The president-elect's platform made its case in part by linking those needs to cutting our thirst for expensive fossil fuel, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and spurring the economy by rebuilding the nation's transportation infrastructure, including airports and highways.
If you've ridden an Amtrak train recently, you may know how timely these efforts are. Thanks in part to record gasoline prices and the hassles and cost of air travel, the once-ridiculed, often less-than-perfect railroad is carrying record numbers of customers and collecting more revenue than ever before.
At peak times, it's standing-room only on some trains. Amtrak warned last summer that, at times, it doesn't have enough rail cars in good working order to meet the demand.
In the 2008 fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, Amtrak carried 14 percent more customers and collected 18 percent more revenue than it did the year before. It was the sixth straight year of increases. Some routes saw increases of more than 30 percent and virtually all of its 43 routes nationwide carried at least 6 percent more passengers.
This upward trend was broken in October, when traffic fell on Amtrak's Northeast Corridor, most likely because of lower gas prices and the deteriorating economy reducing business travel.
But Amtrak patronage elsewhere continued to grow last month, as it has been doing for several years. At one time, half of the railroad's riders were on Northeast Corridor trains. Today, it's 38 percent because of the growth on routes in the rest of the country.
Among the reasons for that growth is that numerous states, including Pennsylvania, help support short- and medium-distance Amtrak trains that are just the kinds business and leisure travelers want - especially when gas hits $4 a gallon.
