Winter term has officially started, and students are returning from all areas of the country and using all modes of transportation to get here.
For some, they can drive to and from college; for others, it’s an airplane; and for still others, it’s the train. Since the days of the Old West, trains have always existed in the American imagination.
The slow-paced journey of the train allows one to appreciate the scenery lost when concentrating on driving or when flying thousands of feet above ground. Where else can one dine while viewing snowcapped mountains out the window, or roam around the multiple cars to stretch one’s legs while still traveling?
Certainly, the train is an enchanting ride, but it is far and away the people on the train who are the most enchanting. There are fewer greater joys than boarding a train full of sleeping people at midnight to find your seat occupied by an old woman who, once you wake her up to inform her that you will be taking away her good night’s sleep, proceeds to crawl over you every 15 minutes.
Or finding out at 1 a.m. that the two men in front of you are long lost soulmates and have decided to toast their meeting by drinking from a couple of 40 oz. bottles one of them happened to bring on the train, while sputtering out lines from their favorite Rob Schneider movie.

But that’s half the fun, isn’t it? People-watching, interactions. One of the more unfortunate aspects of the train, however, is its inevitable tardiness. Since the tracks were sold in the early part of last century to private corporations, private trains have the right of way. Freighters carrying anything from cars to televisions to food are prioritized and allowed to pass passenger trains, delaying the hundreds of people on board.
As if being last in line wasn’t annoying enough, Amtrak has had to deal with the passage of the Amtrak Reform and Accountability Act. Passed in 1997, this act gave Amtrak five years to become financially independent and reduce its more than $4 billion debt.
The government provides subsidies to Amtrak each year in order for it to run efficiently, but it obviously decided that Amtrak’s benefits did not outweigh its burden on the federal budget. Amtrak, it seems, is viewed as nothing more than an obsolete part of the American past that is
best forgotten.
What no one in the White House or Congress has suggested, after the horrific events of Sept. 11, is to provide a larger budget to Amtrak in an effort to provide Americans with another way to travel besides flying. Amtrak, with more funding, could become similar to the highly efficient and fast trains in Europe, with the cost justified similarly to Eisenhower’s decree that the highway system be built by defense dollars for national security.
Unfortunately, public transportation budgets have been continually slashed by both the states and the federal government in a never-ending battle to make ends meet — and it is the poor who suffer. Amtrak provides a service to those who have limited finances that Greyhound attempts to replicate, but cannot.
The airplane industry is not completely independent of federal funds, and it is unrealistic to assume that what the airline industry cannot do, and is not expected to do, Amtrak can and is. According to CNNMoney online, the U.S. government gave more than $5 billion in subsidies and loans to U.S. airlines after Sept. 11, money that was more than enough to compensate for the effects of the attacks.
As an avid rider of Amtrak, it is my opinion that the government should not focus all its efforts in supporting the bankruptcy filings of United and other such airline companies, but rather focus on supporting and modernizing real public transportation.