Senators Say White House Should Offer Amtrak Help

emocratic United States senators from New York and New Jersey accused the Bush administration yesterday of threatening the economic life of the Northeast by failing to extend an emergency loan guarantee to keep Amtrak trains rolling after a threatened midweek shutdown.

Shouting over the Sunday morning din of Pennsylvania Station's rotunda, Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York and Senators Robert G. Torricelli and Jon S. Corzine of New Jersey said that the administration should guarantee the $200 million loan that the rail service says it needs to keep operating until new federal subsidies kick in after Oct. 1.

"This not a question of losing a few tourist trains through rural Montana," Senator Torricelli said. "This is our economic infrastructure. Without regular train service in northern New Jersey and New York, our economy will come to a halt."

The rail service, with tracks and trains that carry 300,000 commuters in the New York region daily, has said that it will run out of money for its payroll and other obligations on Wednesday or Thursday, and will be forced to begin shutting down, starting with its long-distance trains. New Jersey Transit trains, which carry many of those commuters into Manhattan, would also be shut down because Amtrak owns many rails and provides operational services like electricity, switching and dispatching.

The Long Island Rail Road uses Penn Station and some short stretches of Amtrak rail in the city and so would also be affected, although there have been suggestions that the railroad could confine passenger service to Long Island. The Metro-North Railroad into northern New Jersey, the Hudson River Valley and Connecticut operates on its own tracks out of Grand Central Terminal, and so would not be directly affected, an Amtrak spokesman said.

Norman Y. Mineta, the secretary of transportation, on Saturday scheduled a meeting with the Amtrak board for today, saying the administration was "not interested in allowing Amtrak to shut down."

This seeming assurance did not satisfy the senators, however, and they moved to block two possible moves by the administration that they do not like.

Senator Torricelli said he had heard that the administration might propose shifting $100 million already approved for improving Amtrak's Hudson and East River tunnels to help fill the budget gap, a move he said he would oppose.

And Senator Corzine warned the administration against throwing the problem to Congress, where, he said, some Republicans would be sure to block any quick action to help Northeastern commuters.

"The president and the administration may turn around and say it's up to Congress," Senator Corzine said, "and they know we can't act in three days to get this money out."

Senator Schumer said: "They've played chicken too long with this issue. They've left Amtrak hanging right on the edge, because they really want to see it going under."

Ken Lisaius, a White House spokesman, responded yesterday, "The Department of Transportation is currently reviewing the application in question, and, as you know, Secretary Mineta has called on the board to meet tomorrow in order to ensure that all options are reviewed."

The administration has expressed some dismay with the blunt threat from Amtrak's new president, David L. Gunn, to shut down unless the railroad gets a loan to carry it over until October. But an Amtrak spokesman, William Epstein, said yesterday that the railroad had been caught by surprise when banks refused to extend more credit.

"We are about where we expected to be," Mr. Epstein said of the railroad's cash balance. "But we did not expect to be in a situation where we could not take advantage of our line of credit."

Mr. Epstein, who attended yesterday's news conference and made a podium and television lights available for the senators, said a suggestion from Senator Schumer that the Long Island Rail Road might be able to step in and run Penn Station and its cross-Hudson tunnels would not work, at least in the time available.

Mr. Epstein said even a shutdown would cost Amtrak money, and already some cancellations have started to come in. "We are already seeing situations where groups that have booked with us have begun canceling," he said. "Church groups, scouts and schools book well in advance, and it's not that they're afraid we won't be able to refund their ticket. It's just that they have to know their transportation will be available."

Bush suggested a plan last week that would encourage private companies to get back into passenger rail.

Amtrak has never worked, outside of the Northeast Corridor. It's too bad, because train travel is great, or at any rate, it's my favorite way of getting around, when I can find it. Also, building an infrastructure that would enable us to be less subject to threats by petroleum producing countries wouldn't be a bad idea, either.

This is a high priority matter, and I don't think the solution is just extending Amtrak's sort-of-life as it is now.

Let the Amtrak Ponzi scheme fold. In the very few areas where intercity travel makes sense, it a least breaks even. In the NEC between New Haven CT and Washington DC it actually makes money, albeit partially from rent paid to it from MTA and other commuter rail lines.

There are literally dozens of long distance routes that exist only for political convenience. Select Politicians get a rail route into their state, and have to subsidize it massively, just to look good at election time. The section of the Sunset Limited between New Orleans and LA is subsidized to the tune of $350.00 per rider, some bargain. The long distance routes are only there to cater to a select group of romantics and the "afraid to fly" paranoid crowd.

Don’t drag out the tired example of Europe or Japan either. Most of Europe has major population centers no more that 20 miles apart, and Japan is even denser. In the areas of this country that have similar densities, rail makes sense, and may even make a profit if freed from the ridiculous long distance routes.

As far as the, we need rail incase the air traffic system get shut down again, like 9-11 crowd. There are not enough train cars to carry 1% of the long distance Air traffic. Notice how Amtrak had a rider-ship "spike" after 9-11, but why was it only 15% or so more than normal, simple, they didn’t have room for more people. There is not some vast fleet of rail cars sitting someplace waiting for use. They run with a minimum complement of rolling stock, and a few spares for bad ordered units. The rider-ship only went up that small amount because that is all the additional riders they could fit.

How did most people, that could not wait for the airlines to get back up and runnning, get home post 9-11. Ask the rental car companies, they had so many cars that were driven one-way, that most had to sell them off, rather than spend the money to re-transport them to their sending cities, it was the end of the model year anyway. People love their cars, lets just get use to it, long distance rail is a sad joke from another era. Let it die, like the trans-oceanic passenger liners and the stage coach.

Let the market place work is the natural response from those of us in red country; however, the political whores see an opportunity to pander to another class of victims, the shareholders, owners and beneficiaries of Amtrak.

Just let Amtrak go under and then in Bankruptcy Court, whack 50% of the over-staffed management class, re-visit and lower substantially the work rules of the union-led work crews and raise / lower rates as necessary to keep the yield (passengers per seat mile) at a profitable level.

As with most problems produced in Washington, the solution(s) is(are) readily available and doable, it just takes a modicum of political spine.

Amtrak failed to duplicate the Metroliner's sucess throughout the full system. It's almost amazing -- they offered a moderately fast, almost hourly train between a few cities. People flocked to it.

But instead of using it as a model, Amtrak decided to keep running the same slow, diesel, low ridership, high cost long distance trains that people weren't riding when the private RRs were running them.

Amtrak needed to think ahead 20 years (10 years ago).

Speed sells. No one wants a slow computer, car, train, or anything else. No one advertises "Take the train - We're slow!"

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June 24, 2002

Senators Say White House Should Offer Amtrak Help