National Association of Railroad Passengers: www.narprail.org

Hotline #398

At yesterday’s Senate Appropriations subcommittee hearing—the first Amtrak hearing for the new chairman, Christopher Bond (R-MO)—Senators emphasized the difficulty of funding Amtrak in the current environment without support from the Bush Administration, and while dealing with severe budget cuts the Administration proposed in other popular programs.  Bond said, “even if I was to agree that $1.8 billion [which Amtrak requested] was justified, I don’t see how we could provide it.”  He chairs what is now called the Subcommittee on Transportation, Treasury, the Judiciary, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies.  Under the reorganization, Patty Murray (D-WA) continues as the top Democrat.

DOT Inspector General Ken Mead and Amtrak officials insisted that with $1.2 billion [what Congress provided for this year], Amtrak would not make it through FY06.

Amtrak Chairman David Laney emphasized that all of the increase Amtrak requested is for capital improvements; operating grant needs are basically flat. Mead said Amtrak is spending at a rate of $1.4 billion because Amtrak ended fiscal 2004 with about $200 million in cash. In contrast, President David Gunn said Amtrak might “limp into fiscal 2006 with $20 million” or roughly one week’s cash requirements.

Mead again stated (repeating comments made at previous Hill hearings) that “eliminating long-distance service will not solve the problem,” but would only save about $300 million and those savings “would not be immediate. In fact, in the first year, it may cost Amtrak more to eliminate the service than to operate it because of its labor severance payments (commonly called C-2).”

Sen. Robert Bennett (R-UT) reported that the California Zephyr handles fewer than 100 passengers a day in Utah, suggesting this means “we do not have a market for transcontinental train riders.”  However, the California Zephyr overall is well used. The daily average on+off figures for states it serves are: Colorado 550; Illinois 432; California 393; Nevada 176; Iowa 125; Nebraska 110; Utah 96.  The latter obviously reflects having Salt Lake City in the middle of the night; Bennett’s position illustrates why long-distance trains could not survive on a state supported basis.

But Bennett also called the Amtrak Board’s plan “a pretty good piece of work.” He asked Laney, “If you were given a clean sheet of paper, could you design a system that made sense, and that required a lower subsidy than the current system?” Laney said, “Yes, absolutely, I think our plan does just that.” Laney referred to a “reconfigured long-distance service.” He said Amtrak believes long-distance service is important, that “ultimately we may eliminate some routes” but “we might eventually” begin to add others.

Bennett supported Murray’s attempts to get DOT to be specific about what funding it would request. He told Rosen, “You have hit us with a 2x4, now I would advise you to define the carrot.” Rosen, however, said in effect there would be none until Congress actually enacted “reform.”

Sen. Byrd, the dean of the Senate (first elected in 1958) and the top Democrat on the full appropriations committee, argued the importance of Amtrak to small, rural communities, especially as Greyhound has reduced service. He said Bush has many other proposals that hurt rural America, including the elimination of the Essential Air Service program.  He said, “not every grandmother can just get behind the wheel” to go visit family.  But he also said that “a dead railroad may very well be what we get in the coming year…the challenge of saving Amtrak will be considerably greater due to failure of” his Amtrak amendment on the budget resolution in March.  He characterized dropping the long-distance trains as rubbing salt in the wounds of small communities, from which he said a disproportionate number of American “sons and daughters die in the unnecessary war in Iraq.”

NARP issued a news release after the hearing, focusing on the difficulties of funding Amtrak this year.

Secretary of Transportation Norman Y. Mineta met for over an hour with NARP Executive Director Ross B. Capon and Assistant Director David Johnson on Wednesday.  Also present were DOT General Counsel Jeffrey Rosen, who represents DOT on the Amtrak board and at some Amtrak hearings, Acting Federal Railroad Administrator Robert Jamieson, and FRA Associate Administrator for Railroad Development Mark Yachmetz.  There was a lengthy discussion about long-distance trains. Capon emphasized that the “avoidable cost” of these trains is $300 million; a relatively small portion of Amtrak’s total funding requirements.  At the end of the meeting, Secretary Mineta expressed the need for continued “give and take.”  He readily agreed to another meeting.  This does not mean that Bush Administration policy is about to change, but clearly a direct dialogue is good, and may be helpful as Congress and the Administration move forward towards resolving the issue.

“Getting Acela Back on Track” was the title of a House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee’s Railroads Subcommittee hearing May 11.  The latest problems with the Acela Express trainsets were also the subject of a hearing this week in.  The hearing was generally positive and supportive of Amtrak’s quick and decisive action to remove the trains from service when the problem was first identified.  Both subcommittee chairman Steve LaTourette (R-OH) and Ranking Member Corrine Brown (D-FL) pointed out that Amtrak’s quick recovery and shuffling of equipment and schedules to re-start Metroliner service would have been impossible if there were multiple passenger rail operators or if control of infrastructure and operations were separated.

Amtrak Inspector General Fred Wiederhold said that his initial investigations reveal that a member of the maintenance consortium that is responsible for day-to-day repairs of the Acela Express trains may have noticed the cracks as early as three years ago.  However, these cracks were not reported to Bombardier, Alstom, or Amtrak.  The Government Accountability Office (GAO) reiterated their concerns about the maintenance contract and settlement of the Amtrak-Bombardier lawsuit.

Senators Trent Lott (R-MS) and Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) spoke at a Capitol Hill meeting of the U.S. Conference of Mayors’ Amtrak Intercity Rail Investment Task Force, also May 11.  Lott said he hoped to get to work on an Amtrak reauthorization bill as soon as the Senate finishes with the highway bill.  “I believe in a national rail passenger system…We’re up to the point where we’ve got to fish or cut bait. The Administration basically has boxed us in. They’ve put us in a position where we’ve got to figure it out…I was pleased that the board testified in support of $1.8 billion [although] I don’t think that’s enough to do what needs to be done.”  Lott said Amtrak President and CEO David L. Gunn “does an excellent job – the right man at the right time.”  He said some long distance routes may not make it “if the losses are too great, being on time is always a problem, and people aren’t riding.”  He also said, “I feel strongly about my rail relocation bill; my lead co-sponsor, interestingly, is John Kerry. We have problems from Mississippi to Massachusetts.”  That bill would facilitate removal of rail lines from congested downtown areas.

NARP Executive Director Ross B. Capon’s letter to the editor of the Washington Post was printed on Tuesday.  This was in response to a decidedly negative Washington Post editorial on Amtrak.  At the same time The Post ran pro-long-distance train letters from Sen. Conrad Burns (R-MT) and a Post reader from Vienna, Virginia.

Amtrak service between Newark and New York City was disrupted Thursday night and Friday morning by a fire on the Portal Bridge.  The bridge—one of several identified by Amtrak as needing significant upgrade in the near future—is on one of the busiest stretches of railroad in the United States: at the peak of rush hour, a train passes over it nearly every minute.  Limited Amtrak and New Jersey Transit service resumed this morning with trains traveling at 5 mph across the bridge.  It is believed at this time that the bridge suffered no structural damage.  Amtrak is working around the clock to restore full service.

Last week, we reported that the connection between the Silver Star and Capitol Limited at Washington, DC had been restored.  Amtrak quickly invalidated the connection, citing increasing unreliability of the eastbound Capitol Limited and northbound Silver Star.  The Capitol Limited will be affected by several upcoming trackwork projects on the Pittsburgh-Washington CSX mainline and the Silver Star continues to struggle with the CSX trackwork blitz between Rocky Mount and Richmond (an Amtrak train yesterday faced 18 slow orders between Petersburg and Rocky Mount alone).  NARP will continue to monitor this situation and encourage Amtrak to restore the connection when train reliability improves.