1hundredsixty8

The Queen of Passion and Pain and I spent Sunday in Manhattan, enjoying the first warm Spring day with a stroll through Bryant Park, and taking in the Parade of Trains at Grand Central Terminal. The iconic Beaux-Arts building is celebrating its One Hundredth Birthday, and the exhibit of historic railroad cars is one of several events taking place this year to mark the Centennial. The restored dining cars, bar cars and Pullman sleepers are signifiers of America’s Golden Age of Railroading and drew large crowds on both days. I managed to avoid being swept up in the nostalgia of the event, but I did indulge in some reflection of the emblematic role of the railroads in the nation’s history.

In the most elemental narrative, the growth of the railroads in the century that began in the 1830’s was entwined with the growth of the United States into an industrial power, and, after World War I, a world power. It does not hold, however, that the decline of the railroads as a consequence of the impact of the automobile, truck and airplane was mirrored by a decline of our stature in the world. It does say much about the peculiar nature of our capitalist economy and its reliance on government.

As the country relentlessly expanded westward in the 19^th Century, the role of the railroads became increasingly important. The Federal Government expedited this expansion by paying the various private railroad companies cash subsidies and by granting land for rights-of-way, more land than it gave to citizens via the Homestead Act. The U.S. Army provided security from the displaced Natives as multiple rail lines were built to span the continent. The laissez-faire policies of the Gilded Age allowed the railroads to grow into the largest businesses of the era.

But what the government gives, it can take away. By the end of World War II, decades of mismanagement and the growing competition from cars, trucks and planes had weakened the US rail industry. Railroads received less and less of the taxpayers’ money as the Federal government underwrote highway and airport construction. In 1920, per capita intercity rail ridership was an estimated 383 miles; it shrunk to approximately 20 miles per capita by 1975. By comparison, domestic airline ridership was over 1700 miles on a per capita basis by the end of the 20^th Century.*

This is not simply a story of more advanced technologies relegating the railroads to a deserved state of obsolescence. Rail is still a viable transportation modality, as travelers to other countries can attest. And freight rail has had a resurgence in this country, spurred by deregulation in the form of the Railroad Revitalization and Regulatory Reform Act and the Staggers Act, and the ascendancy of the near-monopoly Big Four freight carriers (CSX, Norfolk Southern, Union Pacific and Burlington Northern Santa Fe). It is more a case of what some politicians like to term the government “picking winners and losers.”  So, while it has spent $30 billion on Amtrak over the last 30 years, the government simultaneously spent $1.89 trillion on air and highway over the same 3 decades.**

I thought about this as I looked at the comfortable appointments in some of those sleeper cars yesterday. Forgetting all the economic and environmental implications of air and highway travel, I could not help but think how much more appealing that Pullman looked than a seat on a 737.

 *Source: The Public Purpose, Intercity Transport Fact Book

**Facts About Transportation Subsidies, The Missouri Kansas Passenger Rail Coalition