toledoblade.com --

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration called for a fundamental overhaul yesterday of Amtrak by eliminating its federal subsidies, finding competitors for major intercity routes, and focusing the railroad's attention on train service by ending its ownership of stations and tracks.

The plan would gradually remove Amtrak as owner of 366 miles of track in the Northeast Corridor from Boston, through New York, to Washington and put them under control of a public partnership that has yet to be defined. Routes elsewhere in the country might be dropped if they proved unprofitable, and states would receive more control over their local lines in exchange for assuming more of their costs.

"The country can ill-afford to throw billions of federal dollars at Amtrak and just hope its problems disappear. Thirty years' experience should teach us that merely hoping for better performance is a doomed approach," Secretary of Transportation Norman Y. Mineta said in a speech to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

"Prices and passengers - not politics - should drive service," said Secretary Mineta, who did not set a time frame for the proposed changes. "Amtrak's current route network provides too many services with limited market appeal at high operating costs to the federal government."

Amtrak President David Gunn said he will have to begin turning away passengers and moving trains to storage by the middle of next week unless the railroad gets government help to close a $200 million shortfall.

"The urgency of this is enormous," Mr. Gunn told the Senate Appropriations subcommittee on transportation. "We are very near the point of no return."

Earlier this week, Mr. Gunn asked the Federal Railroad Administration for $200 million in loan guarantees, warning that the system would go bankrupt within weeks and shut down entirely without a cash infusion. Founded in 1971 with the goal of self-sufficiency, Amtrak has never run without a government subsidy.

In Congress, where the railroad has almost equally vocal critics and supporters, the prospect of approving such a drastic overhaul appeared uncertain. This year, Congress approved a $521 million subsidy for Amtrak and the Bush administration has proposed a similar amount for next year, although the House and the Senate are considering larger amounts. Amtrak says it needs at least another $1.2 billion from the federal government to continue operating another year.

"It's a foolish idea," U.S. Sen. Joseph R. Biden, Jr., said of the administration proposal. The Democrat rides an Amtrak train to Washington every day from Wilmington, Del.

"The Brits tried [privatization] and it was a disaster," said Senator Biden, who supports greater federal funding for Amtrak. "Maybe the only way people will understand how important it is, is if we shut it down. The administration's going to be totally, unequivocably responsible for this debacle."

Mr. Gunn told the Senate Appropriations Committee yesterday that "no amount of councils, commissions, study groups, panels, or symposiums will find a painless answer to what to do about Amtrak. Recent proposals to privatize or restructure are exercises in problem avoidance."

Former Massachusetts governor Michael S. Dukakis, vice chairman of the Amtrak board of directors, labeled the administration proposal "very disappointing" and said the way to cure Amtrak's ills is to accept it will need subsidies - as do Europe's famed railroads - and then provide a consistent amount of operating and capital money. "The notion that you can run a national rail system with a bunch of Balkanized regional systems is nonsense. The states have no interest in this. The freight railroads will tell you they want none of this," Mr. Dukakis said.

Toledo and regional passenger interests denounced the Bush plan.

"This is a free-market fantasy," said Stu Nicholson, administrative director of the Ohio Association of Railroad Passengers. "No passenger rail system in the world is self-sufficient, least of all in the United States where the federal government spends just one cent out of every transportation dollar on rail."

Amtrak operates eight daily trains across Ohio - six of them through Toledo - and two others that serve Cincinnati and Hamilton three days a week. All operate on long-distance routes between Chicago and the East Coast that are considered to be the most vulnerable.

In Michigan, Amtrak runs three daily round-trips between Detroit and Chicago and single Chicago-based round trips serving Grand Rapids and Lansing/Port Huron.

"We favor a national system, not just one on the East and West coasts. And it should be a federal system - not a privatized system or a regional system," said Brian Schwartz, a spokesman for the Toledo-Lucas County Port Authority, which owns the Toledo train station and whose roles include promoting regional rail transport.

Richard Harnish, executive director of the Midwest High-Speed Rail Coalition, noted that virtually all Amtrak routes cross state lines, and as such interstate transportation is appropriately a federal responsibility.

"The federal government needs to take a leadership role," he said. His organization represents eight midwestern states, including Ohio, Indiana, and Michigan, into which a high-speed rail network based in Chicago is proposed.

Permanent Link