Latest Airline Meltdown Shows Need for National Railway Program

Traveling last Friday through Iowa and Illinois, an eastbound Amtrak California Zephyr showed little or no sign of being affected by the CrowdStrike glitch and the cascading computer outages that followed.

A morning announcement advised travelers that the café car could only accept cash, not credit cards, but that cleared up after an hour or so. Over lunch in the dining car, I asked fellow travelers—two students on day 42 of a two-month nationwide trip, using back-to-back USA Rail Passes—if they’d heard about the travelers stranded all over the country. “What? No,” they said. By afternoon, our train completed its 2,438-mile journey from California to Chicago less than an hour behind schedule.

Last week’s airline meltdown provided another unfortunate but powerful demonstration of two things: the importance of long-distance train service, and the need for a national railway program. Great train service would become a first choice for millions more American travelers, and trains provide redundancy when air or highway travel become impossible.

It’s not that trains are immune to trouble. Rail systems in some other countries like the UK suffered badly from the CrowdStrike outage. Right now, sabotage before opening ceremonies for the Summer Olympics in Paris has disrupted French train service. In the United States, frequent Amtrak travelers know that sudden cancellations and long delays happen much too often, and Amtrak’s skeletal network doesn’t have nearly the capacity that U.S. airlines do.

But trains keep proving their value: every day, and on extraordinary days. Over the past week, most American trains—intercity, commuter, and freight trains—kept rolling despite the CrowdStrike chaos. American trains remained in service during recent airline meltdowns caused by software trouble and gridlock from volatile weather. Further back, Amtrak even honored airline tickets from travelers stranded by the grounding of all flights after the 9/11 airborne attacks.

How much is it worth to have a balanced transportation system, with air, highway, and train travel on equal footing? Preliminary estimates from insurers show that last week’s IT outage might have stuck Fortune 500 companies with at least $5 billion in direct costs— over just a few days. A congressman serving as a delegate to the Republican National Convention couldn’t fly home or find an available rental car, so he ended up paying $2,900 for a taxi from Milwaukee to Chattanooga. (In the Alliance’s vision for the Midwest and Southeast, he would have had the option to get home by train.)

We have a way—and a chance—to insulate ourselves from such astounding costs and awful inconveniences.

Since passage of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law nearly three years ago, the United States has taken important first steps toward much more robust train service, and making it part of an integrated transportation network:

• The United States now has two 200-mph train lines under construction, in California, and between Las Vegas and Los Angeles.
• Visionary federal champions are making the case for high-speed trains, and advocating for investment on par with air and highway spending.
• Work has started to improve Chicago Union Station, and there are clear ways to improve Chicago’s capacity to serve as a nationwide hub for trains that serve hundreds of communities nationwide.
• The Federal Railroad Administration is finally talking about growth: an initial proposal to add 15 long-distance routes, serving 61 additional metropolitan areas, has sparked interest in a true national network.
• In December, the FRA also awarded Corridor ID grants to support initial planning work on 69 new projects across 44 states.

Trains already have strong bipartisan support. Maybe that’s because Americans have learned the hard way what comes from overreliance on air and highway travel: stress and congestion and chronic snarls that trap travelers and weigh our economy down.

Fast, frequent, affordable train service for every region of the country would keep us moving when one mode or another comes to a stop. Even more importantly, new trains will provide a safe, efficient, convenient option that more and more travelers will choose first.

If you agree, sign and spread the word about this petition to Congress for a national railway program that reconnects America with great trains!

Written by Chris Ott, deputy director of the High Speed Rail Alliance