(The following report appeared on the Longview, Texas, News-Journal website on November 23.)
NEW YORK — A federal report issued Monday suggests that Amtrak cut its long-distance routes, including the Texas Eagle that runs through East Texas.
The report by the U.S. Department of Transportation’s inspector general, Kenneth Mead, says the train service should drop long-distance routes in favor of repairing and maintaining short-distance routes in the Northeast, where Amtrak owns the rails on which it runs.
Amtrak leases access to other rail tracks around the country, including Union Pacific in Longview, Marshall and other East Texas cities.
The Texas Eagle runs from San Antonio to Chicago.
Mead said the current system can no longer be maintained.
“The total funding Amtrak receives from all sources is not sufficient to maintain the current system in a state of good repair,” he said.
Congress has consistently given Amtrak less than the railroad has said it needs for maintenance and capital investment.
This year, Amtrak sought $1.5 billion, but the Bush administration proposed $900 million, which the House approved. Over the weekend, though, House and Senate negotiators agreed to a $1.2 billion subsidy. At that level, Amtrak will not be able to undertake the capital investments it had planned.
The railroad delayed capital investments last year, too. For that year, it asked for $1.8 billion but got about $1.2 billion.
Amtrak has posted losses of at least $500 million each year for the past 10 years, but Meads’ report noted that ridership was up last year.
At least one supporter doubts the Texas Eagle or other long-distance routes will be cut.
“This sort of statement is not anything new … (Kenneth Mead) is really saying that Amtrak needs a stable source of funding. It’s never had its own source of funding. It’s been starved,” said former Marshall Mayor Audrey Kariel, who heads the transportation committee for that city’s chamber of commerce.
“I think that the Northeast corridor alone would cost the same without the long-haul trains,” Kariel said.
Kariel believes the Texas Eagle and other routes still exist because of support from people such as U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, who has adopted a “national or nothing” approach to Amtrak. That support would disintegrate if Texas lines shut down, because senators like Hutchison would have no interest in funding a system located mainly in the Northeast.
“I think it would be a very big mistake to cut the long-distance trains. There is a big battle in Congress over what do with Amtrak,” Kariel said.
The Texas Eagle route also passes through Arkansas, where Bill Pollard is fighting to maintain it.
He said Mead is holding Amtrak to a higher standard compared to all public transportation systems.
He said the long-distance routes have been gaining passengers and real problems are a lack of equipment and freight congestion.
“(Closing down the long-distance routes) would not significantly reduce the loss.
“The vast majority of Amtrak’s funding goes into the railroad they own in the Northeast corridor,” said Pollard.
He also doubts any major changes will take place, calling Mead’s report a “same song, different verse” that has been issued annually.
In a statement, the National Association of Railroad Passengers said if the national network is destroyed, Congress will no longer want to support Amtrak. “Eliminating that network, while preserving every existing short-distance service, would create a 21-state ‘system’ of four isolated mini-networks, weakening Amtrak’s ability to get federal funding,” the group said.
(The New York Times News Service contributed to this report.)