Railroaded.

• Author: Jacobson, Lewis
• Position: LETTERS - Letter to the editor

Thank you for Phillip Longman's excellent article "Back on Tracks" [January/February 2009]. The case for investment in electrically powered freight-hauling railroad infrastructure could not have been put better.

Those of us who have had the pleasure of traveling on modern passenger rail systems like France's high-speed TGV would probably argue that investment in freight rail would provide the perfect opportunity to give the United States a strong passenger rail system as well. Mr. Longman apparently sees passenger rail service as irretrievably "money losing," and he is inarguably correct that our historical experience in the U.S. supports that prediction. But need it forever be so?

Dr. Lewis Jacobson

Professor of Biological Sciences

University of Pittsburgh

Pittsburgh, Penn.

While railroads are the most energy-efficient form of transportation ever invented, there are problems with some of Phillip Longman's proposals [in "Back on Tracks"]. For several years, not too long ago, mail was carried on Amtrak lines, mostly in roadrailers tacked on to the ends of the trains. It seemed a good idea at the time, but the results were miserable, pushing the trains even further behind schedule than they already were. Obviously, mail-by-rail could be made to work as well as it once did, but either there would have to be dedicated mail trains or a significantly higher traffic density on our passenger trains. At one time, Amtrak also carried express freight. That didn't turn out too well either.

Longman also fails to tell the whole story of the hostility between the government and the railroads. In the mid-nine-teenth century the federal government decided it was in the national interest to have transcontinental railroads, and began a program of giving away alternating sections of land (with the railroads having to buy the rest at fair market value) along proposed alignments, and otherwise subsidizing construction. But for most of the twentieth century, if the federal government got involved with the railroads, it was almost always to slap on another unfunded mandate. So it's understandable that the railroads get suspicious whenever the federal government gets involved.

James H. H. Lampert

Fountain Valley, Calif.

In "Back on Tracks," Phillip Longman implies that government ownership or corporate ownership are the only possible ways that railroads can be run. There is a third, untried alternative: public, cooperative-style ownership.

Imagine a rail system...