The transportation double standard continues.

The federal government is trying to act quietly behind the scenes as it props up the financially beleaguered airline corporations. This week US Airways will get a $900 million loan guarantee from the government so it can secure a $1 billion loan while under bankruptcy protection. Next week, who knows? United, probably. It's only seeking a $1.8 billion loan guarantee.

America West was granted a $370.5 million guarantee last November, and no fewer than 10 other airlines have applications pending before the Air Transportation Stabilization Board.

The board has been upfront about its assistance to the airline industry. Its main interest, according to the government's official line, is in restoring the industry to financial health.

That's a laudable interest, to be sure.

But why does that interest only apply to airlines and not railroads?

Contrast the favorable reaction the airline industry gets in Washington with what happens whenever Amtrak asks for a few more dollars. The quasi-public Amtrak operation has to come on bended knee when, like the airlines, it struggles with low revenues and high expenses. And then only after it promised to lay off yet more people and pledged not to look at expanding any routes did it receive a temporary reprieve of $200 million, far from the billions that the airlines need and are likely to get in taxpayer help.

But the airlines carry so many more people, you say? Of course, they do, but rail would carry many more people if it got just a fraction of the subsidies afforded the airline industry.

The way this administration and others before it treat the railroads, it's nothing short of a miracle that we have the second-rate rail service we have. It's run not as a convenience to the consumer, but as a hostage to penny-pinchers. Its service is bad because it can't afford to hire enough people. And it can't tap promising new markets - high-speed rail from Chicago to Milwaukee to Madison to Minneapolis, for example - because Congress refuses to even consider it.

Yet the airlines, which experts agree already have more capacity than they need, are greeted with open arms. It couldn't be that's because corporate execs, the upper class and politicians themselves prefer to fly while the less affluent, the army private going back to his military post, and a considerable number of senior citizens on pensions ride the train - could it?

Sept. 11 should have convinced us that we need an alternative to air travel.

Yet here we are, nearly a year later, and nothing has changed.

Copyright 2002 The Capital Times

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