goal of all transportation is to turn a profit? Shouldn’t there be other standards by which we judge our transportation options?
Having said that, I sense that many of you may be thinking you have me pegged, and some more libertarian minded may already be skipping to the comments to roast me as a Stalinist-Marxist. But actually, I feel that there are pros and cons to be taken into consideration when considering private passenger rail.
It may in fact be necessary to expect a passenger rail line to turn a profit. Good intentions (and maybe a dash of fairy dust) may be sufficient enough to drive my writing career, but the creation of a 200-mile railroad takes cold hard cash. And not just cash in the form of salary, but as a significant return on investment.
Or so the argument goes. In the US, the case of Amtrak is often held up as a boogeyman, as proof positive that public train ownership is forever doomed to failure. And after plenty of negative experiences on US trains, I can see why many would accept this argument. As a west coast native, I’ve found out time and time again why Amtrak’s LA-to-Seattle Coast Starlight train is nicknamed the “Coast Star-late”.
But stepping out of the US, a number of examples illustrate that private rail service is not without its dangers. A perfect case in point is the British rail system. A 2012 Guardian article points out that train travel in Britain is the most expensive in the world, among other issues. Also, many countries in Latin America used to have robust, publicly owned passenger train networks, which were wiped out (such as in Mexico) or significantly cut (such as in Argentina – shameless plug: I wrote about this last year in TBC) as a result of privatization.
And is Amtrak really that bad? Sure, the service is often targeted by Republican critics, such as John McCain, for its subsidies. But others in congress, even some Republicans, stand up for the service. Last year, Streetsblog reported that Republican John Robert Smith stood up for Amtrak subsidies in congress, making the case that “maximizing the system’s value requires increased, stable, and dedicated federal funding.” At the end of a hearing, Smith gave a touching portrayal of how Amtrak was essential to people in his state, even if it didn’t turn a profit:
“On the subject of the long-distance trains, that when my senator, Trent Lott, got to see the Mississippians, and saw that system was vitally important to them — the retired couples who use that system to visit their dispersed families across the country, the single mothers with children [for whom] the only the way they could visit their grand[parents] affordably was through the use of that train, the disabled vets that were on board that train — when he saw the Mississippians impacted and affected, he saw the importance of that facility.”
Needless to say, Florida has a lot more tourist appeal than Mississippi, which raises an important point. If the new Florida train is marketed as a luxury, it may make sense to run it privately and orient its management toward profit. If it is considered a good that should be accessible to all, the way Smith describes trains in Mississippi, it would be best left in the hands of Amtrak.
Perhaps one model for how new train service in Florida might look can be derived from another City Lab article, which describes the rise of “luxury” public buses in some US cities. These buses are privately owned, offer amenities unavailable on public buses, and in some cases duplicate busy public bus routes. I feel that, as long as these buses don’t interfere with public bus service (i.e. if they start blocking public bus stops like Google Buses in San Francisco), their existence should be tolerated and even welcomed by city dwellers.
If Floridians can implement their new private train service as a similar luxury line without hurting other service, more power to them. But let’s not forget that in order for transportation not to become a rarified privilege of the elite, we would do better to offer basic transportation options – whether for city buses or long distance trains – operated by public entities, which have been shown to do a better job of making them widely accessible.
The current Amtrak train service in Florida would probably never be described as “triumphant”. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have value – even if that value comes in the form of allowing citizens of Florida to affordably get around their state instead of a few more black digits on an accountant’s spreadsheet.
Drew Reed is an online media producer and community activist specialising in sustainable transportation. He lives in Buenos Aires.
Images: All Aboard Florida
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