Joe Biden has the ability to make Amtrak, and me, and some smart investors, very happy

Once a running mate is picked by the assumed presidential candidate for a national party, there is a rush to pigeonhole the ever-loving hell out of him. It is a lot of fun for political journalist types, because they get to pop this person’s name into Lexis Nexis, and skim through a whole bunch of crap that their colleagues and competitors have written about the guy. It’s as close as you can get to going through a scrap book at work (and probably as close as most reporters get to doing any research anymore. (NB: the next time you see a reference such as “Some sources have noted” in a news story, that means that whatever you are about to read is something the reporter overheard while playing keno at the Laundromat.))

As noted by one billion Facebook updates this week, and as confirmed by his eye-moistening acceptance speech, Joe Biden is the official running mate of Barack “The Widening Gyre of Hope” Obama. The media at large is plenty tickled. Mr Biden has a political resume as long as a bad sermon, and yet he hasn’t been overplayed (all of which is the exact opposite of Mr Obama). Unfortunately for the media, he seems like a pretty decent guy, which doesn’t make much news. But there are still tidbits to check on. Most recently, Mr Biden has run his own unsuccessful campaign for the presidency. He dropped out during the Iowa caucuses this year after garnering fewer votes than the governor of New Mexico (a man who proves that politicians are generally as loyal as a flu strain), and just narrowly beating “Uncommitted”. But now he’s going to be henpecked and picked apart by the 30,000 rpm news cycle. So if you’ve missed all his goofy gaffes about Mr Obama’s hygiene, prepare to get schooled up.

One fun fact that keeps getting thrown around is that he is “one of the poorest members of the senate” (along with Senator Twist, Senator Canty, and Senator Finn). Some sources have noted (ha-ha) that his net worth is estimated at around $150k, others have it “between $59,000 and $366,000” (aforelinked LA Times article). This is certainly pauper-esque in terms of the senate. But considering he’s been making a six-figure salary since 1991, it really just makes me think that a bit too much of his portfolio loaded with trips to Dover Downs.

In the speech that Mr Obama delivered to introduce his executive partner a few days ago, he mentioned the now popular image of Joe Biden riding home to Wilmington every night on a “lonely Amtrak train”. This is another tid-bit that really has some legs. The next day I got dispatch from my friend Tune noting that Mr Biden was soon dubbed “The Amtrak Candidate”, which is a brand being picked up by blogs on other major news outlets. Furthermore, Biden himself mentioned Amtrak in his acceptance speech last night. Not only a plug for his pals on the train, but also for his son who sits on the Amtrak Board of Directors.

Let’s look beyond the fact that the ride between Wilmington and DC is rarely "lonely". It’s on the Northeast Corridor, which serves about two thirds of Amtrak’s total ridership. Right now, I am just glad that Amtrak is getting press in a quasi-loving light. Generally, Amtrak only gets press when they are trying to figure out how much money the Bush Administration does not want to give them despite continual increases in ridership. This is not a new problem at all.

So now we may actually have someone who makes our massively underfunded passenger rail service a priority. Personally, I’m all for it. I’m a big fan of public transportation in general, and rail transport specifically. When I was living in Brooklyn, NY and Mrs Squatty and I went-a-courtin’, I spent a great deal of time on Amtrak between New York and Baltimore. Also, it was just as easy to pop up to the 518 to visit the folks. All in all, I traveled more than 18,000 miles on the Northeast Corridor from the fall of 2004 to the spring of 2008. I am a fan, and despite at times paying $80 to sit on the floor, or $100 to be an hour and a half late, I have plenty of interest in bumping up the subsidy for Amtrak.

(And this is the part where everyone hates me.)

I know, I know. We’re all still fuming that Amtrak just got a ton of money in a veto-proof bill a few months ago. So it looks like, with a continued Democratic legislature, and maybe even a Democratic executive, our trains will be back on track. Well, it’s important to understand a few things about that. 

For one, when a bill is passed by The House, it is not as if Alex Kummant walks over to some cashier in the Treasury and gets a check cut for $14 Billion. There will be a good deal of that money that will not go to Amtrak at all. It is a passenger rail bill, so it is setting aside money for all passenger rail systems (subways, light rails, commuter rails, etc). In fact, 10% of the money is going to Washington DC’s Metro system alone.

Beyond this, it is an authorization for funds. Amtrak is not guaranteed anything. If it is authorized to receive $1.8 Billion one year but there is only $520M in the budget because we are paying for Poland to be in Afghanistan, or writing checks to farmers to not do anything, then $520M is all they get. They are still down on the priority list.

And one other thing I don’t want to get into here is whether the airlines or the highways get more subsidies than Amtrak per passenger mile, or per household, or anything. National transportation is all federally funded and it should be, because to some degree it should all be federally regulated. Moving people around the country between 60 and 400 mph is not something where we should just let the market do its thing. The point is that the current investment in Amtrak is actually making it worse every year. It's kind of like blowing out a tire on your F-150 on the highway and seeing how long you can make it on the rims. It needs funds just to come up to status quo.

In terms of our national passenger rail debacle, the government is lying in a bed it made itself. Amtrak was created in 1971 by our own federal government because it was a losing business model for private railroads who just wanted to pull freight. It inherited rolling stock and infrastructure that was between a few decades and a century old. Some of this infrastructure is still being fixed; some of it is just getting older and more dangerous. Every day on the way to work, my train goes through tunnels that are crumbling with age because they were built shortly after the war… The Civil War.

It is capital expenditures like these that need the most priority. Amtrak currently has a State of Good Repair backlog in the multiple billions of dollars because it has never received enough money do all the capital improvements necessary. So when you are wondering why they haven’t put in a super high speed rail (a-la the TGV) between Boston and DC, you can ask your local physics professor about sending a 200 mph train over a 90 year old bridge. It’s not like flying where you just build the plane; you have to build the sky, too.

So, what do we do? WHAT DO WE DO?!

Alright, everyone knows of Mr Bush’s old plan to… well… just stop funding Amtrak altogether, let it deregulate, and kind of see what happens in the free market. That sounds like a neat plan on paper, and maybe if Jack Welch were the president it would have happened. But you are hoping for the best parts of Friedman, and you’ll probably get the worst parts of Hobbes. Quite simply, if you start a business that needed a massive cash infusion from the beginning, never gave it that infusion, and then watch it crumble, it is hard to say that you gave it your best shot.

The airline industry is quite deregulated, and I can’t hyperlink enough sites to illustrate its turmoil. So we’ll just hope you read the news and understand that maybe deregulation isn't the panacea that you think it is.

Furthermore, the nation, and the globe, is seeing people move towards urban areas, and not always the big ones. By 2030, UN projections indicate that one third of the world’s population will reside in cities of under 500,000, and 80% of the US and Europe will be urbanized. With those kinds of numbers, we are not talking about New York and LA. We are talking about new and rejuvenated urban centers like Charlotte, Jacksonville, Yuma, AZ, Santa Fe, NM, and Albany, NY. (Dude, seriously. Albany is awesome.) If half a billion people or more live in the US and they are expecting inter-city travel, it is inconceivable to believe that we viably commute that many passengers in the air, or that many short distance flights because we scrapped our national rail service. Why set up yet another industry for failure? 

I am hoping that the Democratic Vice-Presidential hopeful gives Amtrak the shot that it needs, but not just by writing a $5 billion check. The federal government really should stay involved, but just to help with a few laws that I’ll need passed to get my plan underway.

The train should not be thought of as simply a means to move people from A to B. (Stay with me here.) The train is faster, more spacious, and has much less stigma than riding the bus. In terms of entrance and egress between major cities less than 300 miles apart, the travel time is comparable to flying. In terms of longer trips, its entire philosophy is not about pressurized efficiency where you are strapped down most of the time. You can move around, or go to the café car and meet people; you can treat it like an event in it self.

So much of Amtrak’s advertisements are about being able to get work done on the train, or decompressing on the train, or doing all these other things that don’t make Amtrak any money while someone is sitting in a seat for 2-3 hours, or maybe even a day or two. So how do you get revenue beyond selling rooms on the train and food at a loss?

The Casino Car.

Think about it. Just think about it for a minute. On the end of any long-distance train (we’ll start with the long distance trains), you tack on two Casino Cars. One car has two blackjack tables, and two craps tables, and the other one is all just video poker and slots and all that high margin crap that takes the fun out of gambling. You put the café car in between them and the rest of the train, and then you put all the cabins and coaches on the front.

Of course this has been joked about and opined and even pored over by the underground rail literati in forums past. But never before has it been so poignant. This is a way for Amtrak to receive continual revenue while the cars are actually rolling. The train is then not just a mode of transport. It becomes an interstate party bus. It brings form and function together in a high-margin business that has decades of experience in fine-tuning ways to keep trapped people happy.

Also, the costs for converting or building the Casino Cars could be fronted by a major entertainment company that is already looking to expand. Foxwoods? Trump? Harrah’s? Any one of them would be willing to give it a shot. Hell, you can even charge them for the right to brand the car. More dough right there.

Imagine your trip from DC to New Orleans, or from Chicago to New Orleans, or from New Orleans to LA (Mrs Squatty really likes New Orleans), where you get on, check into your room, go have a drink, hit the tables, carouse for a while, hit the hay, and wake up at your destination. Your vacation starts the minute you leave, and not with some wholesome crap about traveling with your loved ones and learning the true meaning of something. Oh no. It is about getting the booze and the yo-leven going as soon as you leave your port of call.

One of the worst parts about taking a trip nowadays is getting on the goddamn plane. Here's a great way to follow Bing's advice and elimiate the negative. Just imagine something awesomer.

(NB: “Imagine Something Awesomer” is going to be my slogan when I run for mayor of Baltimore.)