Have the new air travel security rules got you down? Worried the fancy new baggage-scanning machines can’t tell an explosive from cheese or chocolate or that you’ll lose your tweezers in a carry-on inspection?

Air travel runs fairly well considering the many new and necessary federal security demands but if you’re going to New York or Washington, the train is a pleasant. Read the paper or watch a movie on an early bus from Bangor to Boston’s South Station and catch Amtrak’s new high speed Acela, with its comfortable seats and clean, spacious restrooms. You can make it to New York by mid-afternoon or Washington by early evening, arriving in the heart of the city instead of at a distant airport. It’s a little slower than the plane but a little cheaper, including the bus fare. Amtrak reservations are a breeze.

When Amtrak was created in the late 1960s, the private railroads were going broke and begged the federal government to take them over. To make the deal palatable, President Richard Nixon promised that the new federal system would be profitable within three years. He knew it was impossible, but Amtrak has been burdened ever since by this “big lie.” No mass transportation service has ever paid its own way.

Every year, Amtrak has had to go to Congress hat in hand to beg for money to make up its operating deficit and pay for maintenance and improvement of tracks and equipment. For the 2003 fiscal year, which started Oct. 1, 2002, the Senate has voted the requested $1.2 billion (with the support of Maine’s Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins). But the House voted only a measly $762 million, which would guarantee insolvency by spring and plunge Amtrak into a cash crisis like the one it barely survived last summer.

Until recently, Amtrak made the mistake of trying to make ends meet. It made crazy moves including mortgaging Pennsylvania Station in New York – like mortgaging your house to pay the grocery bill. Its new president, David Gunn, has changed strategy. He says Amtrak can never earn its own way. Its immediate need is congressional action on a $1.2 billion 2003 fund request. Looking to the future, it has been briefing state officials on the need for state funding of short corridors within their boundaries. Results are promising, despite tight state budgets. Long routes must continue to be a federal responsibility.

Long-term survival of Amtrak depends on regular state and federal support to make up operating deficits, regular federal funding for capital needs, beating back opposition lobbying by airlines and automobile and truck interests, and, above all, an admission by the House of Representatives that a self-sufficient broadly based passenger railroad system was an impossible dream.