(The following article by Keith Reed was posted on the Boston Globe website on February 9.)
BOSTON — President Bush’s 2006 budget would force Amtrak into bankruptcy, jeopardizing the future of long distance passenger train service including the popular Acela Express that moves millions of people between Boston, New York, and Washington, D.C., every year.
Bush’s proposal would end federal operating subsidies for Amtrak, whose executives have already said the national railroad needs more money than the $1.2 billion it got from the government for fiscal year 2005 to keep trains running. A Transportation Department spokesman said yesterday the idea is to force Amtrak to restructure itself to become a profitable company, which was the goal when the government set it up to bail out the passenger rail industry more than 30 years ago.
While cutting funding for Amtrak, the president is providing $360 million in the budget for states to maintain commuter rail service. Many states — including Massachusetts — rely on Amtrak to either run their commuter trains, or maintain the rails they ride on.
Rail advocates said yesterday it was unlikely that Congress would pass a budget that did not include Amtrak funding, but Bush’s proposal furthers his push for a major overhaul of the nation’s passenger rail system. In 2003, the president proposed splitting Amtrak into two companies, leasing its Northeast tracks to states to operate, and letting private companies run the other routes.
”It’ll be another one of these fights about how much we’re cutting when we should be talking about increasing funding for passenger rail service,” said former Massachusetts Governor Michael S. Dukakis, who served on Amtrak’s board during the Clinton administration.
Meanwhile, local officials worried that the $360 million would not be enough to keep vital commuter trains operating. In Massachusetts, the state owns and runs the commuter rail, but Amtrak dispatches the commuter trains and maintains the rail lines.
”This would not benefit Massachusetts at all,” said Michael H. Mulhern, general manager of the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, which runs the state’s 465-mile commuter rail system.
An Amtrak shutdown wouldn’t lead to an interruption of commuter rail service, Mulhern said, but ”I’d be concerned that the funds aren’t sufficient to maintain the Northeast corridor on a sufficient basis.”
Regular Amtrak riders, too, were worried about the impact the proposed cuts would have.
”It’s something we definitely need,” said Dale Senechal, 45, of Boston, as he waited for a train in South Station yesterday. ”It’s certainly more environmentally sound than everybody in cars.”
Susan Sheehy of Boston, who was waiting in the station with her mother, 75-year-old Shirley Budassi of Trenton, N.J., recalled taking an Amtrak train back from Florida after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks grounded commercial airplanes in the United States.
”At least it was very reliable — and it kept going,” Sheehy said.
The problem is that Amtrak has always operated in the red. Since Congress formed it in 1970, Amtrak has been a political hot potato as legislators and presidents wrestled with reforming the money-losing operation without cutting back or ending passenger rail service. Amtrak lost about $1.3 billion in fiscal year 2004, which ended Sept. 30.
Amtrak is particularly critical in the Northeast, where many business travelers and politicians rely on the railroad to get between New York and Washington, and where it helps run commuter rail services in Maryland, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Massachusetts. The railroad spent about 70 percent of its $387 million capital budget on the Northeast corridor in fiscal year 2004.
The railroad’s fate remains tenuous in Washington as the Bush’s administration has proposed drastic cuts to Amtrak’s subsidies every year. Past presidents have also proposed zero funding for Amtrak, but Congress has never approved it.
”We’re talking about reform,” said Brian Turmail , a spokesman for the Transportation Department. ”We’re talking about finding a way to get a corporation to operate like a business.”
Ross Capon, executive director of the National Association of Railroad Passengers, said the zero-funding proposal would make it hard for Amtrak to get the funding needed for capital improvements and maintenance.
”The tricky situation here is that Amtrak needs more in fiscal ’06 than they got this year, because they expect to end this year with no cash on hand,” Capon said.
That could bring operating problems for Amtrak and push passengers onto buses or crowded airplanes even if Amtrak gets hundreds of millions in funding, he said.
That would please Peter Picknelly, the president of Springfield’s Peter Pan Bus Lines Inc.
”If Amtrak was to cease to exist tomorrow, the intercity bus industry could easily pick up that slack and we would do it with zero taxpayer assistance,” he said.