(The following story by Susan Milligan appeared on the Boston Globe website on March 14, 2009.)
WASHINGTON, D.C. — New England travelers should benefit from faster, more frequent and safer train travel with an extra $1.3 billion pumped into the long-struggling Amtrak, half of it directed to the Northeast Corridor between Boston and Washington, the Obama administration announced yesterday.
Amtrak, never a favorite of the Bush administration or Republican Congresses, has struggled to retain critical federal subsidies in recent years. But the $787 billion stimulus package recently signed by President Obama will allow the system to renovate trains and stations, improve safety systems, and provide more passenger capacity, administration officials said.
“Amtrak has never been at the trough,” said Vice President Joe Biden, rejecting the long-held conservative position that the nation’s rail system is a money-losing series of pet projects.
“Amtrak has been left out – in my opinion, much too long,” said Biden, who estimated that he has taken 7,000 trips on the rail line, most of them between Washington and his home in Wilmington, Del.
The announcement marks a new era for the Northeast, which has had to fight hard in recent years for funding for regional programs such as public transportation and home heating assistance. While Amtrak is a national train system, it is used largely by travelers in the Northeast, and has few allies among the Southern and Western Republicans who controlled Congress and the White House for much of the last decade.
Obama has been an adamant supporter of train travel, putting into the stimulus package a separate $8 billion fund for high-speed rail lines around the country. And Biden – dubbed “Amtrak’s number one customer” by Jo Strang, acting federal railroad administrator – has made his frequent train travel a key part of his political persona.
“It’s very encouraging. We’re in a different phase, no question about it,” said Representative Richard E. Neal, Democrat of Springfield. “There’s always a huge fight over Amtrak every year. The problem has been that even as ridership has gone up, there’s still an element that insists it’s a waste of money.”
The $1.3 billion grant will double the size of the beleaguered system’s capital investment budget over the next two years, and will be used for capital improvements as well as safety upgrades, resulting in faster and more frequent train travel, lawmakers and transportation officials said. Amtrak’s total annual budget is $3.2 billion, with $1.49 billion coming from federal subsidies.
The train system, created in 1971 as the National Railroad Passenger Corporation, has been threatened with reduction and even extinction many times over the years; President George W. Bush proposed eliminating all Amtrak subsidies in his 2006 budget, but Congress put the money back, saying the cut would spell the end of a transportation system used by 80,000 passengers a day.
Biden noted that all national train systems receive financial help from the government, and that air travel and highways receive much higher subsidies – covering road construction and airport maintenance, for instance – than the long-maligned Amtrak. “I’m tired of apologizing for helping Amtrak,” Biden said.
While specific projects have not been finalized, Massachusetts Senator John F. Kerry’s office estimates that $600 million to $700 million of the new money will go to the Northeast Corridor. The Bay State is expected to share in improvements to terminals and tracks.
Biden’s home state, however, has been selected for a project. About $21 million of the new funds will go to the restoration of the train station in Wilmington. The grant, to be mixed with state funds, will pay for a new platform to increase passenger capacity at the nation’s 11th-busiest station and will make the facility accessible to the disabled.
The stimulus plan has been roundly criticized by congressional Republicans, who complain that it swells the deficit while providing little assurance of long-term job creation. The Obama administration, however, says that 6,000 jobs will be created or retained under the increased Amtrak funding alone.
The rail system plans to use $82 million to refurbish 68 passenger rail cars, returning them to service and increasing capacity on trains. Another $105 million is slated for replacement of the moveable bridge over the Niantic River near East Lyme, Conn. Without the bridge replacement, passengers between Boston and New York face delays or travel disruptions because the 102-year-old bridge cannot handle fast-moving trains, the White House said.
Another $60 million will be used to install Positive Train Control, a technology that helps prevent collisions. The work will be done on the New York to Washington corridor and on the Porter, Ind., to Kalamazoo, Mich., route.
Budget constraints have prevented Amtrak from making basic repairs in recent years and passengers have paid for it with overbooked trains, lower capacity, and slower speeds, Kerry said.
Gesturing to a train behind him at Washington’s Union Station, where he joined Biden and other Amtrak supporters, Kerry noted the vehicle has the capacity to go 150 miles per hour – but only reaches that speed for 18 miles of its journey to Boston because the tracks cannot handle it.
The upgrades, Kerry said, will make trains run faster, and added passenger capacity will save gasoline and commuter hours by encouraging more people to favor Amtrak over car travel.
“It’s going to make America more productive,” Kerry said.