Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, November 13, 1995 TAG: 9511140052
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JESSICA MATHEWS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
The worst is that they are disproportionately subsidized by the government and in these lean-and-mean times should be cut off from federal support and made to sink or swim on their own.
In fact, rail costs are a pittance compared with auto subsidies.
Drivers actually pay less than two-thirds of the cost of building and maintaining roads through the gas tax and other user fees. The remaining $30 billion comes from general funds and property taxes. There are an additional $300 billion to $600 billion each year in unpaid costs for air and water pollution, accidents (and higher health insurance), noise and congestion. The last costs more than $100 billion per year and is projected to quadruple by 2010.
The apparent answer to congestion - more roads - doesn't work. Thirty years of trying has given us a wonderful national road network and, in the words of the Federal Highway Administration's stunning self-indictment, congestion that ``affects more areas, more often, for longer periods, and with more impacts on ... the economy'' than ever before.
The actual answer is a balanced transportation system, with transit, bicycle and pedestrian options supplementing auto for short distances, air for long trips, and fast intercity rail for distances between 100 miles and 500 miles.
State and local governments have learned the lesson. Economic development demands mobility; an unbalanced road-air system alone cannot provide it. There simply isn't enough land to keep traffic moving around large urban areas on roads, while a two-track rail line can carry as much traffic as 16 lanes of highway. Nor is it possible to unclog airports without subtracting the huge number of short-hop passengers who could be more quickly carried downtown to downtown by high-speed rail.
A balanced system means spending according to local and regional need, which doesn't sound like too much to ask, but under present arrangements is practically impossible.
State and local spending decisions are more a gaming exercise of trying to match the most possible federal dollars than a process of rational choice. The size of the various pots of federal money is the result of decisions made years ago to establish self-feeding highway and airport trust funds, leaving the other modes to fight for the table scraps.
For years, rail has gotten the worst possible treatment from Washington: bold mandates to provide service all over the country paired with too little funding to succeed. The combination has meant that the investment needed for economic takeoff - new rolling stock and upgraded rights of way - could never be made. Nonetheless, Amtrak now manages to cover 80 percent of its operating costs and believes it can cover all of them in a few years if it has a source of funds for capital improvements. It has asked for a half-penny of the 18-cent-a-gallon federal gas tax.
That has touched off another pointless battle over who is subsidizing whom and whether that half-cent ``belongs'' to highways or transit. The bottom line is that so long as the federal government spends anything on transportation - which is obviously a necessary part of the national economic infrastructure - it should be spending enough to maintain and upgrade the rail system we've got. If the national mood favored long-term investment a bit more than it does today, we'd be moving toward true high-speed rail, as have Europe, Japan and South Korea.
Meanwhile, it's essential to hold on to the remnant of what was once the world's largest rail network. About half - 160,000 miles of corridor - is gone, and as Will Rogers said about the wisdom of investing in land, ``they're not making any more.'' Where rail corridors exist they can be upgraded at reasonable cost. Where they've been lost, the cost of assembling the land is usually prohibitive.
Under a 1983 law, rail corridor that is about to be abandoned can be preserved by temporarily converting it to trail use. Seventy-five hundred miles of corridor have been converted to trails, with another 8,000 miles under consideration. The rail-trail metamorphosis turns eyesores into recreational assets and hubs of economic development. Local sponsors are so eager for these projects that they are paying far more than the required federal match.
Now, however, the combative property-rights movement and its friends in Congress want to claim that rail banking is a taking that requires federal compensation. Last month, a federal appeals court upheld an earlier ruling that such rights haven't existed since the Interstate Commerce Commission took over rail abandonment in 1920.
Requiring federal compensation for rail banking would not only create a new set of property rights where none now exists but would kill a sensible, popular and badly needed program. If there was ever a clear step backward, that would be it.
Jessica Mathews is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.
- The Washington Post
by CNB