Railroad Health

Interesting story here on the financial health of America's freight railways. Moving goods by train is an incredibly efficient proposition, and with rising fuel prices (and significantly better management) our railroads have found financial health. I am glad of it.

Would that our passenger railways were so healthy. I am a huge fan of the federal government doing as little as possible in our daily lives, as a rule. That said, interstate commerce is one of those enumerated powers (Article I, section 8, US Constitution) specifically reserved for the Congress, and the Congress should be ashamed of itself for this nation's passenger rail system. AMTRAK runs trains up and down the East Coast that cannot go anywhere near their max speed because of ancient infrastructure and aging right-of-ways, and the lack of rail-heads at our major airports is a huge contributor to highway gridlock. There are any number of things I want the government to stop doing, to stop spending money on. Roads, highways, airports and rail infrastructure are not among them.