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Like Joe Biden, Barack Obama also mentioned Amtrak in his acceptance speech to the Democratic National Convention, but only in reference to his running mate's preferred mode of transportation.

There were many, many things to be excited about yesterday, but any livable streets advocate anticipating a call to rebuild and expand our nation's transit infrastructure, or for more investment in clean transportation and sustainable urban development, had to be a little disappointed. In fact, as the New York Observer notes, Obama barely mentioned infrastructure at all, and only then to promise "new roads." And as for energy policy:

As President, I will tap our natural gas reserves, invest in clean coal technology, and find ways to safely harness nuclear power. I'll help our auto companies re-tool, so that the fuel-efficient cars of the future are built right here in America. I'll make it easier for the American people to afford these new cars. And I'll invest 150 billion dollars over the next decade in affordable, renewable sources of energy -- wind power and solar power and the next generation of biofuels; an investment that will lead to new industries and five million new jobs that pay well and can't ever be outsourced.

Are biofuels, more roads, and easier paths to car ownership really the "change" this country, or the planet, needs? Not even Al Gore or the "We" campaign, with its ubiquitous ads, mentioned altering development or driving habits.

So as Americans celebrate a long weekend of cheaper gas, we leave you with this: How do we do it? How do we seize the "Obama moment," as this call to action by OurFuture.org terms it, to make clean transportation, livable streets, smart growth and the kinds of issues that we care about a part of the national discussion on climate change and energy policy?

Until Tuesday ... 

Photo: Barack Obama/Flickr

Last night saw what might one day qualify as an historic moment in transportation circles, as vice presidential candidate Joe Biden used the "A"-word during his speech to the Democratic National Convention in Denver. From a transcript of Biden's address, via CNN:

You know, John McCain is my friend. And I know you hear that phrase used all the time in politics. I mean it. John McCain is my friend.

We've traveled the world together. It's a friendship that goes beyond politics. And the personal courage and heroism demonstrated by John still amazes me.

But I profoundly disagree with the direction John wants to take this country, from Afghanistan to Iraq, from Amtrak to veterans.

Meanwhile, earlier in the week, a panel of Democratic pols and economists seemed to agree that new investment in American infrastructure -- including freight and commuter rail -- is sorely needed, but came up short on the subject of funding. Roll Call reports:

They all expressed the need for a private-public partnership, but the question of where to raise federal funding caused anxiety among the elected officials.

One key issue was that the current system for infrastructure funding, implemented in the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956, relies on gas taxes for revenue. Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) called any attempt by Congress to raise the gas tax “dead on arrival.”

But Gov. Ed Rendell (D-Pa.) said that with or without the gas tax something had to be done to bridge the funding gap, noting that the $1.6 trillion cited by the ASCE report would only cover maintenance, not new projects.

“When I became governor I had to raise $2.4 billion in taxes,” Rendell said. “When re-election came around — people aren’t stupid — one incumbent lost and she voted against the tax increase.

“This is the time we have to challenge the American people. Folks, you get what you pay for.”

Photo: Associated Press via CNN 

Barack Obama's standing as an advocate for investment in US commuter rail looks to have gotten a boost with his selection of Joe Biden as his running mate. Whereas John McCain is the Senate's sworn enemy of Amtrak, his colleague from Delaware is known as a "Champion of the Rails." Notes Daily Kos diarist MissLaura (via George Washington University):

Biden commutes to work each day on Amtrak and has been a strong supporter of the beleaguered rail service. He is an original co-sponsor of the Amtrak Reauthorization Bill (National Defense Rail Act), S.104, introduced on January 7, 2003. Introducing an earlier version of the bill with Sen. Fritz Hollings (D-SC) on March 6, 2002, Biden stated, "For 30 years, I have witnessed Congress dangling a carrot in front of Amtrak's eyes, funding it just enough for it to limp along. And I'll tell you, this has to stop.  Now is the time to commit politically and financially to a strong, safe, and efficient passenger rail system." Biden has been particularly concerned with rail passenger security, and has, in the words of communications director Norm Kurz "worked furiously" to secure funding for Amtrak to upgrade its tunnels, hire more cops and bomb-sniffing dogs, build more fences, and add lighting to terminals.

Amtrak president George Warrington presented Biden with a "Champion of the Rails" award in June 2001 and the American Passenger Rail Coalition (APRC), a national association of railroad equipment suppliers and rail businesses, presented him its "Rail Leadership Award" in March 2002.

As Matthew Yglesias (and MissLaura) points out, Biden's son serves on the Amtrak board. (R. Hunter Biden is the only Democrat among current Amtrak board members. He was appointed by fellow Yalie George W. Bush to fill a seat vacated by Michael Dukakis.)

So well known, or well publicized, is Biden's affiliation with Amtrak that it's already become a point of ridicule for Beltway media types. Undeterred, before heading to this week's Democratic National Convention in Denver, Biden made an appearance at the Wilmington station, which he has passed through each day for the last 35 years, to greet workers and passengers.

Photo of Joe and Jill Biden at Wilmington Amtrak station via Delaware News Journal 

Our friend Sean Roche sent us a link to this brain-bending video of John McCain stumping in Pennsylvania. Just before the 1:00 mark, after McCain gives an ambiguous plug for electric cars, he unloads this doozy:

"I was with Governor [Tom] Ridge yesterday, and we visited a General Electric plant in Erie that makes -- guess what? -- locomotives. That's not viewed as, quote, high tech, is it? But you'd be amazed at the product, of the thousands of workers that are working there and building a locomotive that over half of their business is through exports, because they build the best locomotives in the world in Erie, Pennsylvania."

As Sean notes, high tech and well-made as Erie-produced trains may be, a more significant factor in the plant's export ratio could be that "because of decades of terrible transportation policy, there's not much of a market for locomotives in this country." And who do the folks in Erie, PA have to thank for that? Why, Senator John McCain, for one -- who, as perhaps the most outspoken opponent of domestic rail in Washington, has done everything in his power to cripple the very industry those "thousands of workers" depend on for the well-being of themselves and their families.

But hey, if McCain is elected president and finally succeeds in putting Amtrak out of business, maybe all those GE employees could get jobs building the Car of the Future.

Here's a great way to support transit before we head in to another traffic-snarled Memorial Day weekend. H.R. 6003, the Passenger Rail Investment and Improvement Act, is currently in need of co-sponsors in the House (a version has already passed the Senate). The bill "authorizes Amtrak for the five years Fiscal 2008-2012, provides for capital assistance for states, and development of state rail plans," according to the National Association of Railroad Passengers. Five years of funding will, among other things, put a stop to the current practice of forcing Amtrak to beg for money every year.

Jerrold Nadler is the only member the New York City delegation to sign on as a co-sponsor so far. It needs 218 co-sponsors to get floor time in the House, but only 41 are on board. (See who's a co-sponsor.)

Judging by the response to a recent post about the bill on Daily Kos, progressive-minded voters are more than willing to get behind investment in rail. Streetsbloggers can join Kossacks in urging support for the bill by contacting your representatives. The NARP website has some handy talking points to help get started.

Democratic front runner Barack Obama just released a campaign "Fact Sheet" entitled, "Strengthening America's Transportation Infrastructure" (download it). While Hillary Clinton has put forward some outstanding and heavily transit-oriented plans of her own, Obama appears to be the first major party presidential candidate to outline a national transportation platform that explicitly seeks to "create policies that incentivize greater bicycle and pedestrian usage of sidewalks and roads" (if anyone knows differently, let us know in the comments section). Whatever the case, it's a significant step up from the 2004 campaign featuring George W. Bush's mountain bike fitness regimen and John Kerry, spandex-clad on an $8,000 Serotta.

Before you get too excited, it's worth noting that Obama's paper looks like it was a bit rushed. Is Amtrak really "the only form of reliable transportation" in "many parts of the country?" What parts of the country would that be? The plan is also missing language from Obama's energy plan concerning the equalization of subsidies for motorized and non-motorized commuting.

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Despite fierce and prevalent Amtrak hating, and although I have yet to hear any presidential candidate discuss it, nationally syndicated columnist Neal Peirce suggests that "the stars are finally coming into alignment" for improvements of America's passenger rail system. He writes:

America's train advocates are mildly optimistic. And for some good reasons. Amtrak is reporting impressive ridership gains. Oil is pushing $100 a barrel, throwing a long shadow over affordability of travel on already congested highways. Airport delays hit an all-time high last summer. Global climate concerns are mounting.

Rail freight demands, meanwhile, are rising fast, suggesting joint improvements with passenger rail. Worries are rising about mobility gaps hindering the ability of America's "megaregions" -- the Northeast, Great Lakes, California and others - to match the performance of competitive regions worldwide.

Also positive for Amtrak: signs of a much friendlier reception in Congress. Add to that an array of states anxious to expand rail service, especially if they can get a federal "match" comparable to the 80 percent-20 percent federal-to-state match for highways.

For years, polls have shown Americans strongly in favor of Amtrak subsidies that would build a viable national rail system. But only slowly have legislators -- federal and state -- shown an openness to system expansion. And the Bush administration has been hostile; it's even tried to zero-fund Amtrak.

So here's the irony: Amtrak is able to report it carried 25.8 million passengers in the last fiscal year -- up 1.5 million from the year before. Ticket revenue rose 11 percent. Trains on the Northeast Corridor and other popular corridors are increasingly sold out.

And no one knows, notes Rick Harnish of the Midwest High Speed Rail Association, how expansive demand for Amtrak service would be if many more routes were opened, offering at least three or four trains daily for reasonable frequency. His bet is that millions of Americans would opt for the more convenient system, especially as oil soars in cost: "For 50 years we assumed we could do everything by car. It's now painfully clear that's not true."

Photo: stillsearching/Flickr

If you're the type of person who has been following the Yankee Stadium parking garage story, or the Hudson Yards zoning story or the story about the city block in Prospect Heights that's being leveled and turned into a gigantic surface parking lot, you may enjoy James Howard Kunstler's column this week. The author of The Geography of Nowhere and The Long Emergency, has lately noticed that many American towns "are obsessed to the point of mania with the issue of parking and more generally the management of cars, and much of their spending is directed to those ends." He writes:

Because I wrote a couple of books about the design of cities (and the shortcomings of suburbia), a lot of blather comes my way about what towns around the nation are planning for the future -- and, off course, I hear plenty on the subject in my own town, Saratoga Springs, New York, which is a classic "main street" type town. I also happen to travel a lot and actually see what's going on far from home. Almost everything I see and hear is inconsistent with what I think reality has in store for us.

Most American towns, including my own, are obsessed to the point of mania with the issue of parking and more generally the management of cars, and much of their spending is directed to those ends. Municipal leaders (and the public they serve) have no idea what kind of problems the nation faces with oil. Because life in the USA has worked a particular way all their lives, they assume that it will continue to operate that way. Not only will they be disappointed as happy motoring spirals into history, but they will create a lot mischief in the meantime in planning things based on faulty assumptions.

My own town, for instance, relies heavily on tourism, in particular tourism based on happy motoring. There is not the slightest apprehension among the people here, or our leaders in city hall, that automobile-based tourism may not be happening as soon as five years from now. All our political energy is being expended in fighting about what kind of parking structures we will build (with borrowed money) and where to put them, and how these things might incorporate some secondary uses, such as police offices. We have also been debating plans for the expansion of our modest convention center -- in connection with added parking structures. It seems to me that one of the first things to go as the US economy contracts, along with its energy supply, will be activities like boat shows and optometrist's conventions.

Now this town happens to be on a railroad line that connects New York City to Montreal. Before 1950, it was the main way that people came to this town. These days, we get one train a day in each direction. The trains are invariably late, and not just a little late, but hours late. The track bed is in miserable shape and, of course, Amtrak is a sort of soviet-style management organization. There is no awareness among the public here, or our leaders, that we would benefit from improving the passenger railroad service, and around the state of New York generally there is no conversation about fixing the railroads. (Governor Elliot Spitzer is preoccupied these days with arranging to give driver's licenses to people who are in the country illegally.) We are going to pay a large penalty for these failures of attention....

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This is Part 4 of a five-part series on U.S. rail travel. (Parts 1, 2 and 3.)

Susan Donovan boarding Metro-North Train No. 737 on July 11, beginning an 8,000-mile rail journey at Grand Central Terminal.

I always find it a little amazing that a handful of times a day, one can descend into Penn Station -- the place where you go to catch the 6:13 to Babylon or the 7:37 to Upper Montclair -- and from the same platforms catch a train with beds and a dining car that will take you to Chicago, or Miami or Atlanta. In this case, we forsook that little pleasure for the much greater pleasure of departing for a transcontinental honeymoon from the grandeur of Grand Central Terminal, where we ran into a friend getting his shoes shined who took our picture and good-naturedly warned us about what married life was like.

After the departure, we transferred at Croton-Harmon to the Lake Shore Limited to Chicago. This is a train that ought to be used more for business travel than it is. If you can afford to leave New York in the late afternoon, this train gets you into Chicago at a quarter to 10, refreshed, well fed and relaxed, in time for your morning meeting or power lunch. Yes, I suppose it needs a better on-time rating to be used more by business travelers, but it is not uncommon for planes to run late as well. Our train arrived at 10:28, 43 minutes late.

The train's name, evocative of the Lake Erie coastline, is a bit of a misnomer. You travel along the lake at night, so you never really see it (at least I never have and I've taken this train quite a few times to Cleveland). But can see something with majestic views that more than makes up for it. The wide and mighty Hudson, which the train hugs all the way to Albany.

View of ship traffic on the Hudson River from the Lake Shore Limited.

After spending time in Chicago we caught the Empire Builder for a three-day, two-night trip to Seattle. Pulling through Chicagoland's suburbs, I noticed a number of shipping warehouses with spur tracks going into them that were buried and weedy, while trucks in large parking lots had taken over rail-marshalling yards. The freight railroads stock was on the rise for years before Warren Buffet started buying (look up BNI, UNP, CSX or NSC for some examples), and these warehouses indicate that they have plenty of room for continued growth if shippers continue to switch to fuel efficient freight rail. An hour and a half later, we were in Milwaukee, which seemed like a city we would have liked:

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Part 3 in a series on rail and transit-only travel across the United States focuses on the final three cities of our journey. Part 2 looked at the first three and Part 1 presented an overview of our travel. 

San Francisco

Fully restored streetcars, cable cars, buses with and without pantographs, submerged and at-grade light rail, a regional subway and two commuter rail lines all make for a dizzying array of often very scenic public transportation. (Although, with a $5 fare, the cable cars seem more like a tourist draw and less like a form of public transit.) But even in a city that like New York derives much of its appeal from having a walkable, pre-automobile environment, we read about how pro-traffic forces are trying to reshape the city to accommodate more cars. There's apparently a big vote coming up in November on whether to continue transit-first policies or build a lot of parking garages (which would seem to counteract the $159 million San Francisco just won for congestion pricing).

Los Angeles

Making fun of Los Angeles car dependency was already a cliche decades ago. We didn't want to fall into that trap. We arrived in L.A. with open minds, hoping that it just might pleasantly surprise us. It did and it didn't.

L.A.'s Amtrak station is spectacular, way better than ours (not that that says anything). High ceilings, wide corridors and open concourses with a warm, inviting feeling and soft armchairs for waiting. (Wikipedia's photo does it justice.) It was also busier than we expected, serving morning commuters when we arrived but still busy in the afternoon. It's Amtrak's fifth busiest station (scroll).

Then we exited the station and found ourselves feeling like second class citizens walking with our luggage along wide, busy boulevards and buildings that were distant from one another. Pedestrians are actually forbidden from crossing the street right in front of the station, so we had to take some kind of circuitous route to get back to the station, crossing extra streets unnecessarily. Because of a little bit of a snafu that I'll describe tomorrow, we spent less time in L.A. than we had planned: just five hours. We spent most of it struggling with a crossword puzzle outside a Starbucks three blocks from Union Station.

New Orleans

New Orleans is recovering from Katrina. We stayed across the street from a monument to General Robert E. Lee in the Central Business District, three blocks from Amtrak. This area, like the French Quarter, was never flooded and the Quarter was bustling as always on the weekend we were there. Most of the many cyclists we saw in New Orleans were riding one-speed coaster bikes, which is a trend we didn't see anywhere else. There was also a fair proportion of trikes used to haul stuff. But the transportation highlight was definitely the streetcars, which have friendly drivers, friendly fellow passengers, and tall, wide windows that allow you to see the great panorama before you. Their grassy right-of-way does its little part at reducing the portion of our country paved with the impervious surfaces like asphalt, which are so harmful to drinking water supplies. The oldest and longest streetcar line in NOLA, along St. Charles Avenue, is now running as a short downtown shuttle until the rest of the line can be put back into service. Because I love them so much: two more photos of New Orleans streetcars below the jump.

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