Amtrak Joe vs. the Modern Robber Barons

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Amtrak Joe vs. the Modern Robber Barons

Biden’s big bet on rail infrastructure will be wasted unless he takes on the financiers who control the industry.

by Phillip Longman August 9, 2021 POLITICAL ANIMAL

For a chief executive whose love of trains won him the nickname “Amtrak Joe,” this must be a pretty exciting moment. President Joe Biden’s bipartisan infrastructure bill, which designates an unprecedented $66 billion to expand rail service across the country, appears poised to pass the Senate.

The bill promises to furnish a more convenient and environmentally friendly mode of travel between destinations that are far enough apart to make driving tedious but close enough together to make flying impossible or at best impractical. You may never use these new trains yourself, but those who do will create less traffic congestion, cleaner air, and a cooler planet. Removing more freight from pavement-pounding long-haul semi-trucks onto super fuel-efficient trains will make driving safer and more pleasant, and may yield huge reductions in carbon emissions.

But for any of this to happen on any meaningful scale, the Biden administration will need to do more than invest more public money in train travel. It will also need to reverse decades of deregulation, lax antitrust enforcement, and other policy blunders that left latter-day robber barons in control of nearly all the nation’s highly monopolized railroad infrastructure, just as they were in the worst days of the Gilded Age. This time, the financiers aren’t presiding over an expanding rail system; they’re selling it off and permanently liquidating its assets for short-term economic gain.

Unless Biden takes on the financiers, merely maintaining Amtrak service–let alone expanding it–will become ridiculously expensive. Here’s an example that shows why.

{snip}

Phillip Longman
Phillip Longman is a senior editor at the Washington Monthly and policy director at the Open Markets Institute.