Oh, the Places You'll Go!
By Alan Mittelstaedt & Alfred Lee & Andy Klein & Anthony Miller & Rebecca Schoenkopf & Ron Garmon
The Cruel Desert Wind Hoax
Rescuing Amtrak from a journey to oblivion
~ By Alan Mittelstaedt ~
In 1999, Amtrak threw a giant party near the Las Vegas Strip to announce the imminent return of train service from Los Angeles to the city of lost personal investment. The usual turnout of train buffs, still bitter about the demise two years earlier of the romantic Desert Wind line from L.A. to Salt Lake City, with stops in Vegas, joined Nevada Governor Kenny Guinn and Senator Harry Reid at the affair. With coffee in hand, they toasted the custom-designed, European-style Talgo train that they were all promised would soon make several daily trips.
When will people learn not to count their train cars until they’re lined up on the track? Nine years later, passengers are still clamoring for what would be a popular, filled-to-capacity line for thousands who would gladly board the train for the five-hour ride to Las Vegas and forsake the hellish traffic on Interstate 15 or being stuffed in one of Southwest’s bulging commuter planes.
Today, the line is officially in limbo. The press release advancing the December 14, 1999, party has since been removed from Amtrak’s website, but the crime against the rail-riding public cannot be so easily erased. To make matters worse, the money that could go to needed track improvements for the Casino Special is being squandered on studies for the unrealistic Maglev train, which levitates in an electromagnetic field at laboratory speeds up to 600 mph. Some $45 million has already been gobbled up by Reid and other fanatics who swear by the fantasy of slightly slower 300 mph trains that would make the L.A.-Vegas jaunt in 90 minutes. They’ve been staring at their cards too long if they believe it.
The one huge problem: None of the realists think it will ever happen. “Maglevs are not working in China or Germany,” says Richard Silver, executive director of the Rail Passenger Association of California. “It’s just a bureaucrat’s dream. They’re wasting tons and tons of money looking into it. It’s a failed system both in terms of technology and interconnectivity. That time and money would be better spent on expanding already existing systems. It might be the wave of the future, but it will take generations to develop.”
Silver was referring to the Southern California Association of Governments, the region’s No. 1 cheerleader of the Maglev system, which is studying a hub of local routes that would eventually connect to Las Vegas, say, by the time you figure out how to beat the house at blackjack. A leading proponent over the years of Maglev has been L.A. Councilman Greig Smith, who rides Metrolink from his home in the Valley to City Hall once a week and is sincere about his faith in the technology. “The Maglev train would really bring Southern California into the 21st century. It would allow us to move a great number of people at ultra-high speeds, outside of our congested freeways and with zero emissions.”
Aside from this little problem of getting the Las Vegas service back on track, Amtrak’s achieving a level of success not seen since the second heyday of train travel came to an end in the 1950s and ’60s. Some 26 million passengers boarded trains last year, with 20 percent gains in traffic in California’s three heavily traveled corridors. “The biggest challenge is ridership is going through the roof and not having enough money to put cars in need of repairs back into service. It’s pretty much a national thing,” says Ross Capon, executive director of the National Association of Railroad Passengers. “In the summer months, because of the size of the fleet it might not be possible to keep up with demand.”
The train analyst cites the prediction by Goldman Sachs energy strategist Argun Murti that oil could reach $200 a barrel within six months. If that happens, and motorists must face $8 gas, the demand for train travel will be even greater. “Trains are such an obvious answer as the price of gasoline is expected to double,” says Capon. “Put it this way: The higher the price goes, the madder the public will become that politicians are basically doing nothing.”
Now’s the time to prepare for the onslaught of passengers. The Bush administration is doing the exact opposite. For the second year in a row, Bush proposed cutting Amtrak’s budget by more than 40 percent, to $800 million.
It’s not like Amtrak is seeking special treatment. The federal government subsidizes all forms of transportation, and rail gets the short end of the deal. Last year, the feds dumped $40 billion into the national highway system, $15 billion into aviation. The idea that the private sector can successfully develop and operate any transportation system, including Maglev, is far-fetched. Says Capon: “The biggest subsidy in transportation goes from the airline shareholder to the airline passenger.”
But politicians have failed Amtrak, forcing the system to live “day to day, year to year,” with little long-range planning, says 75-year-old Ed Von Nordeck, a train buff who used to hang out at railroad stations instead of dating when he was growing up. He got his first job as a Southern Pacific reservations clerk in Colton and is now a railroad historian enjoying his retirement in Riverside. He remembers his first day on the job in the ’50s. “It was a highly competitive business. From here to Chicago, you had three railroads and they all had their signature trains on that route, vying for customers.”
Train travel was most popular in the ’20s before the advent of the automobile. Then the Great Depression hit, wiping out many of the railroads. More boom years came immediately after World War II through the 1950s, the decade when jet travel lured many off the tracks. But it wasn’t until the late ’60s that doomsday arrived.
“The crowning blow was in 1967. A lot of trains existed to haul the U.S. Mail and that saved many a train,” recalls Von Nordeck. “But by 1967, truckers and airplanes got all of the business. Overnight, trains were just chopped, chopped and chopped because they were no longer needed.”
By the time Amtrak rolled around in 1972, many major cities in the U.S. were served by only a fraction of the lines. You could still get to most big cities, but on greatly reduced schedules. “It was just a steady decline,” says Von Nordeck. “Now it’s starting to come back.”
And, the Desert Wind to Las Vegas would face better odds of making a comeback if Sen. Reid would return the $45 million blown on the Maglev pipe dream.
Published: 05/14/2008
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Comments
Wow, you're so right - and to think that all along everyone's been thinking Hitler was this bad, inconsiderate dude!
The train! The train!
The BEST WAY TO TRAVEL!
Funny (as usual) and to the point (also, as usual.)
I am really, really, really, really glad you are the editor.