SEATTLE — Amtrak, which will not meet a Dec. 2 deadline for covering its operating costs without government help, now has 90 days to draw up a liquidation plan, according to an editorial in the Seattle Times by Mauris L. Emeka, a Seattle-based Amtrak train attendant who has authored two books about train travel.
Now more than ever, our country needs more (not fewer) local and long-distance trains. Trains can reduce air pollution and auto-traffic congestion, and they can reduce our nation’s dependence on foreign oil. We pay a tremendous price for our strong dependence on automobiles, and trains offer a workable option for reducing that dependency.
When it comes to government financial support for public transportation, Congress seems to use a double standard — one for airline and motor-vehicle transportation, and an altogether different standard for rail-passenger travel.
There’s one mindset when Congress talks about funding runways, highways, bridges and the extensive electronic equipment associated with aircraft control.
Government monies spent on these facilities are often thought of as
“investments in infrastructure,” and they consume untold billions annually.
Then comes rail-passenger travel, or Amtrak, and suddenly there’s a shift in mindset. The money allocated to it is seen as “government subsidies,” “bail-out funds” — and not as investments in our infrastructure.
Congress in 1997 issued a mandate to Amtrak to become self-sufficient in terms of covering all operating costs by 2003. But in reality, the self-sufficiency idea is a fiction, because the fact is that no national passenger-rail service in the world operates profitably without massive public infusions of funds, and Amtrak is no exception. If airlines had to pay for airport runways, and air-traffic-control facilities, they, too, would be hard pressed to show an operating profit.
The federal government spends more than $6 billion a year on airports and aviation; it spends more than $23 billion annually on highways. On the other hand, Amtrak receives approximately $500 million annually.
Amtrak was formed in 1970 by an act of Congress. It was created because the railroad companies had all but abandoned passenger-rail travel, as they found it increasingly more profitable to haul freight as opposed to people. So the next time we talk about “privatization” of rail travel we need to be reminded that we already crossed that bridge before and it didn’t work.
Amtrak, chartered as the National Rail Passenger Corporation, receives federal funding, thus making it subject to federal oversight; at the same time, it is not a federal agency or an instrument of the federal government.
There’s certainly room for Amtrak to improve. There’s a crying need for trains to be more affordable and more accessible to the public. On-time arrival of trains, consistency in the quality of on-board services, greater attention to maintaining the rolling stock, and a careful look at what many believe is an excessive amount of top management — these are all frequently criticized areas.
It should be noted, however, that Amtrak has made significant and measurable progress in recent years in managing operational expenditures.
Amtrak’s president, George Warrington, spoke earlier this year about a basic conflict of mission. He pointed out that Congress has asked Amtrak to be two very different and conflicting creatures: First, Amtrak is asked to operate trains as a public service to nearly all of the 50 states; and secondly, the company is required to operate as a typical private-sector, for-profit business. Clearly, these are rather conflicting missions, and hopefully, Congress will adequately address this dilemma in the coming weeks.
One of the most frequently asked questions of me whenever I go aboard the train is: “Why don’t we have more passenger trains in this country?” My usual reply is something like, “you need to write your congressman about that.”
One thing is for sure: We should not expect these familiar “iron horses” to go away anytime soon. After all, passenger trains helped usher in the Industrial Revolution before the turn of the 20th century, and they are equally capable of reducing our post-industrial and 21st-century travel problems.