(The following article by Susan Finch was posted on the Times-Picayune website on October 20.)
NEW ORLEANS — Long-distance passenger train lines such as the City of New Orleans are the “glue” that holds the nation’s rail transportation system together, but they would likely disappear if the Bush administration persuades Congress to restructure Amtrak to let private companies run the trains, the head of a rail passenger advocacy group said Sunday.
Moreover, the administration’s plan would spell the end of New Orleans’ status as a major rail passenger terminal, said Ross Capon, executive director of the National Association of Railroad Passengers. That’s because the only service Amtrak, officially known as the National Railroad Passenger Corp., offers out of Union Passenger Terminal is the long-distance kind, Capon said at a meeting of his group’s board of directors at the Royal St. Charles Hotel.
The Amtrak trains that stop here are the City of New Orleans, which runs to Chicago; the Sunset Limited, which links Orlando, Fla., and the West Coast; and the Crescent, which operates between New York and New Orleans with stops in Washington, D.C., and Atlanta.
All three of those lines showed an uptick in passenger numbers in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, Capon said. In September alone, he said, the City of New Orleans line saw a 23 percent increase; the Sunset, 34.1 percent; and the Crescent, 20.6 percent.
Another danger of the Bush plan for Amtrak, Capon said, is that if passenger train service disappears from New Orleans, pressure likely will build for the railroads to sell the land across which the long-distance trains run.
“Just the right to use the tracks is something that would die if Amtrak dies,” he said.
Preserving such tracks would keep in place the foundation needed to develop commuter rail service, Capon said.
The Bush administration says it is committed to continuing passenger rail service as a vital part of the country’s transportation system. But it says the best way to do so is not to continue subsidizing Amtrak, which has been plagued by annual financial crises, decaying assets and sometimes unreliable service.
Under the Bush plan, all Amtrak lines except the heavily used Northeast routes would be put up for bid to companies the administration think could run the trains with smaller taxpayer subsidies. The cost of the federal subsidies, would gradually shift from the federal government to the states served by Amtrak’s trains.
The White House plan has drawn fire not only from groups such as Capon’s but also from several members of Congress, including Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss., whose state is traversed by all three Amtrak long-distance trains that stop in New Orleans.
Lott has joined with other lawmakers to propose a six-year plan that would give Amtrak $2 billion a year, some of the largest federal subsidies for rail ever, and set up a program to upgrade the rail system using $48 billion in government-backed bonds.
Since Amtrak went into operation in the spring of 1971, federal subsidies for its operations have totaled nearly $27 billion.