More on mass transit & some recent political history

WASHINGTON — Of all the presidential prospects, Sen. John McCain appears the least likely to lift Amtrak out of the long, waking nightmare it has endured for decades. Amtrak has no more dedicated foe in the Congress than McCain, R-Ariz.

The GOP’s likely nominee is also the least likely to care about a national transportation policy. The absence of such a plan is at the heart of why motorists and airlines — and now grocers — are gagging at the price of fuel these days. ...

...In the 1990s, Moynihan was not cash-conscious. Then a Democratic senator from New York and a power on the public works committee, he wanted the federal government to invest in high-speed intercity rail. President Bill Clinton’s minions smothered Moynihan’s hopes.

The nation’s governors also turned up their noses at almost all of the mass transit subsidies Moynihan offered them.

Clinton’s disinterest in rail and mass transit might be a reflection of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s views. She supports modest Amtrak subsidies like most Democrats, but she has invested little or no campaign time talking about it. Nor has Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., her rival for the presidential nomination.

To their credit, neither has voiced the righteous outrage at Amtrak support that McCain has at every opportunity. Someone should mention that 12 states that control 180 of the 270 electoral votes needed for election are highly dependent on Amtrak.

Under President Bush, Amtrak intercity service has limped along, deteriorating by the week. Service from Buffalo to Albany is now hampered by track work that can add up to an hour to the trip.

Five days a week, Amtrak travelers from Buffalo to Boston must take a bus on the Rensselaer-Boston leg because of track work. Thanks to the Clinton administration’s creation of regional freight rail monopolies that have no oversight.

After 16 months in office, congressional Democrats have finally produced a bill reauthorizing Amtrak. It offers only anemic operating cash to the line, and fails to extend the heavily traveled Northeast Corridor into Virginia and North Carolina, whose roads choke with traffic.

But the bill backed by Rep. Brian Higgins, D-Buffalo, offers $24 billion in tax-exempt bonds and 80 percent reimbursement to states for high-speed rail construction.

The business is there. Gas prices, clogged skyways and air travel hassles have driven more customers to Amtrak, hamstrung as it is. Business is up 11 percent nationally, and almost 20 percent on the rickety line from Buffalo Niagara to Manhattan.

What is needed is an unapologetic presidential commitment for a nationalized passenger system on the scale of the Interstate Highway program. President Dwight Eisenhower, who built it, was no communist.

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Joyce Marcel: Our "Cheap Oil Fiesta" s Over

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It’s the end of the world as we know it, and for a little while, at least, it sounds lovely.

Imagine a world where the air is cleaner because fewer people are driving cars. Where you can hop on a train to visit your friends in the West River Valley or spend a day in Boston, arriving refreshed instead of wiped out from highway driving. Where chemical-drenched agribusiness is dead, and food is grown locally. Where big box stores are gone, and the shops on Main Street sell the things you need. Where small schoolhouses again dot the hills of tight little communities.

This vision harks back to a simpler time, perhaps one directed by Robert Capra and starring Jimmy Stewart. But it may not turn out to have a happy ending.

James Kunstler came through our town over the weekend, giving a talk at Marlboro College on Saturday and sharing his semi-apocalyptic view of a post-cheap oil future. He’s talking about the time when “our cheap energy fiesta” is over, and his vision has a certain relevant ring in a week when gas prices creep up over the $4 a gallon mark and truckers in Spain tie up all the roads to protest paying over $10 a gallon for diesel.

Already, many of us are driving more fuel efficient cars, converting to fry oil, trying to piggyback errands in town and, in general, driving less to save gas. And many more of us are worrying how we’re going to heat our homes next winter.

Kunstler, an enemy of sprawl, has been writing about energy issues for the past five years. He’s not coming at this topic from a right, left, conservative, liberal, progressive, Democrat or Republican perspective. In his opinion, we’ve all screwed up.

For the last 200 years, as Americans have enjoyed an upward path of progress on every level, we have taken “bigger, faster, more” as not only our motto but our birthright.

In the past, a better technology always came along to save our butts. Kerosene replaced whale oil. Electric lamps replaced kerosene. People complained about manure-clogged streets at the turn of the last century, and then along came Henry Ford and his automobile.

Kunstler’s warning is that this upward swing will not continue indefinitely. He quotes Dick Cheney’s famous line, “The American way of life is nonnegotiable.”

“Then reality will negotiate for you,” Kunstler said. “You don’t even have to be in the room.”

The reality is a world of depleted oil reserves and intense global competition for what remains. The current manipulation of the commodity markets and the devaluation of the dollar isn’t helping, either.