On Topic: Not everyone's on board about Amtrak

When I was a teenager, we had a dog in the neighborhood called Petey Banks.

Small, friendly and of indeterminate breed, Petey Banks, in his retirement years, was blind in one eye and probably couldn't see all that well out of the other. He was best known for walking out into the middle of the road, then lying down for a nap.

Folk who lived in the neighborhood knew enough to drive gently around him. But people passing through often would stop their cars and get out to shoo Petey Banks onto a sidewalk.

By the time these kindhearted souls got back behind the wheel, though, Petey as sure as God made little green tomatoes and willful pets, would have trotted back out into the roadway and resumed his napping position.

This passed for many an afternoon's entertainment for us.

Amtrak reminds me a lot of Petey Banks. We like the idea of it, but we're not terribly sure what to do about it.

Like beat-up, old Petey Banks, the passenger rail service sometimes seems more of a good-news-bad-news kind of prize:

•  For fiscal year 2012, Amtrak had an operating grant of $466 million. That's about $1.48 for each American, according to Amtrak calculations.
•  Amtrak President and CEO Joseph Boardman told the U.S. House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee in September that for FY 2011 Amtrak recovered 79 percent of its operating costs from fare box revenues - up from 76 percent in FY 2010.
•  When you include other, net revenues - such as real estate and contracted commuter services - Boardman contended overall revenues cover closer to 85 percent of operating costs.
•  Ridership is on the upswing nationwide by 44 percent since 2000, Boardman said.l On the other hand, Congress back in 1981 proclaimed Amtrak should learn to break even. It has yet to do so.
•  Amtrak has lost $834 million in its food-and-drink service over the past 10 years, the Government Accountability Office reported in August, primarily due to waste, employee theft and crumby oversight.

This is all worth thinking about now as public meetings are held this month in Iowa cities along a proposed Chicago-Omaha route. Henry Posner III, chairman of the Iowa Interstate Railroad's board, is on board (ha) with working with Amtrak.

The IIR and Amtrak plan to reestablish the Chicago line to Moline by 2015. It seems logical, supporters suggest, to push west to Iowa City.

Iowa House Republicans are on record as being less friendly. They object to the $3 million annual price tag for the state.

So the short-term-reasoning side of our brain tells us it's far too much cash to hand over simply so Iowans can ride to Chicago to shop.

But the long-term portion might consider the economic-development benefit of being able to move people and services easily to and from other metro areas.

And dare I, as a once frequent train passenger, even mention the words “carbon” and “footprint”?

It's like the dog in the middle of road. Someone needs to take responsibility, and that's most likely got to be us.