(The Associated Press circulated the following by Sarah Karush on May 14.)
WASHINGTON, D.C. — A proposal in Congress to allow private companies to develop faster rail service on Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor would provide relatively little benefit compared with more modest investments to improve passenger rail service around the country, Amtrak’s chief executive said Wednesday.
Alex Kummant spoke on the sidelines of a House subcommittee hearing on Amtrak legislation. The bill introduced last week would set generous funding targets for the next five years and set up a program of federal matching grants that states could use to set up or expand rail service.
Similar legislation was passed by the Senate in the fall, and the House bill closely mirrors the Senate version except for one twist. It requires the Department of Transportation to seek proposals from private companies to create a high-speed service that would take travelers from Washington to New York City in two hours or less.
The idea has long been championed by Rep. John Mica of Florida, the ranking Republican on the transportation committee. Mica joined Committee Chairman James Oberstar, D-Minn., in introducing the bipartisan Amtrak bill.
“This would have a dramatic impact on highway and aviation congestion in the Northeast Corridor and provide many with a viable transportation alternative,” Mica said in a statement. “By having the federal government partner with the private sector to develop the project and separate high-speed service from other operations in the corridor, we can also significantly improve commuter and freight service.”
But Kummant urged caution in getting the private sector involved in passenger rail.
“I’m open to any innovative ideas,” he said. “I just think we need to be really honest with ourselves on what the British Rail experience really was.”
The privatization of Britain’s state-run rail service in the mid-1990s proved unpopular and critics blamed it for poor service and safety problems. Many aspects of privatization were subsequently undone.
Limited-stop trains on Amtrak’s Acela Express service already make the New York-Washington trip in 2 1/2 hours, and the tens of billions of dollars it would take to create a two-hour service might be better spent elsewhere, Kummant said.
“Could we go south to Atlanta (from Washington)?” he said. “Could we develop a dozen 110-mile-an-hour corridors and, by the way, with the pocket change left over, rebuild every station, create parking, intermodal bus connections, transit connections?”
Labor leaders had a harsher analysis of Mica’s proposal, saying it would destroy Amtrak by peeling off its most valuable asset, the Northeast Corridor, where Amtrak offers its most successful service.
Jed Dodd, general chairman of the Pennsylvania Federation of the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees, called it “a Trojan Horse for the demise of Amtrak.”
Edward Wytkind, president of the AFL-CIO’s transportation trades department, said intercity passenger rail is a service that should be provided by the public sector.
Oberstar said he believed it was important to “give these privatization proposals an opportunity to be heard, to be evaluated.”
The legislation only requires the government to seek proposals on the high-speed link; further congressional action likely would be needed for such a project to go forward. The bill leaves open the possibility for high-speed rail projects in other parts of the country in the future.
A separate bill would provide for $24 billion in tax-credit and tax-exempt bonds to kickstart a high-speed project.