Amtrak's Acela: All Aboard?

Election night was filled with double-takes and startled looks, but not all of them were prompted by Dan Rather's metaphors or the now-you-seem-'em, now-you-don't results in the presidential race. At least in Florida, a considerable amount of head-scratching was also devoted to a startling decision by the electorate to write a blank check for a new high-speed rail system.

Fifty-three percent of the state's voters supported a constitutional amendment requiring the Legislature to begin building high-speed rail lines in the state's five largest urban areas by 2003. Few political leaders figured the measure had any chance of passage. After all, the amendment didn't specify how much the project would cost or how it would be funded, and some estimates put the price tag at a staggering $23 billion.

Voters, it appears, weren't as worried about the cost. They ignored warnings from a broad array of opponents, including Gov. Jeb Bush, the Florida Chamber of Commerce, the editorial pages of the state's major newspapers, and even longtime advocates of mass transit who questioned the helter-skelter deadline and the lack of specifics.

Critics now say the public was ill-informed and didn't realize all of the ramifications of a "yes" vote. Perhaps, but the high price of high-speed rail has hardly been a secret. In a highly publicized move shortly after he took office in 1999, Gov. Jeb Bush killed a bullet train plan that had been in the works for several years. Its estimated cost was $6 billion.

Florida's vote defied the conventional wisdom among politicians — i.e., Americans tend to grow misty-eyed and nostalgic about the heyday of passenger rail lines, but mention spending more of their tax dollars on a rail revival and their eyes dry up and their wallets snap shut.

There's considerable evidence to support that view. Congress, after all, has shoveled more than $23 billion into Amtrak's furnace since 1971, but it's still the Little Engine That Couldn't Turn a Profit. We may love trains, but we obviously don't care enough for them to enable our only national passenger line to break even.

The vote in Florida may signal a change in attitude, however. It may well be that people are growing so frustrated over gridlock in the air and on the road that they're willing to take a fresh look at trains — even expensive bullet trains.

Indeed, public support for rail appears to be accelerating nationwide, thanks in part to record delays at airports and increasingly crowded, dangerous conditions on many urban highways. In addition to Florida, high-speed rail corridors are under serious discussion in California, Texas, North Carolina, several Midwestern states and the Pacific Northwest.

C.C. "Doc" Dockery, a Lakeland businessman who sank $2.7 million of his own money into the Florida rail amendment, says there's no mystery to the outcome. Politicians have simply failed to respond to the public's dissatisfaction with transportation gridlock. "Without the need," he recently told the Associated Press, "the amendment never would have passed."

Florida legislators are hinting that they may try to ignore the results of the vote, but Dockery is pushing for the state to fulfill the mandate by creating a rail authority to sell bonds for the project. There's also discussion of meshing the initiative with previous proposals by Amtrak and tourism-related companies, including the Walt Disney Co., to start high-speed rail service.

If it's built, will Floridians put their money where their votes are and ride the rails? Perhaps. Rail use is on the upswing nationally. Mass-transportation ridership is at its highest point in 40 years, with Americans taking 9.1 billion trips a year, according to the American Public Transportation Association.

Amtrak officials are hoping those numbers, which admittedly include bus and subway use, will continue to climb. The passenger rail line, in fact, is hoping to avoid the scrap heap with its new bullet train, the Acela Express, between Washington, New York and Boston.

Rail officials expect the Acela to generate $185 million in profit in its first year, an amount equal to half of Amtrak's annual federal subsidy. Congress has given Amtrak officials until 2003 to become self-sufficient or face liquidation. Although it earned a record $1.84 billion in revenue in 1999, Amtrak was still about $484 million short of breaking even.

Amtrak recently failed to win congressional approval for a bill that would have enabled rail officials to raise $10 billion to build 11 more high-speed routes. Under the plan, the government would have given tax credits, totaling $3.3 billion over 10 years, for the sale of bonds.

Opponents of the bill, including Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), questioned the wisdom of giving Amtrak more money before it meets its 2003 deadline to become self-sufficient. However, Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, who says he's "an active supporter of a national passenger rail system," has pledged to revive the funding bill in the next few months. "I can't guarantee we'll have the votes, or that it won't be filibustered, but I think it's the right thing to do," Lott told the AP.

Supporters of high-speed rail should be able to find vocal supporters in the new Bush administration. Tommy Thompson, Bush's nominee to head the Department of Health and Human Services, is chairman of Amtrak's board of directors. And Norman Mineta, Bush's nominee for transportation secretary, has been a champion of mass transit throughout his 30 years as a public official, beginning as mayor of San Jose in the early 1970s. In Congress, he was a sponsor of the 1991 Surface Transportation Efficiency Act, which —among other things — allowed states to shift federal highway funds to mass transit projects.

The president-elect is certainly aware of the growing popularity of rail service, too, having witnessed the successes of the new rail system in Dallas and the efforts now under way in Houston to build a new line to its downtown.

If Florida's vote is any gauge, Bush may find the same level of popular support for high-speed trains nationwide. Maybe voters want — and are finally ready to pay for — a rail revival.

Daryl Lease is an editorial writer at the Herald-Tribune in Sarasota, Fla. His e-mail address is daryl.lease@herald-trib.com