SEATTLE — Amtrak, the national passenger rail service, is on the financial brink and has threatened to shut down in the fall if it doesn’t get more federal funding, according to the Seattle Times.
Yet in the Pacific Northwest, investment by the Washington and Oregon state governments has kept Amtrak rail service and ridership healthy and growing.
Whatever happens to Amtrak nationally — Congress is expected to rescue it, although major restructuring could be required _ Washington state officials expect Pacific Northwest rail service, which it operates in conjunction with Amtrak, to keep running.
“We’ve invested more than $180 million since the early 1990s — from Washington and Oregon — in tracks, station, equipment and service,” said Stan Suchan, a spokesman for Washington’s Department of Transportation which spearheaded the resurgence of Northwest rail travel in the 1990s.
“Walking away would be difficult. I suspect Amtrak will be forced to change, and we’ll work around it.”
More than 565,000 people rode Amtrak last year in the Pacific Northwest corridor, between Eugene, Ore., and Vancouver, B.C. This year, more than 600,000 passengers are expected, said Suchan, and the states are working to improve rail tracks in order to speed up trains and reduce travel times between the major destinations of Vancouver, B.C., Seattle and Portland.
While Northwest rail travel is increasingly popular, nationally in its 31 years of operation, Amtrak has always lost money.
Cross-country routes have been expensive to run; Amtrak needs major infrastructure investment; and critics in Congress and beyond argue Amtrak needs philosophical, fiscal and labor reforms. Twenty-one states, including Washington, have formed a coalition to push Amtrak to make changes and improve regional inter-city rail service.
Five years ago, Congress declared Amtrak needed to be self-sufficient by the end of this fiscal year in September.
Amtrak isn’t. Congress gave it a loan of $100 million earlier this month which will keep the rail service running into August, but Amtrak says it needs at least another $100 million to close the budget shortfall and keep running until Sept. 30, the end of its fiscal year.
Amtrak is deep in debt, estimated at nearly $4 billion earlier this year.
One of Amtrak’s success stories is its Northeast service in the corridor between Washington, D.C., New York City and Boston.
In California, state investment has helped intercity routes grow — especially between Los Angeles-San Diego and Sacramento-Oakland-San Jose. The state had about 8 million Amtrak riders in fiscal 2001, second only to New York’s 10.4 million, according to the Washington Post.
While the Northwest’s ridership is small compared to New York’s or California’s, “it’s steady growth,” said Suchan.