WASHINGTON — Amtrak President George Warrington urged Congress Wednesday to create a long-term funding program to develop passenger rail, but insisted that the railroad has enough money to operate until the new fiscal year begins in October, reports a wire service.
At a hearing of the House Transportation subcommittee on railroads, Rep. John Mica, R-Fla., charged that Amtrak will run out of cash within days.
“Amtrak isn’t broken, it’s bankrupt,” said Mica, a leading critic of the railway. He said he has heard that Amtrak does not have enough money “to make it through the end of the month.”
Warrington denied Mica’s claim.
“No, we’re not running out of cash,” he said. “I’ve been very clear that we’ve taken a set of actions that will get us through the end of the year.”
Amtrak is eliminating 1,000 of the company’s 24,600 jobs and making other cuts in training, advertising and equipment maintenance.
Allan Rutter, administrator of the Federal Railroad Administration, told the subcommittee that Amtrak officials would not take such action “unless they were facing some fairly serious financial constraints to get through this fiscal year.”
Last summer, Amtrak had to mortgage part of Penn Station in New York City — one of its most important assets — to raise $300 million to continue running through the end of the 2001 fiscal year.
Transportation Department Inspector General Kenneth Mead warned last week that Amtrak couldn’t repeat such a move this year, even if it wanted to.
“Amtrak has mortgaged most everything there is to mortgage, and sold and leased back most of its assets,” Mead said.
Warrington has said that 30 years of “muddling through” has left Amtrak with a $5.8 billion backlog in needed work to its trains, tracks, rail yards and stations.
Amtrak has requested $1.2 billion in the fiscal year that begins in October — more than double the $521 million penciled in by the Bush administration — and has threatened to cut some or all of its 18 long-distance trains unless it receives that amount.
Transportation Committee chairman Don Young, R-Alaska, said Amtrak “has begun to point fingers at virtually everyone but its own company.”
Young made clear that he opposes legislation introduced Wednesday by a key Amtrak ally, Sen. Ernest Hollings, D-S.C. His bill proposes spending $4.6 billion a year for the next five years on Amtrak operations, renovations to Amtrak-owned tracks in the Northeast and development of new high-speed corridors around the country.
The Senate Commerce Committee, which Hollings chairs, will hold a hearing on Amtrak next Thursday.