I read with great interest Rush Loving Jr.’s feature article for Fixing Amtrak in the March Issue of Trains. Some good ideas, and hopefully some of them can be implemented. In these tough economic times it is often difficult to see beyond this day or this week, and have a vision for the future. But we must, and it is the American way to pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps and start planning ahead.

The future of Amtrak will take some deep thinking and a lot of thinking out of the box, we cannot continue to live in the railroading past. This country needs a transportation system. Not just a railroad plan or an airline plan, but a plan for a truly integrated system.

I visualize a comprehensive system that includes, air, train, bus, boat, and highway. What is the best way to get from point A to point B? Perhaps, as some of these ideas for the future; we consider the fact that airports are the transportation centers of this generation, instead of the train terminals of the past. The Europeans already have a partial grasp of this idea; I remember a trip from Cologne, Germany to Brussels that involved an ICE
train that delivered me to the airport – not far from my airline departure gate.

If we considered this type of an idea in this country, perhaps Amtrak could become several regional railroads. One example could be O’Hare in Chicago where a lot of infrastructure is already in place – High speed trains connecting from the terminal to other regional Airports, or even other International Airports, like an Indianapolis, IN Airport to O’Hare to Rockford, Illinois, along with trains like Peoria to O’Hare to Milwaukee’ Billy Mitchell Field, and maybe a Detroit to O’Hare to Des Moines, Iowa and so on. If all of this works, perhaps a further look in the future of connecting the dots, connecting the Chicago Hub with St Louis, and Minneapolis, etc., etc. Which, in fact, might lead to a truly first class transcontinental passenger railroad.

We have all gone through the ‘taking a friend to the airport’ syndrome. Further, I think the airlines might like the idea of getting out of the short haul business. Go to the airport to catch a train? Why not!

Don Cardiff