I think it is only for lack of any strong ideas that we get a proposal to put money into the economy, but with no focus on the best way to do so.

I hope that all sorts of unions as well as people who have lost or fear losing jobs, will contact their legislators and ask for them to consider this large infrastructiure idea as a solution for all of us.

September 18, 2001 Tuesday

A NATIONAL RAIL PASSENGER SYSTEM
AS THE IDEAL DOMESTIC RESPONSE
TO TERRORISM AND OUR FAILING ECONOMY

by Linn Cohen-Cole

The disaster of the September 11 attacks is growing daily, spreading out from the deaths and terror of those first days to an erosion of our general functioning as a country. We proclaim that we will not be affected by the terrorists, yet are allowing the plug to be pulled on our entire domestic economy. We see the smoking rubble in New York and DC and respond by pouring money into the rescue and clean-up effort, and into miliatry expenditures, but as pieces of our lives are being dislodged and beginning to fall, as we are watching domestic industries shudder and jobs fold in the thousands, no solutions - other than propping up some industries and offering tax breaks to corporations - are being offered.
Yet, we need to do something substantial to undergird our domestic position which is, in the last analysis, any country's ultimate source of safety and military strength.

There is a single solution that could:

1. offer an emotionally satisfying and powerful domestic response to September 11's events,
2. infuse billions into the economy,
3. make us safer in case of further attacks,
4. considerably reduce our long-term vulnerability to Middle Eastern politics,
5. improve our environment significantly,
6. create millions of good jobs, many of them permanent,
7. generate new and lasting businesses and manufacturers,
8. strengthen existing manufacturing and electronics
9. provide a crucial, yet currently incomplete and inadequate, modern industry
10. offer a lasting national symbol of unity and spirit that knits us together.

I'm suggesting a COMPREHENSIVE NATIONAL RAIL PASSENGER SYSTEM.

Here is an answer, both big and exciting.
We just saw how rapidly air travel could be stopped. We have a highway system that depends primarily on foreign - Middle Eastern - oil. It is intolerable that we are missing what most other industrialized countries rely on - a broad system of public transportation.
Having been attacked by Middle Eastern terrorists, perhaps we can see more clearly how vulnerable our oil needs leave us to Middle Eastern politics, and, in fact, that they are what dragged us into the Gulf War and stationing troops in Saudi Arabia - the event that supposedly drove Bin Ladin over the edge.
Now is the time to declare it a primary national priority to free ourselves from this situation. For, in terms of our safety, military action alone won't:

1. address our continuing liability in relation to oil interests,
2. protect our economy now or support it over the long term,
3. answer the crying domestic and military need in this country for more than two comprehensive forms of transportation

In short, boosting the military and focusing on security are an insufficient response to the threat.
The economy is weak. Even if billions of dollars are shifted into a war-time economy, our way of life, now in crisis, will never bloom from the proceeds of major arms dealers and military supply industries. We must do something capable of contributing to all sectors of our domestic economy and all parts of the nation.
A NATIONAL RAIL SYSTEM, a public works project of a scale never before seen in this country, would provide an incredible psychic boost to national morale and would please:

1. WORKERS AND UNIONS because building and maintaining this system will generate millions of jobs, not just construction but permanent transportation-related jobs, from engineers to car attendants, from clerical workers to traffic controllers, from chefs to baggage handlers.
2. BUSINESSES because this project will produce lasting spin-offs of domestic manufacturing from steel production to computer connections to furnishings of stations and trains themselves, reversing a shifting of manufacturing from overseas, to domestic production.
3. ENVIRONMENTALISTS because they have pushed for public transportation for years. Trains use significantly less oil than cars or even planes and will mean less environmentally destructive highway building as well.
4. CITIES and COMMUTERS across the country because they are suffering from smog and sprawl and congestion. Citizens increasingly irate about commuting time and cities previously without sufficient funds or consensus for public transportation, will find this unifying need offers a long-awaited impetus.
5. THE AUTOMOBILE INDUSTRY and even AEROSPACE INDUSTRY because they could build the engines and train cars. In an economy facing recession and with oil shortages a not unreasonable expectation, this project offers large manufacturers a chance to retool for new and major sales.
6. THE POOR, ELDERLY, AND DISABLED because they don't own or can't drive cars, and because planes don't carry people well over short distances, and certainly not within cities themselves. A thorough rail system would answer a desperate need.
7. PEOPLE WHO HAVE BEEN WAITING FOREVER FOR THE US TO HAVE A CIVILIZED RAIL SYSTEM LIKE OTHER WESTERN COUNTRIES OFFER.
8. THE TOURISM INDUSTRY because it has been deeply affected by people's concern about flying.
9. EVERYONE WITH ANY INVESTMENT IN THE STOCK MARKET.

We could challenge ourselves to have the main lines of this rail system in place in 3 years. We could have contests for construction deadlines between cities, and later, for best rail speeds, for snazziest train designs by manufacturers (with different styles of trains in each region for variety). We could have public namings of stations or the trains themselves, architecture contests for design of stations, art contests for murals within stations or for decorations on trains, etc, etc. In all these ways, we could make this be an exciting and BENEFICIAL American response, pulling everyone in and helping Americans feel and the world see that we are creative and strong and healthy HERE - truly a part of dealing with things internationally.
The cost-benefit analysis between letting our economy go under, or spending to build a system (that is absurdly missing to begin with), that will itself address military, domestic, economic, and environmental needs, was never so strong as at this moment. The balance has been tipped.
A NATIONAL RAIL PASSENGER SYSTEM will provide us with a crucial infrastructure. And, in the wake of watching two symbols of American strength attacked, it will leave us with an immense and literally unifying symbol of American spirit.