DENVER — Travelers who want to see the West by passenger rail might want to take that picturesque trip soon, the Denver Post reported.
Amtrak’s financial troubles are no secret.
“We obviously are in a struggle for survival,” David Gunn, president and chief executive of the passenger rail corporation, said in a telephone interview Monday.
Gunn spoke before boarding Amtrak’s California Zephyr in Chicago for an overnight trip to Denver, then on to the Zephyr’s destination in the San Francisco Bay area.
Once a bustling hub for passenger rail, Denver’s Union Station today only gets one Amtrak train a day in each direction on the California-Chicago route.
Waiting with his wife to board the Zephyr at Union Station on Monday, Warren Bunge said he would be very disappointed if Amtrak’s long-distance service were to end.
“The train is the only way to go,” he said. “You could drive in a car around the United States and there are things you would never see unless you were on a train.”
Long-distance routes like the Zephyr have long been considered the most vulnerable to cuts, but Gunn said “getting rid of long-distance trains will not solve the problem.”
Amtrak doesn’t have enough money to do basic maintenance and capital improvements throughout its system, Gunn said.
The railroad has asked Congress for $1.2 billion for the current fiscal year that runs through Sept. 30. Lawmakers so far have earmarked about $1 billion, Amtrak officials said. But that may not be enough.
Gunn, who formerly headed the New York City Transit Authority, said Amtrak is in such “desperate” shape that anything significantly less than $1.2 billion this year “is a nonstarter.”
Congress is expected to take up Amtrak’s request for money along with the rest of the federal budget early next year.
Over time, the halt of long-haul passenger service might save $300 million a year, or about a quarter of Amtrak’s budget, Gunn said. But it wouldn’t solve systemic financial problems.
“Long-distance trains lose money. Short-haul trains lose money,” he said. “We’re like United Airlines: We lose money.
“We’ve reached the point of whether the federal government wants passenger rail service in its quiver to deal with congestion,” Gunn said about Amtrak’s collaboration with certain states to run regional commuter rail operations.
The Colorado Department of Transportation is exploring the possibility of Front Range commuter rail service between Fort Collins and Pueblo. But unlike other states, it has no current regional rail collaboration with Amtrak.
Ross Capon, executive director of the National Association of Rail Passengers, agreed that Amtrak’s financial condition is dire.
“We’ve been funding this system on the cheap for many years,” said Capon, whose group represents about 16,000 rail users.
Capon said last week’s Republican takeover doesn’t necessarily mean bad prospects for Amtrak funding.
“The stereotypical idea that a Republican White House and Congress are out to kill Amtrak is not an up-to-date idea,” he said.
“How desperate is the situation? It’s hard to know so soon after the election,” he said. “In the past, Trent Lott has been a supporter of a nationwide passenger network.”
Lott, the Republican senator from Mississippi, will be the Senate Majority Leader in the new Republican-dominated Congress.