(The following article by Michael Jamison was posted on the Missoulian website on June 3.)
WHITEFISH, Mont. — Politicians from both sides of the tracks are working to derail a White House budget that offers nothing for Amtrak and would effectively scuttle the nation’s passenger rail service into a financial siding.
“I’ll be frank with you,” said David Laney, “we’re at risk.”
Laney chairs the Amtrak Board of Directors, a board whose members don’t “want to be the ones responsible for the disappearance of passenger rail in this country.” Should Amtrak fail, he said, “I guarantee we’ll all regret it.”
But Norman Mineta, U.S. secretary of transportation, has said the White House plan for Amtrak is one of success, not failure. In a teleconference earlier this week, Mineta said the plan is to “reform” Amtrak, making the rail service more efficient.
He proposed that each state should share the cost of keeping the trains running, splitting the bill 50-50 with the federal government. States, he said, would then have more input into crafting a custom-made passenger rail service that is bigger and better than ever.
If a state would not – or could not – pay its share, Mineta said, the train simply would pass on through without stopping.
Of course, not everyone is convinced that’s such a good plan.
“Mineta says he wants states to have the opportunity to expand train travel,” said Gov. Brian Schweitzer. “With zero dollars, mind you, zero dollars.”
Schweitzer joined Laney and others midweek for a two-day whistlestop tour of Montana’s Hi-Line, traveling by train through Glasgow and Malta, Havre and Shelby, before cresting the Continental Divide and rolling into Whitefish.
Whitefish is an important stop on Amtrak’s Empire Builder line, a historic depot where about half of the people who get on and off trains in Montana either board or disembark.
There, more than 100 people turned out on a rain-soaked afternoon Thursday to hear what the rail riders had to say about the Bush administration’s failure to fund Amtrak.
“How come we didn’t zero out the highway budget?” Schweitzer wondered. “Or the airline industry? How many times in the last 50 years have we bailed out the airline industry?”
The nation’s transportation system “is a stool that has three legs,” Schweitzer said: highways, airways and railways. If you want a secure and affordable transportation system worthy of a wealthy First World superpower, he said, “that means you actually have to put some dollars in. Zero will not be enough.”
In fact, the budget request was for $1.8 billion nationwide, just to maintain the status quo. There is no way, Schweitzer said, that Montana could afford its half if the federal government were to shift the burden to the states.
Currently, he said, highways are funded in a joint effort between the state and federal governments, with Montana picking up 13 percent to the fed’s 87 percent. It’s a far cry from the 50-50 split proposed for the rail system.
Schweitzer’s second-in-command, Lt. Gov. John Bolinger, said the message he heard during his two-day train tour was that Montanans want continued passenger service, and they want officials in the nation’s capital to recognize the unique needs of the wide, wide West.
“It’s a message that will travel across this country all the way to the president of the United States,” Bolinger predicted. There are no airlines along much of the Hi-Line, he said, no bus routes. Train travel, Bolinger said, “is essential.”
The rails connect the country both literally and figuratively – as do the highways – Bolinger said, adding that “this country is 50 states united, not 50 individual nations with their own transportation systems.”
Bolinger was joined at the Whitefish rally by Rep. Denny Rehberg, R-Mont., who has joined the rest of the state’s congressional delegation in bucking Bush’s zero-dollar budget.
The West is unique, Rehberg said, because of its wide open spaces. His district covers a chunk of land that, if transferred east, would stretch from Washington, D.C., to Chicago – yet fewer than 1 million people live in that territory.
Opening up the West – and maintaining its viability – required subsidies. The federal government subsidized rural electrification, Rehberg said, subsidized highways, agriculture, schools, hospitals, airports – nearly all vital infrastructure.
Without the subsidies, Rehberg said, “we wouldn’t have the West,” and “we could not survive as a state.”
But there is a national value purchased by those subsidies, he said, pointing to Montana as “the breadbasket of America.”
That’s why Rehberg has joined fellow Republican Rep. Don Young of Alaska in calling for a $2 billion budget item aimed at keeping Amtrak on track.
“Not only do we not agree with the president,” Rehberg said, “we’re going to stick it in his ear” with the funding proposal.
Sen. Conrad Burns, R-Mont., likewise said he was “concerned about the financial impact on the states,” and Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., said he “cannot and will not support any program that would shift the burden of funding Amtrak onto the backs of Montanans.”
Both senators spoke through press announcements but did not attend Thursday’s meeting in Whitefish.
But Whitefish is precisely where the steel meets the rail, Schweitzer said, noting that Amtrak “is an important part of the economic picture” for such train towns. One of the area’s biggest economic engines, Glacier National Park, was built by the Great Northern Railroad, which brought passengers westward to stay in scenic lodges built and operated by that same railroad.
Nearly everyone in Whitefish has a personal story about the passenger service, said Mayor Andy Fuery, and the town itself is tied tightly to Amtrak’s schedule.
“Obviously,” he said, “it’s a huge economic impact for us.”
But Fuery said he has been “frustrated,” because “we seem to have these meetings about every two years.”
That is to say, every federal funding cycle.
Fuery called not only for continued federal support of rail transportation but also for continuity and predictability in that funding process.
Failure to fund based upon blaming Amtrak for failing to profit, he said, is like turning out cattle to pasture during a drought, not giving them any feed and then holding the cows responsible for not fattening up.
The system has emaciated Amtrak, he said, and has set the rail service up for nothing short of failure.
“Over time,” he warned, “it’s going to wither and die.”
Amtrak’s Laney is trying to avoid that, crafting a reform package of his own that he says will revitalize passenger service. It’s a broad approach, aimed at nearly every aspect of the business, but Montanans will see the most obvious impacts on the popular Empire Builder.
The line will be upgraded, Laney said, with everything from better equipment to better food.
“The Empire Builder is the model by which we will likely begin to reshape, restructure and rebuild,” Laney said.
He predicts improved rail service will combine with increasingly expensive and congested highways to drive rail ridership in a future where “there is nothing but promise if we take advantage of it.”
Already, he said, Amtrak passenger lists are increasing by about a million riders a year.
And numbers should rise even faster as oil prices climb, said George Chilson. Chilson is with the National Association of Railroad Passengers, and is lobbying hard to add something to Bush’s nothing.
Chilson said “the interstate highway system didn’t get built by the states,” and called for “the federal government to stand up front and center.”
“We don’t build roads to make a profit,” he said. “We don’t build airports to make a profit.”
To fall for the “red herring” of profitability, he said, is to miss the point of a strong and secure national transportation system.
It is, said State Auditor John Morrison, a system that brings both people and economic stability to many Montana towns. And like Laney, Morrison predicts an increased need for passenger rail as highways clog with cars and oil prices push upward.
“At a time when fuel prices are going through the roof, it hardly makes sense to do away with public transportation,” Morrison said.
But if passenger rail is to survive, Laney said, the time has come to address the “Amtrak issue” once and for all.
“It’s long-term funding that is the key to passenger rail,” he said, “and the federal government will have to play a role.”