(The Utica Observer-Dispatch posted the following Gannett News Service article by Ledyard King on its website on May 12.)
ABOARD THE ACELA EXPRESS — Amtrak’s bullet-shaped train was built to travel as fast as 150 mph from Washington to Boston.
But heading north toward New York on a spring morning, the sleek and silver Acela often slows to 100 mph or less through Civil War-era tunnels, over rotting wood ties and under unreliable electric wiring.
Amtrak’s trains are high-speed but the Northeast corridor they ride on is not. Only on an 18-mile stretch around Providence, R.I., does Acela hit 150 mph.
While critics focus on its cross-country lines that collectively lose $300 million per year, Amtrak’s financial albatross turns out to be its most popular line.
Company officials are asking a skeptical Congress for nearly $1.8 billion in federal aid through 2008 to upgrade signals, replace railroad ties and open-deck bridges, and make other long postponed improvements in the Northeast corridor that could benefit tens of thousands of transit commuters in New Jersey as well.
“If we don’t get funding (for) the services that I think everybody wants to keep, like the Northeast corridor, it’s going to collapse on us,” Amtrak President David. L. Gunn told a House committee in April. “We are very close to the point where we won’t be able to operate high-speed operations between Washington and (Boston).”
Unlike the rest of the country where passenger trains run on track owned by freight companies, Amtrak owns most of the 456-mile Northeast corridor, including all the track running through the Garden State.
The corridor, particularly near New York, “operates on the razor thin edge of reliability,” according to an Amtrak report detailing its proposed capital plan.
Many of the problems have been exacerbated by the company’s unsuccessful attempt to wean itself off federal operating subsidies.
In 1997, Congress ordered Amtrak to break even by 2002 or face potential closure. Under then-President George Warrington, who now runs New Jersey Transit, the company went deeper into debt and put off maintenance as it poured resources into improving its bottom line.
It spent $300 million building and expanding its mail and small freight delivery service, a program that lost money according to Gunn, who has been scaling back non-passenger programs since he was hired a year ago.
Congress is openly wary of providing more subsidies to a company already more than $3 billion in debt that carries a small percentage of the nation’s inter-city passenger traffic.
Amtrak’s poor track record of financial management is precisely why it should not be allowed to oversee such a mammoth capital project, said Thomas Till, who served as executive director of the congressionally established but now disbanded Amtrak Reform Council.
“We’re looking at a company that has a tremendous challenge just trying to get its act together to run trains and now we want to hand them a civil works project twice the size of the Big Dig,” Till said, referring to Boston’s multibillion-dollar redesign of its downtown highway system. “Does that make any sense to anybody?”
The Bush administration recognizes that federal taxpayers will have to contribute to corridor improvements, but is proposing to create an independent entity that would manage train traffic and track maintenance. Such a plan would allow commuter agencies — including NJ Transit — to keep running trains even if Amtrak were forced to shut down for any period of time.
Amtrak’s unreliability has forced state taxpayers and commuters to shoulder a financial burden as well. Some states have agreed to help pay for improvements that benefit local commuter rail lines.
For the past several years, New Jersey has contributed about $35 million annually — an amount matched by Amtrak — for mutually agreed upon projects.
That hasn’t prevented some of the roughly 100,000 New Jersey commuters who ride the corridor every day from experiencing some delays due to infrastructure problems, Warrington said. But he said the investment has helped keep delays from increasing — so far — and he hasn’t seen an unusual spike in transit service delays attributable to deteriorating conditions.
“Amtrak has done a good job given the hand they were dealt, but I am deeply concerned looking forward,” said Warrington, who ran Amtrak from 1998 until last spring.