Carmichael stumps for states’ power on high-speed rail development
In a speech delivered to the Indiana High Speed Rail Association Wednesday, transportation policy veteran Gil Carmichael said he believes a partnership between the states and private enterprise is the best hope for successful high-speed rail development in the United States.
Carmichael, a transportation expert and former U.S. Federal Railroad Administrator, said U.S. high-speed rail marketing initiatives are badly misplaced.
'The 'single-mode mindset' of Capitol Hill really has not changed during my lifetime,' said Carmichael, who is also senior chairman of the board of directors of the Intermodal Transportation Institute at the University of Denver. 'Very few members of Congress are even aware of the scale and impact of the freight intermodal revolution of the past 25 years; so when they talk about high-speed rail or claim to be pursuing intermodal legislation, they are really continuing to vote for highway projects only.
'Another point that has been neglected by Capitol Hill is that high-speed rail projects should be intermodal in nature,' he continued. 'Intermodalism is clearly being handled better by the states and the private sector as opposed to the federal government. The intermodal freight system in this country, which has no authority from DOT (Department of Transportation), works because it is customer-designed and customer-driven. By contrast, the commercial passenger system in this country currently is neither.'
Carmichael said that with the intermodal freight system in this country, savvy customers are in the driver's seat, using their marketplace power to insist upon good service, continuing improvements and the technology and service alterations necessary to adapt to changes within the marketplace.
'If high-speed corridors are to achieve these same goals,' he said, 'we will have to do more than just provide quality rail service at a price that customers accept as a satisfactory value. We cannot agree to an 'if-we-build-it-they-will-come' developer's mentality ' because they will not.'