(The following article by Jennifer McKee was posted on the Billings Gazette website on June 1.)
HELENA, Mont. — Amtrak’s Empire Builder passenger route may cut its stops in Montana if the state does not agree to help pay to support the service under a Bush administration plan that U.S. Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta promoted Tuesday.
Gov. Brian Schweitzer called the idea a “cockamamie scheme,” and all three members of Montana’s congressional delegation opposed it.
Mineta called a telephone press conference Tuesday, the day before Schweitzer embarks on a “whistle stop” tour from Havre to Whitefish on the Empire Builder to promote maintaining Amtrak’s service in Montana unchanged.
Mineta said the current system, in which the only Amtrak service in the state cuts across Montana’s sparsely populated Hi-Line, not only can’t turn a profit, but also doesn’t really meet the state’s needs.
“The 12 Montana cities with stops on the Empire Builder represent just three and a half percent of Montana’s population,” Mineta said. “The train bypasses the entire southern part of the state, including residents living in Billings, Great Falls and Missoula.”
Mineta encouraged adopting a Bush administration plan announced this spring in which states would enter into agreements with the federal government to manage and support rail service. Under that plan, the states could decide where the train routes should run, but they’d also have to pay for a larger share of the service. The Bush plan calls for 50-50 state and federal partnerships in which the states would receive money from the federal government to improve rail lines and other necessary infrastructure. States would also have to pay to subsidize the service, said Brian Turmail, a Transportation spokesman. But the plan envisions subsidies no longer being necessary once rail lines are improved and train service is competitive.
Turmail said Montana could use the 50-50 federal grants to improve the freight lines that the Empire Builder currently uses. Those lines, maintained by freight companies, don’t allow Amtrak to travel as fast as the train can.
He said that if nothing were done, Amtrak service would cease because the heavily subsidized system doesn’t work.
States that opt out of the plan would lose their Amtrak stops, Mineta said.
Asked how much Montana would have to pay to enter into one of the agreements and keep Amtrak stops, Mineta said he “wasn’t really sure right off hand.”
Mineta said the plan, should it pass congressional muster, would allow Montana to transfer the Empire Builder to the southern part of the state where it would benefit more people. Montana could also accept bids from rail lines other than Amtrak for rail service, potentially reducing the cost.
He said the state of Alaska, which assumed some 665 miles of track there from the federal government in 1985, forming a state-owned railroad.
But the plan has received a chilly reception in Montana.
“This is no plan,” Schweitzer said. “When asked about dollars and cents of the plan, he says, ‘I don’t know.’ ”
He also said it’s disingenuous for Mineta and others to complain about Amtrak subsidies when almost all modes of transportation in the United States are subsidized.
“The airlines we’ve bailed out many times before, and we’re bailing out one of their pension programs right now,” Schweitzer said. “We build the highways, we maintain the river system for barges, but when it comes to passenger rail traffic across Montana, that’s where we draw the line?”
The governor said no one in the federal government has told him how much the state would have to pay to keep Amtrak, adding that there’s no money in the state budget to do so anyway.
Baucus, who is joining Schweitzer on his whistle stop tour, said in a statement that he could not support “any program that would shift the burden of funding Amtrak onto the backs of Montanans. That’s exactly what this plan would do.”
U.S. Sen. Conrad Burns, R-Mont., said in a statement that while he wants to fix Amtrak’s financial problems, he’s “concerned about the financial impact on the states” of the Bush administration plan.
“Amtrak, and specifically, the Empire Builder, is a national rail service,” Burns said. “It should be handled from that perspective.”
Republican Rep. Denny Rehberg agreed. His spokesman, Brad Keena, said maintaining rail service for rural Americans is a federal responsibility.
“That’s one of the reasons we send our federal tax dollars to Washington,” Keena said.