We have no one to blame but ourselves

Airline analysts expect US airlines to slash flights at the end of summer, leading to some smaller cities losing airline service and generally making travel more difficult, especially for business people. Well, fortunately the US has a great railroad, with high speed trains, that has been invested in by our government in the same manner our airports and highways have been funded the last few decades.... Oh wait, we don't .... uh oh.

Why are people surprised that the end of cheap fuel would mean changing travel patterns and reductions by airlines? As private businesses, the airlines need to make a profit. We chose a long time ago to have private investors supply airline service and they not only look at supply and demand but also look at the bottom line, despite giving subsidies to provide service to less profitable locations. If rising fuel prices mean they lose money they cancel service. However, they have received money from taxpayers to help them stay afloat in the form of airports and air traffic controllers. Obviously those features benefit communities as airports allow more commerce to come into their areas. Truckers, while equally hurt by rising fuel costs, also benefit from all those federal highways build and maintained by the federal and state governments the last 5 or 6 decades, at the cost to rail freight. Yet, if similar subsidies aresuggested for rail, the public, especially those wi th a vested interest of keeping the status quo in place, freaks.

There is nothing wrong with subsidizing transportation in the US. A good transportation structure is key to our economic well being. However, we continue to provide billions of dollars in subsidies "to truckers unthinkingly, while carefully scrutinizing every dollar allocated to transit" and try to "solve our commuter traffic problems by building highways instead of railways, even though it takes fifteen lanes of highway to move as many people as one lane of track." We have foolishly built our structure on the assumption that cheap fuel wouldremain forever and continue to live that way. Well, non renewable fuels eventually start to run out and, along wi th other countries rising to our standard of living, fall victim to supply and demand. Now, because we have not invested in alternate transportation systems we are stuck with what we have, a system subject to the whims of the fuel/commodities market. We let rail die in favor of trucks and planes instead of, at the least, trying to treat all equally. For example, federal law establishes about 80 percent of highway funding for highway projects, but just 20 percent for transit investments. This has led, in part, to the decimation of our passenger railroad system (of course trains could not compete with flying to LA from NY in a few hours over taking a train across country for a few days, unless you are not in a rush). Now we are paying the bill for that.

The largest percentage of funding for transit projects comes from the federal government. The US has, and continues to, prefer funding for highways in lieu of rail or other mass transit for an automobile culture from the 1950s, leaving those who want to travel by something not as dependent on oil in the early 21st century few options. Fixing this won't be easy. But we better start soon and it better be more than the sad initiatives we've already started. We've wasted enough time foolishly starving our rail system on the theory they need to be profitable (mass transit is a service that is generally not profitable) while subsidizing the airlines and trucking industry with our federal dollars. We need to stop looking for excuses not to invest in mass transit. We need to wake up and realize that this nation will need effective mass transit of people and goods as the 21st century will probably not have the same cheap fuel as the 20th. For the good of the nation, we need to rethink our transportation methods. Because if we don't, we're going to wake up one day and find that it is too expensive to do anything but walk.

As to the airlines raising prices and decreasing services thanks to their effective transportation monopoly thanks to our funding initiatives of the last century of subsidizing the airlines, we have no one to blame but ourselves. If that means some of the major airlines collapse, so be it. That's part of the risk of capitalism. Annoy your customers too much and you fail. And, as smaller cities are abandoned by the big boys, I'm sure that some nimble competitor will eventually take their places.