Tommy Meehan wrote:There’s a lot of truth to the fact campaign platforms get forgotten pretty quickly after Election Day but I don’t think that will be the case as far as Amtrak is concerned. The difference between the two candidates is so stark.
The difference is stark on paper. The Republicans actually use the term and advocate for high speed rail in their platform, and the Democrats don't mention it directly.
Tommy Meehan wrote:I have serious doubts as to whether the HSR program will survive a Republican Administration. I would expect Romney to move pretty quickly to kill it. It won’t make him too many enemies or even save very much money in terms of the total federal budget. What it will do is get a lot of attention and be a dramatic way for Romney to demonstrate he’s a fiscal conservative.
Overall, I'm not sure that a Romney Administration would be anything but favorable to private sector HSR, and we all know there's a huge regulatory hurdle for any HSR operation. I could really see Romney cutting the red tape associated with HSR, but is he brave enough to reform labor to make HSR viable? There are so many steam era institutions, laws and practices on the books.
In contrast, the Dems have dropped any reference to HSR from their platfrom. Out of sight but is it completely out of mind for the current administration? Who knows? Who cares? Apparently nobody who's willing to talk about HSR?
Tommy Meehan wrote:Under a Republican Administration I think we’ll then see Amtrak revert to annual zero budget proposals. Revert to stumbling along from budget to budget, never knowing how much money they’ll get and, as a result, never able to do any long-term planning.
The problem is that Amtrak still was incapable of doing any realistic long-term planning during the years of full funding. The current $151 Billion plan to duplicate the NE Corridor and $7 Billion plan to build a pretty glass trainshed in Washington Union Station illustrate that point. Unrealistic proposal alienate support and accomplish nothing productive. Amtrak needed to order coach, just coaches, and instead Amtrak funded baggage cars, sleepers and diners, everything but coaches. And in light of huge and growing food service losses, the dining cars were the worst move that could have been made.
The reality is that a few years of abundant financing have improved the NE Corridor, renewed the electric locomotive fleet for decades to come and resulted in a few bad ordered coaches being restored to service. So, Amtrak could withstand Bush or Clinton levels of funding for another decade, of course, still unreformed, still with too few coaches, which is really the worst failure of planning at Amtrak in recent years.
Tommy Meehan wrote:I expect the current administration will try and continue both the HSR program and the planned expansion of Amtrak as per the Vision for the Future.
What vision was that? Stretching the definition of high speed to encompass 79 MPH, appropriating $7 Billion when states requested $100 Billion, and then seeing grant money actually refused in multiple instances?
That particular framework is dead and if there's room for taxpayer funded HSR, it has to be a bipartisan effort, it has stress productivity increases and has to be driven by reforms, not just bigger and bigger subsidies. And I don't see that happening.
Tommy Meehan wrote:Despite the election baloney from both parties I really think it’s pretty clear we can expect a very different Amtrak depending on who is elected.
Yet somehow I think I'm probably completely wrong and I expect the folks to my right to point it out!
In an election year, differences tend to be magnified, but in the end, nothing really changes very much.