Open letter to Hon. Sean Duffy, U.S. Secretary of Transportation:
Re: USDOT F.R.A.’s Notice of Proposed Determination 6-4-2025
In my opinion, the reason for the failure of the CAHSRA’s high speed rail proposal is its reliance on the public sector model of transport funding as seen in the nation’s history with Amtrak and other public sector transit boondoggles.
Despite “efficiency” appearing four times in the national transportation policy, long before creation of a federal department of governmental efficiency, in practice we seem dependent on taxpayer funded forms of transit to the detriment of the taxpayers, e.g., motorists paying gas taxes, who are expected by the government to pay 102% of our transport costs.
Over the decades, state and federal transport funding experts have recommended that we fund our transport with user fees, that is, fares by the patrons. The Highway Trust Fund has been diverted to subsidize public sector transit systems. So, we don’t even follow our own experts’ advice for transport funding.
In 1970, during debate on creation of the National Railroad Passenger Corporation (Amtrak), congressmen stood on the floor in the House and proclaimed, “It will be self sufficient in three years.”
By Sept. 11, 2001, when the terrorists took down the World Trade Centers, Amtrak’s subsidies, in a stack of $100 bills, were taller than the World Trade Centers had stood, as reported by Traffic World. Today, Amtrak’s subsidies would make Lenin blush.
In 1920, we enacted the Transportation Act and reversed the nationalization of the railroads that had been done by the Wilson Administration during WW1. Why? Private sector rail was, and is, far superior to socialist rail. Today, our Class Ones are the envy of the world.
In my opinion, we are giving the wrong answer to the late honorable Norman Y. Mineta, who in 1995 at the Institute at SJSU that now bears his name said, “The crucial question in transportation today is: What should government do, and what should it leave to others?”
Secretary Mineta was right then; and he’s right today, God bless his soul.
As I said to HSRC before it became an “authority,” if we put enough UPS, Fedex and Postal Service tonnage on the High Speed Rail, then we would not need to ask the taxpayers for a dime.
We ought to learn from our history. Wells Fargo added U.S. Mail and bullion to their passenger stage coaches to offset their losses moving passengers.
We filled the bellies of the jumbo jets with high value freight and U.S. Mail to make those flights more profitable. Even the land grant railroads added Railway Express Agency freight to cars added to their passenger trains to make those runs profitable.
The north-south tonnage flows on I-5, US-101, and CA-99 have sufficient volumes that, if diverted to TOFC & COFC intermodal service, we could offset the losses of moving passengers-only HSR in California.
I sent Secretary Duffy a copy of Granville Dodge’s “How We Built the Transcontinental Railway,” in which Congressman/General Dodge relates Lincoln’s rejection to his urging at the White House in 1864 that the transcontinental railroad be government owned. In my opinion, we ought to be following Lincoln’s advice for the private-sector solution to the nation’s transportation.
Voters in California voted in 2008 for private sector HSR. We did not vote for another Amtrak, public sector transit boondoggle.
California taxpayers cannot afford to subsidize the transit boondoggles that we already have. Let’s give the right answer to Secretary Mineta’s “crucial question.”
Joseph P. Thompson
Fresno
