Biden meets with coffee
shop employees at the train
station in Wilmington, Del.,
on Sept. 16, 2008.
benefits of keeping millions and
millions of cars off the road.
and seeing the lights on, they told me
things that the briefing folders in front
of me never could. they gave color and
meaning to the problems i’ve spent my
career trying to solve. they reminded
me why i made that trip back and forth
7,000 times.
but my support for rail travel goes
beyond the emotional connection. With
delays at our airports and congestion on
our roads becoming increasingly ubiquitous, volatile fuel prices, increased
environmental awareness, and a need for
transportation links between growing
communities, rail travel is more important to america than ever before.
support for amtrak must be strong—
not because it is a cherished american
institution, which it is—but because it
is a powerful and indispensable way to
carry us all into a leaner, cleaner, greener
21st century.
consider that if you shut down
amtrak’s northeast corridor, it is
estimated that to compensate for the
loss, you’d have to add seven new lanes
of highway to interstate 95. When you
consider that it costs an average of
$30 million for one linear mile of one
lane of highway, you see what a sound
investment rail travel is. and that’s
before you factor in the environmental
Back to the Future
in 1830, the first steam-engine
locomotive, the tom thumb,
graced america’s railways. its
first run was a rickety 13-mile trek
from baltimore to ellicott mills,
md., but it became much more
than that. it marked the beginning of a new journey, heading
straight into a better, more imaginative american future.
We are on a similar journey
now. We are at the dawn of a new age,
where the very best ideas of today will
shape our tomorrow, where renewable
clean energy and new transportation
systems and more efficient technology
will revolutionize american life the way
the tom thumb did some 180 years ago.
on Jan. 20, 2009, pulling out of the
Wilmington train station, embarking on
that same short trip i made thousands of
times before, i thought again about the
journey america was about to take as a
nation. and i saw our future the same way
i always did: looking out
amtrak’s windows.
1959
1970
1971
2000
Director Alfred Hitchcock releases the stylish thriller
North by Northwest, in which stars Cary Grant and
Eva Marie Saint meet on the glamorous 20th Century
Limited from
New York’s
Grand Central
Terminal to Chicago’s LaSalle
Street Station,
leading to a
famously risqué
debate over
who will sleep
where in a
single sleeper.
Congress passes the Rail Pas-
senger Service Act on Oct. 14.
President Richard Nixon signs
the bill into law on Oct. 30,
creating the National Rail-
road Passenger Corporation
(NRPC) to preserve the many
regional rail lines servicing
different parts of America.
Shortly thereafter, the NRPC
adopts the name Amtrak, with
the red, white and blue arrow
logo, which still can be seen
from coast to coast.
Amtrak begins operation with the 12:05 a.m.
departure from New
York’s Pennsylvania
Station of the “Clocker”
to Philadelphia’s 30th
Street Station. Amtrak
runs 184 trains that
first day, operating on a
23,000-mile network.
Acela
Express,
America’s
first high-speed rail
service,
makes its
inaugural run
on Nov. 17, departing Washington, D.C.’s Union Station
in the morning and arriving
in Boston’s South Station five
minutes ahead of schedule.
— Eric Wybenga
