(The following article by Tom Howard was posted on the Billings Gazette website on March 14.)
GLASGOW, Mont. — Two or three times a week, Mary Sugg takes up a spot on the platform at the Glasgow train station and gives a big wave to the engineer as Amtrak’s Empire Builder pulls into town.
Sugg says it’s important to get the engineer’s attention, so he’ll know that she’s ready to pick up her delivery of fresh-cut flowers.
After the train came to a halt during the noon hour March 3, Sugg jogged over to the baggage car and reached for a half-dozen boxes of flowers that she had ordered the day before from her wholesaler in Minneapolis.
Flowers shipped from Minneapolis arrive on Train 7, the westbound Empire Builder, at 12:26 p.m. If necessary, she can pick up flowers shipped from Spokane on the eastbound Train 8, which arrives at 3:47 p.m.
“It’s convenient for me because the train arrives here during business hours,” said Sugg, owner of Glasgow Flower and Gift.
Sugg says her business would change significantly if the Bush administration succeeds in cutting funding for Amtrak and the Empire Builder stops running.
“You really don’t have much else to depend on for shipping perishable goods,” Sugg said.
Shipping flowers to Glasgow by air freight is one possibility. But when the weather gets hot, airplanes can’t haul as much cargo. That means flowers could wilt while sitting in the airport for days at a time, Sugg said.
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Cathryn Wylie, owner of Friesen’s Floral and Greenhouse in Wolf Point, said the Empire Builder delivered six shipments of fresh flowers during the week before Valentine’s Day. Shipments dwindle to one or two a week when business slows down.
“We could use Federal Express to ship flowers but it’s not as reliable, and we don’t have bus service so that’s not an option,” Wylie said. “The way it is, my wholesalers will work with me to a point. But without Amtrak, it would get a lot more expensive.”
Larry Neutgens, owner of the Ben Franklin store in Wolf Point, said he periodically receives shipments of tropical fish by Amtrak. If railroad service is halted, he could probably find other ways to have the fish delivered.
But passenger service remains the most important reason for keeping Amtrak running, he said. “It’s a good way to travel,” said Neutgens, who sometimes takes the train to the Twin Cities for business.
Photo diary
Photographer Larry Mayer describes the people and places he encountered while riding Amtrak along the highline.
Click here.
Amtrak ticket agent Dale Erickson said the Wolf Point station handles between 300 and 400 passengers a month, and rail travel has increased significantly since 2002, when Amtrak last experienced budget problems, Erickson said.
More Montanans are riding Amtrak: ridership grew to 129,044 in 2004 from 122,053 the previous year. But train travel accounts for only a fraction of all travel in Montana. By comparison, 411,989 people boarded commercial aircraft last year at the Billings airport, the state’s largest.
A 2003 study by R.L. Banks and Associates, a national transportation consultant, says that Amtrak and the non-resident travelers who ride Amtrak spend $5 million a year in Montana. That’s a small portion of the $1.87 billion spent by 9.6 million tourists who visited Montana in 2003. During 2003 Amtrak also employed 57 Montanans who earned $3.2 million, the study says.
Montana’s congressional delegation has pledged to fight to maintain funding for Amtrak. Rep. Denny Rehberg, R-Mont., says Amtrak’s importance to Montana is more than just how many people ride the train.
“We have to remember that Montana is a huge, rural state, with nearly a million people that don’t have access to the kind of transportation choices that most everyone else in the country has,” Rehberg said. “We can’t just zero out federal operating funding for a rail system that employs 20,000 people and carries 25 million passengers on 22,000 miles of track every year.”
Critics have branded government-funded Amtrak as a waste of taxpayer money. Ronald D. Utt of the conservative Heritage Foundation last month issued a blistering critique of Amtrak, calling it an “inconsequential provider of intercity passenger service” that is the high-cost provider of transportation in the markets it serves.
“Amtrak’s inefficient, high-cost operation, which serves less than one percent of the intercity passenger market, cannot justify billion-dollar subsidies,” Utt wrote.
In a recent address, Secretary of Transportation Norman Maneta said the Bush administration’s plan to eliminate $1.2 billion in Amtrak funding is an attempt to force Congress and Amtrak to change and become more efficient.
Changes being discussed by the Department of Transportation include requiring states served by Amtrak to pay for the railroad’s upkeep. Under such a scenario, the Empire Builder couldn’t stop any place along the Hi-Line if Montana refused to pay a share of Amtrak’s maintenance costs, said Jay Martin, Rehberg’s deputy chief of staff.
“The Bush plan is essentially an attempt to gut Amtrak and kill it,” Martin said. “They are looking at defunding the national railroad and parceling off routes in the northeast corridor. But Denny is stressing that he wants to keep Amtrak together and preserving a way of life in Montana.”
The Montana Legislature is considering a joint resolution by state Sen. Glenn Roush, D-Cut Bank, which urges continued federal funding for Amtrak service through Montana. If it passes, the resolution would carry no weight in law, but it would reinforce the Legislature’s support for Amtrak.
The resolution has passed the Senate and will be considered by the House Transportation Committee on Wednesday.
James C. Green of Billings, a member of the Montana/Wyoming Association of Railroad Passengers, a pro-Amtrak group, predicted that communities along the Hi-Line would face economic devastation if Amtrak is eliminated.
“As the population gets older, I think there’s going to be more demand for rail travel,” Green said. Green says he doesn’t mind flying, but he prefers traveling by train. “You get to walk around and you can meet people,” he said.
Another frustrating aspect of the debate is that Congress usually appropriates barely enough money to keep Amtrak going. The yearly battle to continue Amtrak funding doesn’t provide money to improve tracks and equipment, Green said. He said Congress must approve a multi-year plan for improving Amtrak.
Green also scoffs at the suggestion that Amtrak could be operated at a profit by private industry.
“There’s not a passenger railroad anywhere in the world that isn’t subsidized,” Green said. “We’re trying to convince Congress that Amtrak is public transportation like the highways and the airways. They’re all subsidized, too.”