Progress Illinois

Sen. Dick Durbin introduced legislation yesterday intended to reinvigorate the American rail industry and answer the growing demand placed on Amtrak as rail travel becomes more popular (and practical). Durbin's office is touting the Train CARS Act as a major re-imagining of U.S. domestic travel:

The Train CARS Act envisions a Twenty-First Century Rail system that makes flying short distances a thing of the past with a high-speed rail system rooted in major metropolitan areas like Chicago. The most immediate obstacle in the way of making this vision a reality is the lack of passenger rail train cars and equipment [...]

The Train CARS Act provides funding to encourage manufacturers currently supplying passenger rail cars overseas to bring their modern design and manufacturing expertise to the U.S. and open manufacturing facilities here to meet growing demand. The bill also provides a tax incentive for private, domestic businesses to re-enter the passenger rail equipment business and rebuild facilities and train cars here in the U.S.

Amtrak set records last May both for the number of passengers it carried and for the amount of tickets it sold. This is particularly impressive considering that May is usually a slow month for Amtrak. As the New York Times recently reported, increased demand is a mixed blessing for a national rail system that has suffered from decades of under-use and financial neglect:

“We’re starting to bump up against our own capacity constraints,” said R. Clifford Black, a spokesman for Amtrak.

The problem is that rail has shriveled. The number of “passenger miles” traveled on intercity rail has dropped by about two-thirds since 1960, and the companies that build rail cars and locomotives have also shrunk, making it hard to expand.