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Summary:
Under the Obama Administration, an agreement was reached that the government would help with the essential renovation and expansion of the Northeast Corridor Rail Line that runs between Newark, New Jersey, and New York City, New York. This was decided because the railway was damaged during hurricane Sandy and it is also not a very efficient system. Renovating it could prevent system failures that could result in an entire system shutdown which would completely destroy the New England economy in addition to forcing tons of people to not go to work until the rail line is fixed. The problem now is that Trump took away the agreement to help with the funding of the project and now the funding is going to have to be found elsewhere which will greatly extend the projected finish date for the construction.
Although this issue might not seem important to us living on the west coast, the damaged rail line has the potential to cause an economic disaster in New York and New Jersey. This would, in turn, impact our nation as a whole.
Questions:
The money set aside for this agreement is probably going to be used to compensate for the recent tax cut. Do you think it was worth it?
To me, it seems unfair that Obama can promise something that Trump just says no to. Do you think it should be a law that later presidents need to adhere to previous presidents' agreements?
6 comments:
This is a blatantly outrageous decision. As a person who has been on the east coast, and ridden the trains on the Northeast Corridor, I can testify with certainty just how many thousands of commuters ride the Amtrak Northeast Regional every morning in order to get to work. A breakdown of the rail network between New Jersey to New York would be catastrophic. The existing plane network would not be prepared to handle the major influx of passengers. The interstate 95 northbound and southbound would be choked with traffic, unable to handle the new surge in vehicular traffic. Moreover, the Amtrak Northeast Regional and Amtrak Acela Express, both of which run through this crucial rail segment, are Amtrak's first and second most profitable rail routes. Amtrak relies upon significant revenue generated by these two most profitable routes to operate all of its other national routes. A failure to renovate this track network could cause a shutdown of the entire national rail network. Someone needs to yell at Trump and knock some sense into the man who made a promise to America that he would renovate and renew national infrastructure.
I think that there should be a law to protect a past president's promise to the people. Growing up in the Bay I know many people that use public transportation, and if the same thing were to happen here, I know it would cause many problems so like Frank said, Trump's choice is outrageous. Even though Trump may not agree, he should still help fund the renovation because it is a need for New York.
In general, I personally think that the reconstruction and update of the rail lines should not be the job of the government. I believe the government should actually try to privatize the Northeast Corridor as a private company separate from the national government, to separate all ties with amtrack in order to make it a private company as well, and to allow amtrack to own this hypothetical Northeast Corridor rail company (which it already does as a state-owned company). This would turn amtrack from a government service to a private company, making it less bogged down by federal regulations and would allow it to be competitive in the mass transit market.
However, I do believe that the government should subsidize the Northeast Rail corridor to a degree. President Trump should subsidize this project because he made restoring our national infrastructure and using that as a means to create more jobs a key part of his economic policy during the campaign. However, after this last subsidy of the Northeast Corridor, I think the government should take steps to back off from rail transit and privatize Amtrak.
Going back to Gabby's point, I do not believe there should be a law holding current presidents accountable for adhering to past presidents' agreements. While in theory it sounds nice, I am sure that there are many agreements which liberals will disregard after Trump leaves office. I believe such a strict continuity would prohibit change within the executive branch. The president got voted into office so they can make their own decisions, so we must let them. I know that Trump's decision to pull out of the agreement is unfortunate. However, he has the power to do so.
Since I am against tax cuts and a fan of public transportation, I do not believe breaking the agreement was worth it. It is important to acknowledge that the government reaches many agreements, and there will always be winners and losers. Here, the winners were the people who got taxes, but at the expense of commuters in a specific region. I am sure there are many who think it was "worth it."
Granger brought up in an interesting point in his above comment, that we should privatize Amtrak. Here is why such a system would not operate well. Before 1970, railroad passenger service was all privatized- by companies such as Southern Pacific Railroad, Union Pacific Railroad, etc. However these railway companies cut down their passenger service dramatically over the years. Why? Private railway companies can earn a lot more profit by using the railways to ship freight. Shipping freight around the country pays a lot more than shipping passengers. Therefore if we privatize Amtrak, the company will be much more focused upon investing its efforts into improving freight service, rather than passenger service. Subsequently we would experience an unacceptable cut in railway service. And people rely on Amtrak service in the Northeast Corridor. Amtrak ridership data shows that it carries 3 times as many passengers between Washington DC and New York as all the airline trips between those two major cities combined. And this very corridor, between Washington DC and New York, is the corridor that Trump plans to cut funding for.
Also, as a fan of public transportation I'd like to set it straight that the National Railroad Passenger Corporation is spelled "Amtrak", not "amtrack".
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