ONE HUNDRED years ago this month, the New York Central railroad introduced a new train on the run from New York to Chicago, and called it the Twentieth Century Limited. It became the most famous and most glamorous train in America, and by the time Cary Grant, in the movie North by Northwest, was stowing away in an upper berth, it was streaking between the two cities in 16 hours. It left Grand Central at 5 p.m. and arrived in Chicago at 8 the next morning.
A century after The Century, Amtrak runs a train over the same route -- in 19 hours. When it's on time, that is. Americans, in truth, can't run passenger trains as well as their grandfathers did.
Since its founding 30 years ago, Amtrak has been a poorly thought-out, poorly financed, and poorly run stepchild of a rail network. And now the cash has run out.
To avert a shutdown this week, the Bush administration has promised a rescue, but is insisting on a thorough overhaul of the system. Planning for the future with a gun to the head isn't the best way to make policy, but it is clear something has to be done about Amtrak, so why not now?
The problem is this: The White House is on the wrong track. It wants Amtrak to sell off its Northeast corridor route, and it wants the states to pay more of the freight. Neither idea makes much sense or would address the real problems.
The one thing its free-market critics don't admit is that Amtrak doesn't lack for passengers -- it has just never had the wherewithal to carry more than the 24 million people who climb aboard every year. Americans would ride trains if they had them.
If it were possible to go from Cleveland to Cincinnati, for instance, or from Dallas to Denver without going through Los Angeles, Americans would do it.
The passengers are willing but the means aren't there -- not the agreements with the railroads or the start-up money or the operating subsidies or the equipment. Especially not the equipment.
How bad has it gotten? Amtrak deferred so much maintenance that its rolling stock has been breaking down, and this spring it was forced to pull sleeping cars off its Chicago-Denver train and its Chicago-Louisville train, even though sleeping cars are its biggest money earners. That's a system that's broken, and needs fixing.
Trains make sense. They're good for the environment, for clearing congestion, for convenience, for providing an alternative to the airlines. The price tag for a sensible, restructured national system would not be excessive, especially compared to the billions that the administration has lavished on the airlines just since Sept. 11.
United Airlines is now asking for an additional $1.8 billion loan guarantee. Let's spend it on the trains instead -- it's high time this country got acquainted with the Twenty-first Century.