(The following editorial was circulated by Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service on May 8.)
PHILADELPHIA — If a dangerous hurricane threatens New Orleans this season, the city will evacuate some residents on Amtrak trains.
That makes sense. Passenger rail is an efficient way to move people, especially on trips of less than 400 miles.
With terrorist and natural disaster threats, and gas prices at $3 a gallon, the United States needs an affordable, reliable rail system more than ever. Yet as Amtrak this month celebrates its 35th birthday, it faces a dangerously unpredictable fate.
The Bush administration tried to zero out Amtrak funding in 2005, and Congress had to fight to restore $1.3 billion. Last fall, the Amtrak board fired railroad president David Gunn, despite his widely admired efficiencies and managerial reforms.
This year’s dollar-and-cents battle looks less ugly, but Amtrak still faces a long haul.
President Bush claims that he wants to wean the country from its oil addiction. So why is he campaigning to dismantle this key alternative to highway travel? Bush proposes downsizing Amtrak, devolving funding to the states, or breaking it up. Those strategies won’t help; they’ll do harm.
It’s true that, despite efforts to improve Amtrak’s structure and funding, “we have a system that limps along, never in a state of good repair, awash in debt, and perpetually on the edge of collapse,” as former Transportation Department Inspector General Kenneth M. Mead told Congress last September.
Amtrak has a debt of more than $3.5 billion, annual operating losses topping $550 million, and antiquated work rules. But it cannot overcome those problems as long as it’s stuck in a yearly tug-of-war between fiscal conservatives with the unrealistic expectation of “self-sufficiency” and rail enthusiasts seeking European-style subsidized trains.
The ideal lies somewhere in the middle – stable, adequate aid coupled with fiscal accountability.
Those demanding that Amtrak run by market principles alone blithely ignore billions in annual government highway and airport assistance. Amtrak support is a wise transportation “investment” akin to air traffic controller contracts, bridge repair money and airport expansion or highway bonds.
Of course the government shouldn’t sanction dated labor rules, bloated food contracts, poor customer service and lax accounting. More reform is needed, including a look at long-distance lines that are expensive to run.
Like Mead, a House of Representatives advisory group in March lamented low public confidence in Amtrak because of “inadequate, unpredictable funding” and chronic mismanagement. However, that group understood that “a well-operated Amtrak, with its financial house in order, could help reduce the congestion currently facing some of our highways and airports. It could also increase our security by providing additional alternatives when other transportation modes are compromised.”
From New Orleans to Chicago, Boston to Washington, San Diego to Paso Robles, the country needs Amtrak in its transportation and energy mix. Looking forward, Congress and the president must consider passenger rail in that larger context.