TRAIN YOURSELF TO RELAX. I stole that title from a New Haven timetable. The public is figuring it out.

The high cost of energy, coupled with congestion on highways and at airports, is drawing travelers back to trains not only for commuting but also for travel between cities as many as 500 miles apart.

Because the passenger train services are government supported, the new administration confronts the Reagan Paradox. Government is not the solution to the problem. Government is the problem.

The public is ahead of policymakers in recognizing trains as an attractive alternative to cars and planes, said U.S. Rep. James Oberstar (D-Minn.), chairman of the House Transportation Committee.

"I think we're at a transformational point in intercity passenger rail service," said Oberstar.

Amtrak, the passenger rail service that struggled for years to attract riders, drew a record 28.7 million in the year ending Sept. 30. That is 11 percent more than the year before and the sixth straight year that ridership has increased. Ticket revenue hit a record $1.7 billion, a $200 million increase from a year earlier.

Then there's the Bush 41 Constraint. The will is there, but not the wallet.

Rail travel is gaining greater favor in Congress, which provides the subsidies needed to keep Amtrak rolling. Lawmakers are trying to find ways to deal with high energy prices, congested and aging roads and bridges, and an air traffic control system that relies largely on World War II-era technology.

Congress passed legislation this month that sets a goal of providing $13 billion over five years to Amtrak—a major vote of confidence for the railroad. The measure also encourages development of high-speed rail corridors and contains $2 billion in grants to states to enhance or introduce new service between cities. The money still must be appropriated.

Where public funds are allocated, it's difficult to build a majority without providing benefits to sufficiently many districts, which often means to inefficiently many districts. The alternatives are pork-barrel earmarks, or logrolling. The public interest, if such a thing can be defined, let alone identified, is not necessarily served.

Critics say it is unfair to require people in areas where there is no Amtrak service or infrequent service to subsidize the train travel of people in the few corridors where there is frequent, fast service.

The claim is incomplete in two ways. First, some of the corridors with frequent, relatively fast service, are state-supported. There's little logic to the way it works. Federal moneys maintain the Acela Express line, but Pennsylvania moneys support the Harrisburg service, New York moneys the Albany-Buffalo, and Wisconsin, Illinois, and Michigan keep the Chicago-based network going. Second, the commuter rail operators, which provide useful connections to the corridors, run into the same problem at the county level, one reason there are no suburban trains to DeKalb. I leave the issue of subsidizing transportation facilities for aviators (a generally richer portion of the population) or for motorists (not too young, not too old, not too ill) for another day.

The idea of faster Midwestern service is not going away, which I endorse.

Some cities that would be in the network have passenger train service to Chicago, but it is often slow and infrequent. The regional plan calls for using 3,000 miles of existing rail rights of way and introducing modern train cars and engines operating at speeds up to 110 m.p.h.

I will, however, remind readers that there's nothing new here.