(The following article by Tom Feeney was posted on the Newark Star-Ledger website on November 28.)
NEWARK, N.J. — Rail operations on the Northeast Corridor should be run by the federal and state governments rather than Amtrak, according to a think tank’s study made public yesterday.
Amtrak has been chronically underfunded by Congress and, as a result, much of the Northeast Corridor — the line that runs from Washington, D.C., to Boston — has fallen into disrepair, said Martin E. Robbins, director of the Alan M. Voorhees Transportation Center at Rutgers University and author of the study.
Robbins’ study, funded by a group of New Jersey businesses, recommends ownership of the rails and other infrastructure on the Northeast Corridor be transferred to the federal government and that a public benefit corporation be formed to govern its operation.
Half of the control of the new corporation would be held by the federal government, and half would be held by the governors of the states along the Northeast Corridor and the mayor of Washington. Amtrak would be hired to manage the infrastructure and operations, though it could be replaced in that role the future.
“We need a different governance model than the one we’ve been living under for the past 30 years,” Robbins said.
The Newark Regional Business Partnership, an organization that represents the interests of more than 450 large and small companies in the Newark area, considers inter-city rail vital to the economic interests of the Northeast, said Chip Hallock, the group’s president. It has lobbied Congress to adequately fund Amtrak.
At the same time, it contracted with the Voorhees center to look for ways to ensure the long-term health of inter-city rail service. Robbins’ recommendation was the result of that work.
“This is a precious asset that we have to manage and take care of and utilize,” said Dennis M. Bone, president of Verizon New Jersey, one of the members of the Newark regional partnership.
The group will lobby the Corzine administration to embrace the proposals in the report, Hallock said. Robbins said presentations will be made to the other governors in the Northeast Corridor, too.
Coming up with a new way to manage the Northeast Corridor also could benefit people riding on regional rail services.
NJ Transit, like other Northeast regional rail agencies, relies heavily on rails now owned by Amtrak. Its busiest commuter route is the Northeast Corridor Line, which runs between Trenton and Penn Station in New York. More than 500 of the 600 weekday trains that travel on those rails are NJ Transit’s, according to Robbins’ report. An estimated 161,000 NJ Transit daily riders are dependent upon Amtrak operations.
NJ Transit pays about $35 million a year to Amtrak for the privilege of operating on its rails and contributes millions more toward Amtrak’s capital costs, Robbins said. In return, the agency gets virtually no say in how the corridor is governed.
“Commuter services are playing an ever and ever larger role, but Amtrak is the owner, operator and manager of the entire corridor,” he said. “Does that model really make sense?”
Amtrak is often unresponsive to the needs of the commuter rail agencies, Robbins said. For instance, he said, it shot down an NJ Transit proposal to operate regular, one-seat, daily service between New York and Atlantic City because it thought the service might lure riders off some of its trains, Robbins said.
New Jersey Transportation officials yesterday said Robbins’ proposal deserves careful consideration. Both Transportation Commissioner Kris Kolluri and NJ Transit Executive Director George Warrington said they hoped the proposal would spark a serious discussion about how the Northeast Corridor is governed and how Amtrak can remain viable in the future.
An Amtrak spokesman said he doesn’t believe the proposal would fix the Northeast Corridor’s problems.
“A change in ownership won’t change the underlying funding needs for the corridor or the process to obtain that funding — it just sidesteps the issue,” spokesman Cliff Black said.
David Johnson of the National Association of Railroad Passengers also has concerns.
“The number one issue is bringing the corridor into a state of good repair,” he said. “This proposal doesn’t say anything about where that money would come from.”