(The following editorial was posted on the Bergen Record website on October 17.)
BERGEN, N.J. — It makes no sense to jeopardize the future of one of America’s busiest passenger rail lines at a time when gasoline prices are soaring.
But that’s exactly what the Bush administration appointees running Amtrak are doing.
Amtrak’s board has moved to spin off the rail service’s entire Northeast Corridor into a separate entity that would be dependent on funding from states.
The board – which voted on the matter in late September with no public announcement and, even more alarmingly, no notice to the Northeast states – claims such a spinoff is the only way to revitalize Amtrak.
In fact, the plan may be a first step toward dismantling what is the only national passenger rail service.
Amtrak carries more than 20 million passengers a year, and its busiest routes are along the corridor stretching from Washington, D.C., to Boston. Nearly 100,000 commuters from New Jersey alone rely on it to get to work every day, which takes a lot of traffic off roads and saves a lot of gasoline.
But President Bush shows only disdain for Amtrak.
He has recently suggested that it be allowed to fall into bankruptcy. And his budget proposes zero funding for the rail service, which could force it to shut down.
Fortunately, the House of Representatives understands the need for passenger rail and has approved giving it $1.2 billion, about the same as last year.
Now, Congress must step forward to stop the Northeast Corridor spinoff plan.
The corridor, while comprising the busiest Amtrak routes, also is the most expensive to run. Unlike in other parts of the country where freight rail lines own the tracks that Amtrak uses, the passenger service itself owns and maintains hundreds of miles of track in the Northeast.
That track is in such poor shape that it will cost billions of dollars to fix.
As New Jersey Transportation Commissioner Jack Lettiere says, it’s unfair of Amtrak to make states share responsibility for tracks that have fallen into such disrepair.
It’s also dangerous to the future of Amtrak in this region. If states can’t contribute enough to keep the spun-off Northeast Corridor lines in good repair and operating to full capacity, service would likely have to be cut back.
Ominously, the planned spinoff of this corridor follows the president’s proposal to break the rail service up into regional entities that would have little if any federal support. That would probably force major cutbacks in service and elimination of routes – which would be precisely the wrong way to go.
Amtrak is vital not only to this densely populated region of the nation but also to rural areas where residents depend on trains as alternatives to long, grueling car trips.
In this time of high energy prices, growing concerns about air pollution and increasing traffic on roads, the federal government needs to give more support to mass transit – not less.