(The following article by Elisabeth Sherwin was posted on the Davis Enterprise website on May 9.)
WOODLAND, Calif. — Supervisor Helen Thomson of Davis and her colleagues urged President Bush last week to get on board the Capitol Corridor rail service.
“Over the past six weeks there has been a lot of concern over the federal proposal to reduce funds to Amtrak, thereby severely impacting the Capitol Corridor commute train, which we have all worked for and supported since its inception,” Thomson said.
She is the board’s representative to the Sacramento Area Council of Governments, the multi-jurisdictional agency that spends federal transportation dollars.
The rail service provides 24 daily trips between Sacramento and the Bay Area and is enjoying record ridership and revenue, and vastly improved time performance. The Capitol Corridor is the third-busiest Amtrak route in the nation.
Thomson and her colleagues on the Yolo County Board of Supervisors unanimously passed a resolution Tuesday urging the president, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the state congressional delegation to establish a multiyear capital funding program available to states on a matching basis to initiate or improve service and to provide an adequate level of capital funding for Amtrak to sustain its mandated rail passenger service.
Key elements of the state’s transportation system are the three intercity passenger rail corridor services – the Pacific Surfliner, the Capitol Corridor and the San Joaquin routes – and these three intercity rail services now transport 4.5 million passengers annually due to the successful partnership with Amtrak.
The federal budget recently proposed by the president includes no funding for the continuation of Amtrak and its services, Thomson said.
In 2004, Amtrak-operated passenger services within the state (intercity and commuter) transported 9.3 million passengers, making California second only to New York in the number of passengers transported on Amtrak-operated trains.
California’s capital investments for intercity passenger rail services, based on voter-approved bonds, are approximately $1.7 billion, with most of these funds providing new rolling stock and track capacity improvements in the private freight railroads.
The resolution passed Tuesday made clear the desire of Yolo County to protect these public investments as expressed by the voters who approved the bond measures that provided the initial funding.
The Yolo County Board of Supervisors called upon Congress to provide adequate operating and capital funding for Amtrak in the fiscal year 2006 federal budget to allow uninterrupted continuation of California’s Amtrak-operated services. That would cost $1.4 billion annually.
The resolution also asked Congress to preserve and improve the four Amtrak trains serving California (California Zephyr, Coast Starlight, Southwest Chief and Sunset Limited) and the rest of the nation.