Notrak

I can't remember the last time an incoming President arrived in Washington by train.  Maybe Ike in 1953.  Lincoln famously arrived in Washington by train in 1861 . . . after having been smuggled through Baltimore in the dead of night to avoid a possible assassination.  But Joe Biden won't even be able to do that.  He had planned to arrive in Washington on Amtrak, a transport service he has famously supported for his entire political career, in advance of his presidential inauguration.  But the dangers posed by the threats of anti-Biden militants proved to be too great.

Of course, this is a lost opportunity for publicity for Amtrak, the national passenger railroad having never been used for the arrival of an incoming President before.  It has been used for the departure of an outgoing Vice President.  (That Vice President's name?  Joe Biden.)  Amtrak, woefully underfunded and underappreciated (especially by the MAGA crowd - public transport being an assault on personal freedom and all), is barely making it to its fiftieth anniversary.  Biden's original plans for getting in to Washington would have been, like the COVID vaccine for all of us, a real shot in the arm for Amtrak.

No matter.  Once Biden is sworn in, he'll likely push for more funding for Amtrak and for modernizing it to bring it up to par with the bullet trains of Europe - something Bill Clinton and Barack Obama mostly paid lip service to with little of anything to show for it.  And if Biden succeeds,  Amtrak will certainly be able to run for another fifty years.