Business Travel Advice For Obama

Days after winning the 2008 election, Barack Obama flies from Chicago to Washington, D.C.

Image: Stan Honda/AFP/Getty Images

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To: The New POTUS

From: Joe Brancatelli
Date: January 20, 2009
Re: The Travel To-Do List

Congratulations on your inauguration as the 44th President. I take you at your word that you will consider good ideas from anyone. And as much as I would appreciate an opportunity to discuss these matters with you on the basketball court--I'm old and slow, but remain a dogged defender and relentless rebounder—I'll settle for this memo to make my points about your business-travel agenda.

Don't Get Railroaded
It's great that you took Amtrak from Philadelphia to Washington last week. After eight years of outright hostility from President George W. Bush—his Administration once proposed eliminating every penny of Amtrak's federal subsidies--it's good to have a President who understands the value of passenger-rail solutions. But don't let the "national passenger railroad" zealots and railroad buffs bamboozle you. Americans don't want or need a "national" railroad; we've wasted uncounted billions of taxpayer dollars since Amtrak was created in 1971 by subsidizing substandard long-haul trains. What the nation needs is a titanic investment in high-speed, short-haul rail service between heavily populated major cities. What we need is inter-modal solutions that create express rail links between major airports, nearby suburbs and city centers. Recreating the 20th Century Limited between New York and Chicago isn't the answer. Creating a 21st Century Amtrak that links Chicago's O'Hare Airport to tens of millions of travelers in Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan, Iowa and Indiana is.

Tokenism at Transportation
I'm all for bipartisan cabinets, but I'm wary of the Department of Transportation being the dumping ground for a token appointee of the vanquished party. Your choice of retired Illinois Representative Ray LaHood as Transportation Secretary makes him the only avowed Republican in the cabinet. Bush's sole Democratic cabinet member was Norm Minetta and his record at the department was dreary despite his being the nation's longest-serving Transportation Secretary. Minetta's problem: Bush didn't listen to him. Your staff's claim that LaHood will be different because he is part of your tight-knit Illinois posse is suspect now that his confirmation hearing was hastily delayed last week because you were still checking his background. It doesn't sound like LaHood is part of your Illinois inner circle and that raises the specter of another powerless token atop Transportation. My advice: Make sure LaHood gets substantial access to your decision makers and is publicly seen as having influence with you.

Deregulation's Original Sin
If your newly minted Chief Performance Officer, Nancy Killefer, is really going to go line-by-line through the federal budget, may I direct her attention to the $125 million boondoggle known as the Essential Air Service? Created 30 years ago as part of the Airline Deregulation Act, Congress meant it as a short-term stopgap to ensure that small communities wouldn't precipitously fall off national airline route map. But as one critic recently noted, these days it isn't essential nor much of a service. Who, after all, is served by an $850-a-head federal subsidy paid to haul a handful of flyers each year to and from Lewistown, Montana? Not residents, who got awful service, nor the airline (Big Sky), which went out of business last year. And why is the new E.A.S.-subsidized carrier, Great Lakes, being paid to connect Lewistown to Denver, 550 miles distant, when the airport in Billings, Montana, is just 95 miles away? Why does the D.O.T. want to pay Cape Air $1.2 million to connect Hagerstown, Maryland, to Baltimore-Washington Airport? And what traveler will pay about $60 each way to fly a 9-seat prop plane 67 miles to Baltimore when the drive from Hagerstown to Washington-Dulles Airport is just 54 miles?

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