Off track

Some of Amtrak's biggest critics are Republicans such as John McCain and Sen. Phil Gramm, R-Texas, but the railroad also has bipartisan support. In addition to a wide variety of Democrats, Amtrak supporters include Gramm's Republican Texas colleague Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, a sponsor of the High Speed Rail Investment Act (HSRIA), and New York Republican Rep. Jack Quinn, chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Subcommittee on Railroads.

Quinn says the Amtrak Reform Council's liquidation decision "could not have come at a worse time."

The debate is not so much over whether passenger rail has a role. Instead it's a disagreement between those who believe Amtrak cannot do what needs to be done, and those who think it can -- if longstanding problems are addressed.

On the anti-Amtrak side are critics like Paul Weyrich, vice chairman of the Amtrak Reform Council's board of directors. Weyrich, a conservative activist and president of the Free Congress Foundation who also served on the Amtrak board for six years and played a role in getting President Nixon to sign the bill that created Amtrak in the first place, says he has been an Amtrak booster for most of the railroad's existence. But he doesn't support the railroad anymore.

"I am for a national passenger-rail system, and I am for the government investing a lot of capital in it, but we ought to be able to put a system together that at least breaks even," Weyrich says. "Amtrak is broken. It cannot be fixed. Congress can continue to pour endless sums of money into it, but it's never going to prove itself because the culture is such that it can't.

"Amtrak was a system that was inherited from the freight railroads. A lot of the attitudes and practices that were part of the old way of operating railroads came with Amtrak and it has been almost impossible to get rid of it. There are routes where you have pretty good service, but there are routes where the attitude is surly, the food is lousy, the trains run hours and hours late."

In its defense, Amtrak says it has changed significantly in the last several years by trimming costs, rolling out service improvements like Acela high-speed rail, partnering with other businesses like airlines and car-rental companies, starting a guest-rewards program similar to frequent-flyer programs, and offering a satisfaction guarantee: The agency offers passengers an equivalent credit toward another trip if they aren't happy with Amtrak service.

Amtrak also has consistent proponents, such as Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., and others who have come to its defense in the wake of the Amtrak Reform Council's finding. "Now is not the right time to do this," says Quinn. "I understand that Amtrak might have difficulty making the self-sufficiency deadline, but now is not the right time to begin the liquidation process."

Amtrak also has significant support at the state and city level, in the form of endorsements for the High Speed Rail Investment Act from the U.S. Conference of Mayors and the National Governors' Association. State transportation officials in particular are also eager for federal help in building high-speed rail corridors, some of which are already in development. Construction is already underway, for example, on a high-speed rail link between Chicago and St. Louis, and Mike Monseur, spokesman for the Illinois Department of Transportation, says the state is "absolutely" hoping to get additional federal money for other rail projects.

Under the proposed Midwest Regional Rail Initiative, Chicago would be the hub of a nine-state network of trains that could run more than 100 mph.

In California, state Department of Transportation director Jeff Morales says, "From a lot of perspectives -- air quality, quality of life, the management of dollars -- rail makes a lot of sense as an element of a balanced transportation system." Morales says new rail services that have already been introduced in California in partnership with Amtrak are "struggling to keep up with demand. We've essentially created a new market, and now it's growing faster than anticipated."

Morales says that California has also had a "very good experience" working with Amtrak, and adds, "We absolutely would like to see some sort of major rail package passed. California stands to benefit significantly from any national rail program."

In addition to the High Speed Rail Investment Act, which currently has 57 cosponsors in the Senate (enough to pass, but not enough to break a filibuster) and about 180 in the House, other measures have recently been proposed and introduced in Congress to help the country's rail service begin to catch up.

For its part, Amtrak asked earlier this year for capital funding of $1.5 billion a year for 20 years. The agency says the money could be used for a wide range of service improvements, like reducing travel time between Seattle and Portland by an hour, from 3.5 hours to 2.5 hours, or two hours between Chicago and Detroit, from five hours and 46 minutes to three hours and 40 minutes.

On Oct. 11, Sen. Ernest Hollings, D-S.C., introduced the Railroad Advancement and Infrastructure Law of the 21st Century. Also known as Rail-21, the bill would remove Amtrak's self-sufficiency deadline next year, authorize $3.2 billion for new security and capacity needs, and provide funds for capital investment, including $35 billion in direct loans for passenger rail, freight rail and security enhancements. Hollings says Sept. 11 "not only proved that Amtrak works, but that Amtrak is a critical part of our transportation infrastructure during a national emergency."

Going even further, in a way, is a bill introduced on Sept. 25 by Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska, the Rail Infrastructure Development and Expansion Act. The bill would provide a total of $71 billion in bonds and loans for freight and passenger rail projects.

"The tragedies of Sept. 11, and the resulting short-term cessation of air travel, demonstrated the need for transportation alternatives for passengers. It is time for the United States to make high-speed passenger rail a transportation priority," said Young in a statement.

Rail observers like Scott Leonard at the National Association of Railroad Passengers express concern about loan programs. "It's never been a realistic expectation that high-speed-rail programs would be so successful they'd be able to cover the cost of their operations and capital," Leonard says, and Goddard criticizes the expectation of turning a profit.

"No national railway of a developed country has ever run a profit. They're not supposed to. The correlative economic and social benefits they throw off -- bringing commuters to taxpaying corporations daily, for one thing -- more than offset any net loss they suffer." Operating expenses can be reduced, but rail proponents argue that capital investment needs to be provided for rail, just as it is for other forms of transportation, and just as it is for other public services.

"Unlike every other passenger rail system in the world," said Biden when introducing the 2001 version of HSRIA earlier this year, "Amtrak has lacked a secure source of public support for its capital needs ... The bill that Senator Hutchison and I introduce today is designed to provide Amtrak with the capital funds to establish a truly national high-speed passenger rail system. The idea is simple, and it is modeled on a program we already have in place to support another important public priority, public school construction."

Anti-Amtrak conservatives do not like the idea of letting the rail agency off the self-sufficiency hook, but there may be a growing recognition in the wake of Sept. 11 that the United States has to invest more money if it wants better rail service. Amtrak cites figures showing U.S. per capita rail spending at Third World levels; figures from the European Conference of Ministers of Transport and U.S. Congressional Budget Office highlight the stark contrast in priorities: Of Germany's total transportation capital spending, 21.7 percent goes to rail; France spends 20.7 percent; the United States spends 0.4 percent.

"You get what you pay for," says Leonard at NARP. "Those countries have paid for an excellent rail system, and we haven't."

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