(The Baltimore Sun published the following story by Marcia Myers on its website on September 14.)
MINOT, N.D. — Hemmed in by miles of peas, lentils and Durham wheat, the 36,000 residents of this town have better transportation choices than most in this part of the country.
Minot sits at the junction of three interstate highways. It has a new airport that provides daily service. Still, for more than 70 years, its heartbeat has been defined by the visits of the Empire Builder, a passenger train now operated by Amtrak that twice each day – one train west, and one east – traces a 2,000-mile course across the prairie and mountains between Chicago and Seattle.
But the rhythm of the Empire Builder’s visits might soon end.
President Bush is proposing to break Amtrak into a network of regional systems supported by a combination of private and state money and significantly reduced federal aid – a plan widely viewed as a virtual death sentence for the national rail system.
Congress is expected to begin pondering Amtrak’s future soon. Its decision will be felt across America. From crowded Penn Station in New York City to rural way stations such as Minot, more than 23 million passengers use Amtrak every year.
Critics call the national network an expensive toy for rail enthusiasts and say the shape of the passenger rail system should be determined by the willingness of states and users to pay.
Last week, Rep. Pete Sessions, a Texas Republican, argued that all Amtrak routes that fail to earn at least half their operating cost in ticket revenue be eliminated.
“It’s high time Amtrak gets its hands out of taxpayers’ pockets,” he said. “Both Amtrak customers and taxpayers are better served by keeping service that provides value, rather than by subsidizing under-subscribed routes.”
On average, the company’s operating losses have totaled $600 million a year for the past six years.
Those losses are projected to rise to between $700 million and $800 million a year through 2008.
“The status quo pleases no one,” Kenneth Mead, inspector general for the Department of Transportation, recently told Congress. “It will require significant increases in funds just to maintain it, and it will not meet the mobility needs of this country in the years ahead.”
Funding woes
The federal government spent more than $34 billion on highways and about $16 billion on aviation last year. Amtrak, meanwhile, received just over $1 billion. Some critics say that even that is too much for the rail system, given its relatively few passengers.
Among the lines that could be headed for the graveyard under the Bush plan is the Empire Builder, one of the most popular of Amtrak’s long-distance routes, and one of the more vulnerable. It carries about 400,000 riders a year – and lost more than $45 million in 2001, the most recent figures available from the Amtrak Reform Council, an oversight body formed by Congress.
Just what the Empire Builder contributes to the economic and social fabric of the expanse of prairie and mountains it traverses is an elusive question, discussed by its advocates as much by anecdote as by budget analysis.
In Minot, where incomes are modest and the territory remote, Amtrak is an important lifeline.
Almost anyone here can quickly tally up the options for getting to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. – the hospital of choice for many in this region. By car, it means a drive of almost 600 miles or 11 hours. The cheapest seat on a flight from Minot and back costs about $400.
Or one can take the Empire Builder overnight. Cost: $161 for a round-trip ticket. A hospital shuttle takes care of the remaining 40-mile trip to the clinic.
“We’ve lost a lot of our better doctors here, so it’s very important,” said Muriel Smith, 72, who lives on a wheat and canola farm north of Minot. Last spring she traveled by train to the Mayo Clinic for an operation.
“Without the train, a lot of people would just have to take their chances and have their surgery here,” she said.
Residents also rely on it for shopping trips to other towns and visits to friends and relatives. For many, the train is the only reasonable choice.
“I’m just sick about it, thinking they might quit the Amtrak,” said Smith. “That’s our main transportation here. Every time I ride the train, there are a lot of people on it. It’s hard to find a seat. Unless you’re young and you drive, you really depend on it.”
Phil Lowe, who runs a garden center in Minot, considers Amtrak a missed opportunity, both for the railroad and local businesses.
At one time, he received all his cut flowers on the 8:45 a.m. Amtrak train from Minneapolis. Air shipments would have cost him more than $40 per pound; deliveries by truck, more than $30 per pound. Amtrak charged only $18, sometimes less, Lowe said. But in an efficiency move, Amtrak has begun eliminating many of its business and postal deliveries.
“It was all too good a deal,” Lowe said. “Maybe it’s not run like a business, but my opinion was they could have raised the rate considerably and still been competitive.”
Faced with the prospect of losing the Empire Builder altogether, officials next door in Montana commissioned a study last spring on the potential economic fallout. In jobs, tourist spending and transportation benefits, it amounted to $14 million for that state alone, researchers found.
The loss of the transportation option for residents, however, couldn’t be quantified, they said. Even for those who can afford more expensive alternatives, severe weather in the region often makes the train the only viable choice.
“At certain times of the year, there is literally no other way out – you can’t drive, you can’t fly, you can’t hitch,” said Charles Banks, head of R.L. Banks and Associates, the Washington consulting firm that ran the study. “How else are you going to get out of there?”
So, would states be willing to help pick up the tab?
Tom Steyaert, a planner who works for the Montana Department of Transportation and who coordinated the study for the state, said he participated in a conference call several months ago on that question and others regarding Amtrak. The response among representatives from more than 20 states that day was unanimous, he said.
“Not one state said they could afford to subsidize or pay their share of operating costs,” he said.
Facing their own budget worries, Montana legislators recently imposed wage freezes for state workers and slashed numerous social and welfare programs.
‘It’s a crapshoot’
A figure of $20 million has been suggested as Montana’s share to keep the Empire Builder running if it joined a seven-state pact. But the risky logistics of such a plan are even more daunting to many than the money.
“There’s too many variables in a multistate compact,” Steyaert said. “What happens if two states out of seven decide not to participate? It’s a crapshoot as far as trying to figure out what it would cost.”
Banks, of the Washington consulting firm, agrees.
“Trying to allocate the losses across multiple states and get these parties to act as one is a hell of a lot of work,” Banks said. “One state might have a Democratic governor and a Republican legislature, the next state the opposite. You can’t even get Maryland and Virginia to agree on the Woodrow Wilson Bridge.”
In fact, in some places it has worked. Washington and Oregon pay a total of $15.5 million toward the cost of Amtrak’s Cascades line between Eugene, Ore., and Vancouver, British Columbia, with stops that include Portland, Ore., and Seattle. Around the country, states pick up part of the cost for 19 similar lines, although only one other line crosses two states.
But, Steyaert notes, those trains serve commuter corridors with large populations. “We’re rural,” he said.
With the future of the long-distance lines uncertain, some are buying tickets while they still can. Last summer, amid talks of an imminent Amtrak shutdown, Mike and Becky Erickson boarded the Empire Builder in St. Paul, Minn., with their sons Jack, 9, and Sam 8, for their first big family vacation, to Glacier National Park in Montana.
“We were afraid if we waited, we would miss our chance to take the train there,” Becky Erickson said. The tickets cost about $1,200, a significant dent in the family’s budget: he’s a journeyman printer; she’s an associate librarian.
But the Ericksons saved money by booking coach seats instead of bedrooms, and by packing a cooler with sandwiches, sodas and trail mix instead of buying more expensive meals in the dining car.
The couple felt comfortable letting the boys roam the train and visit with other travelers. And the glass-topped observation car gave them a prime vantage for sketching pictures of the passing fields and flowers, wild horses and antelope, and on one afternoon, a bright rainbow curving down to the plains.
“When we got to Glacier, it was hazy and cool and the lights were shining up at the lodge,” Becky Erickson said. “It looked mysterious and beautiful, kind of like stepping back in time.”
For days they hiked and rode horses and explored. And when it was time to come home, they boarded the train again.
“We loved it – it was a great way to see country we’d never seen. And the boys slept all the way home,” she said.
Among train lines in the United States, the Empire Builder’s history is distinguished. It was launched by the Great Northern Railway 75 years ago and for years served as a first-class luxury train. It shares its nickname with that given to James J. Hill, a Canadian railroad builder and Great Northern executive whose construction of rail lines, including this one, helped transform the American West.
Departing in midafternoon from Chicago, the Empire Builder takes nearly two days to reach the West Coast. Riders nestle into their seats as a round-the-clock geography lesson unfolds on the other side of their window.
Moving quickly from Chicago to another urban center, Milwaukee, the train by late afternoon and into dusk provides calming vistas of rivers and lush Wisconsin soybean and dairy farms. From a table set with linen and fresh flowers, passengers can dine on grilled salmon and wild rice while watching the sun set over the Mississippi River.
By bedtime, the Minneapolis skyline looms. And from there the gentle sway and rhythmic clacking encourage slumber.
Overnight all this gives way to North Dakota prairies colored in late summer by acres of green wheat and sunflowers. And just after breakfast, if the train is on time, it reaches Minot, where the Empire Builder picks up a new crew to carry it the rest of its journey, over the Cascade Range to Seattle.
The smooth rumble of the train’s passage through the stark landscape as day turns to night and then back to day seems comfortably out of sync with the harsher rhythms of modern economics.
Political opposition
Still, there is a substantial body of opinion in Congress that Amtrak has an important role to play in Minot and hundreds of other communities across the rural West.
Bush’s plan to break up Amtrak is facing opposition even from within his own party. Four Republican senators came out against the plan and presented their own idea for the future of Amtrak – one that includes a lot more money for the railroad and the expansion of current routes.
“It has to be a national system,” said Sen. Conrad Burns, a Montana Republican. He said Amtrak has traditionally had trouble finding support in Congress because lawmakers don’t ride trains much. “People tend to support what they use. So we have to re-educate folks. But we can get that done.”
Burns co-sponsored a bill that would provide Amtrak with $12 billion in operating expenses over the next six years as well as underwrite $48 billion in bonds to rebuild the railroad’s crumbling infrastructure. The other sponsors of the bill are fellow Republican Sens. Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas, Trent Lott of Mississippi and Olympia J. Snowe of Maine.
Burns is worried that the Bush plan – with its reliance on states to help pay for trains – would spell the end of passenger rail service in much of the country other than the Northeast and Pacific Coast, where ridership is the highest.
“We know the East Coast Corridor is very important, and of course the West Coast is important, but there’s another America, and it’s called the flyover part of America,” Burns said. “We ought to be able to participate in a national rail plan.”
He said Amtrak is vital in bringing tourists to Montana’s ski resorts in the winter, when the roads are treacherous, and in transporting goods in remote areas not served by freight railroads. He’s not sure who could fill those roles.
“Right now there are a lot of states that wouldn’t do anything at all because of budget restraints,” Burns said. “It was posed as a national railroad and it should stay as such.”
Amtrak President David L. Gunn, who is leading the railroad through its current troubles, takes a pragmatic view of the system’s capabilities and priorities.
He significantly cut Amtrak’s Express Service, like the flower deliveries Phil Lowe had depended on in Minot.
“There was probably some money to be made in it, but the way it was done here, they lost money,” Gunn said.
He took over the railroad in the midst of an administrative and budget crisis in the spring of last year, and is getting good marks from Congress and private transportation experts for his efforts to shore up the railroad’s failing infrastructure in recent months.
And for the first time in several years, Amtrak is not facing an immediate budget emergency.
But Gunn said the system has deteriorated to the point that Congress is risking serious economic disruptions or even major accidents if adequate maintenance funds and a commitment for the system’s future aren’t set.
Old infrastructure
Of three cables installed in the 1930s to feed power from a rail yard in Queens to Penn Station in New York, Gunn said, one failed several years ago, and another blew during the recent blackout. Had the third failed before repairs were completed last week, about 200,000 New York area commuters would have had no way to work.
Gunn is also trying to dispel what he calls the “myths” about Amtrak, chief among them that the railroad can ever be profitable.
“Look, why is Amtrak here?” he said. “It’s here because the private sector couldn’t make any money in the business. That’s why Amtrak was created 30 years ago. What’s changed? Except that the track’s in worse shape, nothing.”
The Bush administration’s notion that private companies would be eager to step in and take over various lines is “absurd,” he said, particularly given the billions in needed repairs.
Besides, he adds, no national railroad passenger system in the world makes a profit. All depend heavily on government subsidies. Even high ridership lines cannot bring in the dollars to compensate for expensive operating, labor and maintenance costs.
“If they want to restructure, go ahead, have a good time, but I think Balkanizing the institution is really very foolish,” Gunn said. “Anybody that’s going to run it, no matter how they structure it, has got to do what we’re saying. And they better do it damn fast or we’re going to have a problem.”
Amtrak was at a critical point when Gunn arrived. Last year marked Amtrak’s deadline for meeting self-sufficiency, a mandate imposed by Congress in 1997.
Instead, the system was in so dire a fiscal crisis that the entire railroad was on the brink of shutting down. Gunn begged a $200 million loan from Congress to keep things afloat, then got to work on the details.
But while he has cut bureaucratic fat, Gunn has also laid plans to spend far more money in the future.
With the amount of overdue repairs in the billions, he drafted a $6 billion strategic capital spending program for the next five years, set priorities and began overhauling cars, locomotives and track.
But to Amtrak’s critics, Gunn’s pragmatic optimism flies in the face of what they believe are insurmountable challenges the national rail system faces.
If Amtrak receives less federal support than other forms of transportation, it’s because it gets relatively little use, critics say.
Motorists travel 2.5 trillion miles on American highways each year. Airline passengers in the United States fly more than 400 billion miles. But passenger miles on Amtrak total just 5.5 billion.
After 30 years of lurching from one financial crisis to another, it will take more than disciplined management and tougher oversight to fix the problems, said Allan Rutter, administrator of the Federal Railroad Administration.
The status quo organization cannot stretch to resolve these and other inherent weaknesses with which Amtrak has struggled to live, he told Congress last spring. Major restructuring is required, he said, not more federal money.
“Twenty years from now we would hope more passengers are riding more equipment and the trains are providing more jobs and more services,” Rutter said.
“What we’ve tried to do is provoke a bigger discussion,” he adds. “Why are we doing this, what do we want to do really with inter-city passenger rail?”
Ron Utt, a senior policy fellow at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, said he believes the Bush bill will spur serious debate.
“We’re almost alone in the world among countries that haven’t tried to come to grips with passenger railroad costs,” Utt said. “Where it comes out is anybody’s guess, but I think a good case can be made that the administration’s plan is worth considering.
“For the first time you have a fairly bold proposal on the table,” he said. “Now you begin to start taking it seriously.”
For Gunn, there is just one bottom line.
“The question is, do you want rail service? Because then it’s a question of who’s going to pay for it,” he said. “Is this a nation that is just going to fall back for the swells in New York City and Baltimore, or do the people in Minot actually deserve some mobility?”
(Sun staff writer Stephen Kiehl contributed to this article.)