(The following article by Ledyard King was circulated by Gannett News Service on November 10.)
WASHINGTON — The firing of Amtrak President David Gunn on Wednesday could make it easier to eliminate cross-country train lines and turn over the deteriorating Northeast corridor between Washington and Boston to private hands.
Gunn resisted Bush administration calls to privatize its track in the Northeast and eliminate long-distance lines that serve rural America but don’t pay for themselves. Those steps might not be any easier to achieve now that the company’s governing board, made up of Bush appointees, has gotten rid of Gunn.
Sen. Trent Lott called Gunn’s dismissal “a step backward” for the nation’s passenger rail system.
Lott was the prime author of a measure the Senate passed overwhelmingly last week authorizing more than $11 billion over the next six years to reduce Amtrak’s debt, fix its tracks and keep it operating.
Amtrak has two lines running through Mississippi. The City of New Orleans goes from Chicago to New Orleans, and the Crescent runs from New Orleans to Washington D.C. The Sunset Limited ran along the Gulf Coast, but Hurricane Katrina damaged rail lines halting service in the area.
Some members of Congress said they’ll be even more reluctant to endorse White House calls for change in rail service.
“The board’s decision today provides a degree of uncertainty that does no one any good: the people who ride Amtrak, the people who work there and for us in Congress who want to reform (it),” said Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del., a former Amtrak board member. “His departure is not going to convince anyone in the Senate that selling off the Northeast corridor is a good idea.”
Federal taxpayers have contributed about $29 billion to Amtrak since it was created in 1971. Its trains operate in 46 states and carry more than 25 million passengers a year.
Amtrak Chairman David M. Laney announced Wednesday that David Hughes, the railroad’s chief engineer, would run the quasi-public company while the board conducts a national search for a replacement.
Laney said Amtrak needed “a different type of leader who will aggressively tackle the company’s financial, management and operational challenges” than Gunn, who had headed transit systems in New York City, Toronto and Washington.
Gunn’s firing comes less than a week after a report by the Government Accountability Office criticized Amtrak’s financial management. The report accused the company of approving contracts that mushroomed far above their initial amount, spending $2 for every $1 in revenue from food and beverage service, and giving top executives bonuses without spelling out why they had earned them.
But the GAO also gave some praise to Gunn, who has boosted ridership, cut Amtrak’s workforce and discontinued some of Amtrak’s money-losing pursuits since he was appointed in 2003. He also earned bipartisan praise from Capitol Hill.
Gunn had said — and lawmakers such as Lott and Carper agreed — the federal government has an obligation to provide a national rail network, even though some cross-country lines cost more than $100 per passenger in federal subsidies.
Gunn’s departure means it will be easier to confine rail service to California, the Northeast and regions where passenger traffic is highest, lamented rail advocate Jim RePass, president of the National Corridors Initiative Inc. “The administration has decided to accelerate the end of long-distance service because that’s the fundamental goal,” he said.
Tom Till, who headed the now-disbanded Amtrak Reform Council, which Congress set up to suggest ways of improving passenger rail, said it’s too early to tell what this latest step means for the future of passenger rail. But he said new leadership would be more willing to consider much-needed reforms that could lead to the private management of the Northeast corridor between Washington and Boston.
“I give a tremendous amount of credit to the board,” said Till, now in Seattle as a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute. “They need a lot more cleaned up operation.”