Transit's Future? Trains and Transponders.

Our nation faces a daunting challenge today: how to fund improvements to our transportation system and reduce congestion. While Fred Hiatt delved into the recommendations of the congressionally mandated National Surface Transportation Infrastructure Financing Commission ["Breaking the Gridlock on Paying for Roads," op-ed, March 16], he overlooked a key source of congestion relief and infrastructure funding: freight rail.

Shifting long-distance freight from highways to rails reduces congestion by taking trucks off the roads -- one intermodal train takes 280 trucks off our congested highways. Unlike trucks, which ride over publicly financed highways, freight trains operate on a vast 140,000-mile network entirely funded by freight railroads. These private companies invest billions of dollars each year to revitalize and expand their rail systems. By making wise choices and sound investments over the past quarter-

century, America's freight railroads have created the lowest-cost rail service in the world.

But some in Congress want to put the government back in control with burdensome new regulation that would threaten the railroads' ability to continue investing in their rail networks. Removing the limited antitrust exemptions that railroads have today would only create confusing and overlapping oversight.

Overregulation of the railroads is not new. It drove the industry to the brink of disaster in the 1970s. Congress must preserve the current system of reasonably balanced regulation, because crippling the railroad industry is a risk our economy can't afford to take.

ED HAMBERGER

President and CEO

Association of American Railroads

Washington