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Sunday, September 7, 2008
Another trip across the aisle for Isakson, this time for high-speed passenger rail
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
It would be incorrect to call Johnny Isakson a reckless adventurer, a seeker of confrontation and controversy.
But he is by no means shy.
Already the Republican senator has taken flak for engaging — along with colleague Saxby Chambliss — in a bipartisan attempt at an energy bill. Election season is not the time for kumbaya measures, the Rush Limbaughs of America have screamed.
Undeterred, Isakson is about to reach across the aisle again, this time to John Kerry, the Democrat from Boston. The purpose: A revival of this country’s rail system, which — with luck — could give birth to a high-speed passenger train that would careen from Birmingham, through Atlanta, to Washington.
For Isakson, energy is again a motivating force. It takes less of the stuff to push a load of people sideways than to raise them to 35,000 feet — and then push them sideways. Also, high-speed trains can be powered by electricity that’s generated by coal, natural gas, or — if one prefers — nuclear energy.
Oil be damned.
This is no small thing, however. We’re talking the largest reshaping of American infrastructure since Dwight Eisenhower ordered up a duplicate of the German autobahn.
Fiscal conservatives, and Republicans in particular, have wrinkled their noses at passenger rail. Amtrak, the current system, is a corporation wholly owned by the federal government. Operating deficits are picked up by you and me. And there are always operating deficits.
“The funding mechanism is broken. It’s a totally subsidized mess,” Isakson said.
Kerry’s office would not offer any details of the bill that the Massachusetts senator intends to drop sometime this month. But at least one draft is already floating around Atlanta business circles.
Isakson said the bill would fundamentally alter our method of capitalizing rail transportation, putting it on a footing similar to the way we fund airports, freeways and seaports. Governments, a combination of state and federal, would acquire the right-of-way and build tracks. User fees would pay for upkeep, levied by private rail corporations that would live or die on their own performance.
By some accounts, the Kerry legislation also permits the raising of $200 billion via bonds to finance a limited number of high-speed rail lines across the country.
Isakson said he intends to sign on as a co-sponsor to the Kerry measure. It fits neatly with his advocacy of high-speed rail in the South, which stretches back to his days in the U.S. House. He has long envisioned a line from Birmingham to Atlanta through the Carolinas to Richmond, thence to Washington.
“You’ve got to have a spine that’s the backbone,” Isakson said. Lines to places like Chattanooga and Savannah would be the ribs.
Last year, Isakson pushed through a $2 million allocation — matched by state cash — to determine the economic viability of such a line. The study isn’t yet finished.
The Georgia business community is high on the idea. The missing ingredient in any discussion of rail has been political will. But that is changing, fueled by this summer’s waltz with $4-a-gallon gasoline. Gov. Sonny Perdue recently signed on to the concept of commuter rail in the direction of Macon.
The Republican platform approved in St. Paul last week calls for a resolution to America’s dependence on foreign oil “not by changing our lifestyles but by putting the free market to work.”
The wording is inartful at best. Weaning ourselves off the Middle East will require fundamental changes in our lifestyles. In the way we heat our homes, power our television sets and computers and blenders, but most particularly in the way we move from Point A to Point B.
“We’ll never see $2 -a-gallon gasoline again,” Isakson said.
Photo credits: Rick McKay/Cox Washington Bureau, Associated Press
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