The Great Railroad Revolution (64 page)

As railroads centralized their services, focusing on major routes between cities, the automobile provided transport that could potentially go anywhere. . . . [T]he automobile met the needs of all those fairgoers, picnickers, politicians, and others who found it more difficult to arrange for special fares and excursion trains. The train required more conformity of behavior than ever before. Sitting quietly with arms and legs inside the car, no stopping en route, no rowdiness, no drinking, for many added up to no fun and precious little individuality. The car, if nothing else, held out the promise of adventure that the railroad had offered about a hundred years before.
¹³

The car remains, for most Americans, the default form of transportation. Rail is seen as a poor man's option that needs support from taxpayers, always an unpopular notion. It is easy to criticize the railroads as subsidy junkies that are a drain on government finances. However, that is more a result of presentation than substance. The modern big freight railroads have none of the self-promotion skills of their forebears and their Phoebe Snow–type publicity antics. On the contrary, the amazing boost in efficiency since the 1980s and the important role they play in carrying freight are little known to the average American, who imagines that roads are the dominant mode even for long-distance traffic, which is far from the case.
Indeed, the $1.4 billion in taxpayer subsidies that Amtrak received in 2011 has to be viewed in the context of support for roads. Depending on what factors are included, it is even possible to suggest that the cost of roads in terms of infrastructure, pollution, climate change, maintenance, road accidents, policing, and so on is greater per mile than the support given to Amtrak. Yet road spending, as in the UK, is generally viewed as investment, while spending on rail is considered subsidy. This is a long-standing gripe of rail supporters. In 1959, the Interstate Commerce Commission calculated that between 1921 and 1959, $140 billion of public money had been provided for streets and highways. Yet between 1950 and 1956, at a time when the railroads were struggling, railroads paid $1.1 billion in federal, state, and local government taxes, amounting to 11 percent of their revenue. However, the railroads themselves invest far more in their own businesses than other industries, typically around 18 percent of revenue.
¹⁴

The paradox is that, in many respects, there is a residual affection for the railroads. On a visit to the Lancaster Quilt & Textile Museum, in Pennsylvania, I was struck by an exhibition dedicated to how Christmas had been celebrated throughout the twentieth century. There was a room for each decade, and whereas everything from the style of the trees and the baubles hung on them to the wrapping paper on the presents and the style of the greetings cards changed as time wore on, there was one ever- present gift that seemed to delight the children over the whole period: a train set. Translating that nostalgia into support for railroads in the twenty-first century is a challenge.

Although it may seem hard to be optimistic for America's passenger railroads in the face of such widespread ignorance and, at times, sheer hostility, there is in fact plenty of potential. The railroads need to be seen as modern. Amtrak's long-distance trains, evoking the nostalgia of a long-gone era, are not, in fact, a good advertisement for the railroads. They require subsidy and are effectively a tourist attraction rather than an integral part of the nation's infrastructure. Few, apart from rail fans and those with a flying phobia, would notice their abandonment. As mentioned above, the railroads are strong in three major markets, and transporting people thousands of miles slowly across a continent by rail is neither cost-effective nor particularly environmentally sustainable.

Running frequent fast services between city pairs such as New York and Washington, or Dallas and Houston, is precisely where the railroads have a key advantage and can operate on a commercial basis, although probably not if they have to bear the full costs of providing the infrastructure that their rivals on the roads do not. There is plenty of scope to exploit these opportunities, but that requires strong political direction backed by not inconsiderable sums of money. While the high cost estimates for improvements—a feature of railroads in the UK, too— understandably give ammunition to rail's opponents, there is no doubt that America would benefit enormously from a better passenger rail network. One suggestion would be to allow private companies to develop property around new rail facilities, the basis of how much rail construction is funded in Japan.

It is very likely that as the oil starts to run out and becomes very much more expensive, Americans will rue the day that they allowed their passenger rail services to decline to the point of near extinction. All that money begrudged over the years to Amtrak will not be seen as canny business but rather as a missed opportunity. Rail's energy efficiency and its comfortable travel are advantages that no other mode offers. Railroads are enjoying a revival across the world in the form of metros, light rail, suburban services, and high-speed lines for intercity travel, as well as retaining a large share of the market for freight in several countries. Perhaps nothing better illustrates the reinvention of rail in the twenty-first century than the fact that Saudi Arabia, the world's biggest oil producer, is building major new lines for both freight and people across the country. Nearby Dubai, that town built in the desert on the basis of the ubiquity of the car, has opened two metro lines stretching forty miles and has plans for two more.

Can America join in this rail renaissance? In a way, it has already done so. Its freight railroads are very successful and profitable and have ridden out the recent recession in a remarkably healthy state. American railroads carry more freight than any other system in the world apart from Russia. Warren Buffett, the legendary investor and stock market player, who bought the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway in 2009 for $26 billion, does not back losers. He is a philanthropist, too, and stated clearly that the environmental advantages of rail were one of the reasons that prompted his investment. The railroads' construction of new tracks to carry coal from the
Powder River Basin in Wyoming is another major success story, as production has expanded dramatically because of the relatively “clean” nature of the coal mandated by the Clean Air Act of 1970. The area now provides 40 percent of America's total needs, serving more than forty power stations from Texas to Ontario, Canada. Starting with a single-track line built in the 1970s, the railroads have invested more than $2 billion to build or refurbish hundreds of miles of track to serve the mines. Although there have been problems in meeting the demand, consolidation of the railroads involved— it is now a joint operation between Union Pacific and Burlington Northern Santa Fe—has resulted in a smooth-running operation that runs up to eighty trains per day on the track heading east out of the area. Each train consists of between 125 and 150 cars, making it the line with the heaviest annual load in the world. Again, it is a success story that has attracted little attention in the wider public. The huge double-stack container trains that run from the Pacific Coast to Chicago and beyond, and which necessitated many parts of the old transcontinental lines being double-tracked, and the coal traffic from the Appalachians to the East Coast are other success stories of the freight railroads.

In terms of suburban and commuter rail, numerous cities have recognized their importance as a way of reducing congestion. There is, too, a hidden benefit, one that is rarely discussed. It is noticeable that New Yorkers, who have by far the best public transportation system in America, are fitter and healthier than Americans elsewhere, thanks to their high use of railroads and their consequent readiness to walk. New York's Metropolitan Transit Authority is struggling to keep up with rising demand and is spending $3 billion on extending the Long Island Rail Road from its present cramped terminal in Penn Station to Grand Central and on to Queens.

Every American who travels to Europe and sees the way that the railroads have survived and flourished in the twenty-first century is a potential convert to rail. Amtrak's recent surge in passenger numbers at a time of great economic difficulty suggests there is much latent demand. Where there is a reasonable service, such as in the Northeast or on some lines out of Chicago, young people, perhaps less hooked on cars than their parents, are being attracted onto trains because traveling on them means they can still use their cell phones, laptops, and other electronic devices. The railroads have a 40 percent share of the New York–Boston rail-air market, and
it could be much more if the trains were faster. Or indeed, if gas prices rise even further.

The harsh truth, however, is that America will not get a national railroad network, high-speed or otherwise, without a more radical and comprehensive strategy than was contained in the stimulus package, which was an attempt to please everyone and ended up being ineffective. Nevertheless, much can and should be done. The less newsworthy or dramatic development of suburban rail systems and light-rail networks may be a better way of initially getting more people quickly onto the railroads than the big-ticket, high-speed rail schemes promoted by a government eager to attract the headlines. The fact that the stimulus package is concentrating on a few key corridors is the right way to go, but it would be better to do a few cheaper ones rather than throw vast amounts of money at schemes like California's high-speed rail project that are unlikely to see the light of day for a generation or more, if ever. America could enjoy a new age of the train. Environmental conditions may again make flying difficult or expensive. Cars are losing their allure and are unsuitable for many long journeys. America needs to relearn the joys of railroads that have served them so well in the past and, indeed, continue to do so today, albeit invisibly.

1
. The British sections of this chapter are based partly on my earlier book
Fire & Steam.

2
. Often spelled “waggonways.”

3
. Jack Simmons and Gordon Biddle,
The Oxford Companion to British Railway History
(Oxford University Press, 1997), 567.

4
. As with most of these early developments, their precise origin is subject to debate.

5
. George Rogers Taylor,
The Transportation Revolution, 1815–1860
(1951; reprint, Harper Torchbooks, 1968), 56.

6
. Ibid., 57.

7
. Ibid., 63; Thomas Crump,
A Brief History of the Age of Steam
(Robinson, 2007), 83.

8
. Taylor,
Transportation Revolution
, 55.

9
. Ibid., 15.

10
. Ibid., 21.

11
. Technically, West Virginia did not exist at that time, as it was still part of Virginia.

12
. It eventually became part of Highway 40.

13
. Ibid., 26, 29.

14
. Albro Martin,
Railroads Triumphant
(Oxford University Press, 1992), 8; Taylor,
Transportation Revolution
, 28.

15
. Francis T. Evans, “Roads, Railways, and Canals: Technical Choices in 19th-Century Britain,”
Technology and Culture
22 (1981).

16
. It can still be seen in the Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers in Paris.

17.
They were not yet chartered as cities.

18
.
Rocket
was then merely a description of a firework rather than a spaceship, though some had been used for military purposes, too.

19
. Now, rather oddly, called Jim Thorpe, after the celebrated Native American–European American athlete.

20
. Quoted in Dee Brown,
Hear That Lonesome Whistle Blow: Railroads in the West
(1977; reprint, Touchstone, 1994), 22. There are other claimants for this feat, notably John Stevens, the early railroad enthusiast who laid out a circular track in his garden and built a small steam engine, the sixteen-foot-long Steam Waggon, to run on it, but in reality it was little more than a toy.

21
. Sarah H. Gordon,
Passage to Union: How the Railroads Transformed American Life, 1829–1929
(Elephant Paperbacks, 1997), 27.

22
. Officially known as the South Carolina Railroad.

23
. John F. Stover,
American Railroads
(University of Chicago Press, 1961), 15; Stewart H. Holbrook,
The Story of American Railroads
(Bonanza Books, 1947), 23.