For Charlestown, it's the only way for the zombie Old Saybrook-Kenyon Bypass to rise again
Adam Barrington for Common Dreams
At a Senate Commerce subcommittee hearing earlier this month, former car salesman, wage thief, and current Ohio Sen. Bernie Moreno said the U.S. government should stop funding Amtrak, and argued in favor of handing it over to the private sector. Moreno and his ilk—including former White House dog, Elon Musk—perpetuate an old and tired right-wing tradition that is at best confused and at worst conniving: bashing all that serves the public good and venerating all that transfers wealth to private moneyed interests.
One might be tempted to give Moreno, Musk, and other practitioners of the ancient religion of market worship the benefit of the doubt; perhaps they really believe what they say. Maybe they truly think concentrating wealth and institutional control in the hands of a few corporate masters is what’s best for everyone. If that is the case, they are both far too bewildered, their minds far too infantile, to be in any positions of power and influence.
On the other hand, if Moreno and Musk are not in fact confused, then they must be aware that what they say is completely false. Privatization of public institutions has an observable record of raising prices for customers, diminishing service quality, and degrading working conditions. They know privatization is not good for the public, but it is good for private moneyed interests, like Moreno’s wealthy campaign contributors and billionaires like Musk, and that is what matters most to them.
For all the talk about Amtrak’s inefficiency, the record tells a different tale. Even with
inadequate federal funding, Amtrak has made significant accomplishments. For
example, though rail travel decreased during the Covid-19 pandemic, Amtrak set
all-time records for ridership and revenue in FY24. In fact, Amtrak’s Northeast
Corridor (NEC) ridership was 12% higher in FY24 than it was in FY19, before the
pandemic struck, and the NEC’s FY24 operating cost recovery, at 123%, far
exceeded the 100% statutory goal.
Speaking of efficiency—just how “efficient” is the private
sector, anyway? Hack economists tell us that efficiency means getting the same
or better results at a lower cost. A corporation gutting their workforce and
skimping on maintenance to obtain higher profits is, by this logic, acting
efficiently. The efficiency of a private business, therefore, depends on how
much profit it can squeeze out of fewer workers, with cheaper materials, in
worse conditions, and at greater risk to surrounding communities.
By laying off workers, cutting costs, neglecting maintenance, lengthening trains, and eschewing capacity expansion, the Class I railroads, with their Precision Scheduled Railroading (PSR) business model, must be sublimely efficient. After all, with after-tax profits in the billions, railroad corporations like Norfolk Southern, BNSF, and CSX must be doing something right. Just ask the folks in East Palestine, Ohio, how marvelously efficient Norfolk Southern is.
And there’s the rub. When priests of private enterprise like
Moreno and Musk say public services should be privatized because the private
sector is more efficient, they mean private entities deliver higher profits to
their owners, not that they better serve the needs of the public. In fact, even
when services and institutions are privatized, the public still pays for them in numerous ways—with
lower wages and worse jobs, decreased or eliminated benefits, displacement,
money siphoned away from communities into private pockets, and so on.
For example, a 2009 study showed that, following privatization and
outsourcing, food service workers’ wages in New Jersey K-12 schools were cut by
$4-6, and many workers completely lost their health insurance benefits. In
2011, privatization of nursing assistant jobs at a home for
veterans in Michigan saw the starting wage lowered to $8.50 an hour with no
health insurance or pension benefits. Public nursing assistants, on the other
hand, received $15-20 an hour, health insurance, and pensions.
In regard to rail, one can simply look across the Atlantic to see the results of rail privatization. Margaret Thatcher, high priestess in the cult of the market, privatized various public services, including some connected to the rail system. Her successor, John Major, started the process of privatizing the British rail system in 1993-4, and by 1997 the U.K.’s national rail system was under corporate control.
The privatization of British rail was disastrous. Higher
fares, deteriorated service, rampant underbidding by franchisees who then
abandoned agreements, and neglected infrastructure that cost people their lives. In the first three years after
privatization, 38 people died in rail accidents, and in October 2000, four
people died in a derailment that was entirely preventable. The private owners,
Railtrack, knew about the cracked rail that caused the derailment, but refused
to fix it. These people were sacrifices made at the altar of profit. Talk about
“efficiency.”
Recognizing that these devastating events were caused
largely by the egregious negligence of private owners, Britain renationalized
its rail infrastructure in 2002. A 2012 GfK NOP poll revealed that 70% of the 1,000
Britons surveyed were in favor of returning the rail system to public
ownership. In October 2022, YouGov reported that a majority of British voters,
including Conservatives, believe that utilities such as rail, water, and energy
should be in the public sector.
After decades of failure under the experiment of
privatization, the U.K.’s Labour government is currently taking steps to renationalize the British
rail system. In the United States, we should understand what happened across
the pond as a case study for what not to do. Privatization, in
terms of its service to the public, was a complete flop. There is no reason to
believe the privatization of Amtrak would be less of a flop.
It is worth noting that while Elon Musk was
castigating Amtrak at a tech conference earlier this year, he compared Amtrak unfavorably to China’s exceptional high-speed
passenger trains. In calling for privatization of “anything that can be
privatized” while at the same time praising a state-owned rail system (he even
called China’s trains “epic”), Musk showed the disingenuousness, or
incoherence, of the market religion he shares with Moreno and many other
delirious practitioners.
With all this in mind, it is clear that if we want a
passenger rail system that consistently, effectively, and conveniently serves
the public, the last thing we should do is privatize Amtrak. With increased
(and long overdue) federal funding, Amtrak can invest in infrastructure and
equipment upgrades and repairs, create thousands of well-paying union jobs
across the country, and better serve passengers.
If anything, we should be asking ourselves why so many
critical industries, like the Class I freight railroads, remain in private
hands when our needs would be better served if these industries were publicly
owned and operated. Why not democratize these enterprises? Wouldn’t you like a
say?
Adam Barrington is the national organizer for Public Rail Now and the author of The U.S. Labor Movement in the 20th and Early 21st Century: A Critical Analysis. For more information about Public Rail Now, please visit publicrailnow.org.