(The following story by Hasso Hering appeared on the Democrat Herald website on January 5.)
ALBANY, Ore. — Passenger trains in the Amtrak Cascades service through Albany again face a potential budget ax in 2004 if voters reject a tax package and lawmakers start looking for programs to cut.
The state pays Amtrak to make four train runs a day between Eugene and Portland, two in each direction, plus a connecting bus service. The subsidy amounts to about $9 million for this two-year budget period.
Officials are concerned about the financial picture, according to Claudia Howells, administrator of the Rail Division in the Oregon Department of Transportation.
“Our operating funds continue to be at risk,” she said last week. “They’re solid at the moment, but if the Legislature hunts for money we’re on the cut list again.”
Lawmakers may have to go into a special budget-cutting session after the referendum on a tax package approved by the 2003 session. The vote-by-mail election will end Feb. 3.
Part of the train subsidy comes from the state’s general fund. The rest is backfilled from proceeds from custom license plates, Howells said.
Meanwhile, ODOT plans to award contracts to the Union Pacific early in 2004 for about $15 million in improvements on the Union Pacific main line used by Amtrak trains.
Three main projects are planned – near Millersburg, in Portland and in the Eugene yard.
In Millersburg, north of Albany, the plan calls for spending about $3 million to install a second section of track so that freight cars from the Millersburg industries no longer have to be switched directly on to the main line, an operation that can interfere with passenger schedules.
Similar bottlenecks are to be eliminated by the projects in Portland and Eugene.
Howells said ODOT will pay for the projects with federal funds that have been reallocated within the ODOT budget. The change will slightly delay one highway project, she said, a Highway 99 bypass near Dundee and Newberg.
Ridership on the Cascades trains was up this past fall, Howells said. She called the trend “incredibly good” but said she had not yet seen specific numbers, which will be reported by Amtrak in the next couple of weeks.
In a related development, Robert Krebs, passenger rail coordinator in the Rail Division for several years, is retiring this month. Krebs dealt with most of the details of negotiating with Amtrak and getting the Cascades service started in 1998 and expanded in October 2000.
It will be another few weeks before his job is filled, Howells said.
The Cascades service runs between Eugene and Vancouver, B.C. On the Oregon leg, two trains go north in the morning, stopping in Albany at 6:28 and 10:13 a.m. Two southbound trains stop in Albany at 7:06 and 10:36 p.m.