(The following article by Vince Devlin was published by the Missoulian on May 14.)
MISSOULA, Mont. — Amtrak is again under attack. Taxpayers spend $1 billion a year keeping the passenger rail service afloat, and it’s become an easy target for critics.
The Bush administration wants to change Amtrak into for-profit companies that leave it up to states to fund unprofitable lines if they want them; some politicians and editorial writers claim the railroad is the only form of transportation that is subsidized by the federal government.
All of which gives the Montana/Wyoming Association of Railroad Passengers something to do these days.
Their efforts to establish Amtrak service between Spokane and Denver – via cities such as Missoula, Billings and Casper – is on hold, thanks to a two-year moratorium on new Amtrak passenger lines. But MWARP president James C. Green of Billings notes that his group’s mission is not just to expand service, but to maintain it, too.
Which is why Green was in Missoula on Tuesday, a week after a Missoulian editorial said Americans “don’t rely on the federal government for other modes of transportation, and we shouldn’t for rail service, either.”
Government subsidizes all kinds of transportation, from the barge industry to airlines, Green said, and spends billions more on them than it does Amtrak. It builds highways for cars, trucks and buses, and airports for airlines.
“They don’t call them subsidies, but a rose is a rose is a rose,” Green said. “Air traffic controllers are paid by the federal government. Amtrak dispatchers are paid by Amtrak.
“We don’t think people understand that all public transportation is subsidized in some way,” Green went on. “Whether we’re upgrading highways or airports or runways S we spent $15 billion on the (Federal Aviation Administration), $33 billion on highways, we gave the airlines a $12 billion bailout after 9-11.”
Amtrak critics point out that money translates into tiny fractions of a penny spent on each passenger mile traveled by airline customers and automobile drivers. Amtrak’s $1 billion spends nearly 25 cents for every passenger mile traveled, according to government figures.
The Bush administration wants to end this by turning rail passenger service over to private companies – which would take over potentially profitable lines – and demanding individual states fund unprofitable lines they wanted to keep, but no one in the private sector took over.
But what would happen to lines like the Empire Builder, which runs from Seattle to Minneapolis and crosses Montana’s Hi-Line, Green wondered. What if Montana wanted to fund the service but one of the other states the Empire Builder crosses didn’t?
Public Citizen, a national nonprofit consumer advocacy organization founded by Ralph Nader, predicts the Bush plan will turn the federal funds over to private contractors who are major contributors to the Republican party, who will then “cherry pick the most profitable routes,” primarily in the Eastern corridor of the United States.
“Rail passenger service is just that – a service. It should be run efficiently and safely for the good of the communities it serves,” said Wenonah Hauter, director of Public Citizen’s Critical Mass Energy and Environment Program. “It should not be held to a naked standard of profitability and then, for failing to attain an unrealistic goal, be thrown to corporate cannibals hungry for public subsidies and willing to put profits before people. Amtrak needs to be protected and strengthened, not gutted.”
Michael Ackley of Missoula, vice president of the Montana/Wyoming Association, noted that June 29, 2004, will be the 75th anniversary of the Empire Builder, and said there is lots of support on the Hi-Line to keep it running.
“Amtrak’s spent 30 years concentrating on the Northeast corridor,” Green said. “They’ve put no money into maintenance. But there’s a $3.9 billion bill in Congress to beef up Amtrak’s infrastructure and make it run right. Amtrak has a new CEO (David Gunn) who’s cut their number of vice presidents from 84 down to 20. There’s a whole change of attitude in the upper echelons of Amtrak.”
But will Amtrak live to see MWARP restart its attempts to open the old “southern route,” a Spokane-to-Denver line? Another group is pushing an Edmonton-to-Billings line, and still another a Denver-Dallas run that would connect Canada to Mexico for railroad passengers, Green said.
“Too many people are giving up on the project,” Green said. “We’ve got to keep working. It took them six years to get through the aviation act back in the ’50s; this isn’t going to happen overnight.”
Green said his group, which gathered 14,000 signatures supporting a southern line and had 120 people join the organization, is down to 20 members.
“It’s going to happen,” Green said. “Amtrak is going to survive. But the rural West has got to be united, or we won’t get anything.”