Still Waiting at the Station

At best it will be several years before a scheduled passenger train pulls up in downtown Fort Wayne. Meanwhile, I'd consider it a major benefit if the Lakeshore Limited and Capitol Limited achieve respectable schedule reliability at Waterloo as a result of the investment in Northwest Indiana, and if additional frequencies are added on the line through Waterloo and South Bend. That would make Amtrak a viable option for me when traveling to Chicago, and I'd be inclined to make the 20-mile drive to Waterloo sometimes instead of traveling 112 miles to Michigan City to ride the South Shore trains.

I was pleasantly suprised to see how much lost time Indiana recovered in the application process, and much of that surge in interest was a result of very energetic and well-organized local activism led by Geoff Paddock and Dr. Tom Hayhurst and others in Northeast Indiana Passenger Rail Association (NIPRA). There's no denying, though, that Indiana came very late to the table compared with other states, and the strongest reason any of the funds were allocated to Indiana is because of the benefit to passenger routes that primarily serve other states.

Indiana has yet to commit a significant amount of its own money to the advancement of inter-city passenger rail, but the state has been steadfast in misdirecting precious resources toward an ill-conceived and badly-executed boondoggle. Apparently Indiana has forgotten the lesson learned when it undertook construction of a costly canal after some eastern canal operations had already been forced into bankruptcy by the ascendancy of railroads. Indiana's commitment to extending Interstate 69 southward from Indianapolis, disregarding the clear future of rising fuel prices and the diversion of long-haul freight from trucks to rails, will one day be seen in the same context.

The imprudent dissipation of public funds on the I-69 extension should be stopped now, and the money should be redirected toward a transport mode with a future. Rallies and public enthusiasm command attention from officials who need votes to keep their jobs, but Indiana needs to demonstrate at the Federal level its official commitment to passenger rail. We need to be heard by transportation policy-makers in Washington, and there, money talks.