WASHINGTON — Rep. Jack Quinn struggled to get a grip on Amtrak’s future at a hearing Thursday during which an advisory committee said the federally owned system should be broken up and sold to private companies, reports the Buffalo News.
The Hamburg Republican, chairman of the House Transportation Subcommittee on Railroads, indicated that it would not happen on his watch.
Quinn told the Amtrak Reform Council – a group set up five years ago by then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga. – that Amtrak has been consistently underfunded despite demands that it quickly make a profit. “You can’t have it both ways,” he said.
“If Congress continues to turn a blind eye to Amtrak, we face the prospect of the disintegration of passenger rail service in this country,” Quinn said. “I will not stand by and watch that train leave the station.”
Quinn’s statements came close to defiance of the chairman of the full transportation panel, Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska, who sat glumly next to him. Young strongly favors the reform council’s plan to privatize Amtrak.
The council’s report, which criticizes the subsidies given to the government-owned rail line, proposes that Congress allow a new agency to create private companies to operate lines, which also would receive subsidies from the federal government totaling $100 billion over 10 years.
The council also would break off the Northeastern Corridor of Amtrak, its most heavily used portion and the only one that owns its own tracks. Critics of the plan believe that unprofitable lines would be shut down. The Niagara Falls-New York City segment of Amtrak operates deeply in the red.
While Quinn praised the council for providing Congress with a framework of discussion, he was noncommittal about the council’s specific plans to privatize Amtrak. So was freshman Bill Shuster, R-Pa., who said Amtrak provides a “vital service” to his state.
Quinn and other Republicans who back the national system complained that Amtrak’s current management is not accountable enough.
But the House committee’s Democrats and the labor movement were the most outspoken opponents of the council’s recommendations.
Rep. Bob Clement, D-Tenn., said that after Sept. 11, “people have made it clear they want a reliable alternative to air and auto transport.”
Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-Brooklyn, said, “Preserving Amtrak is a matter of national security.” He scoffed at the council’s opposition to subsidies, saying, “Did Congress ask the airlines to show a profit as they passed a $15 billion aid bill last fall?”
The next hearing on the system will be March 6.