Hotline #942 - August 9, 1996

Amtrak yesterday announced its plan for coping with what it termed "an accelerated reduction in federal funding." The Amtrak Board will approve the plan next month. The changes will take effect November 10. Amtrak proposes a mixture of route eliminations and frequency increases. Total train-miles would increase, with 131 stations getting more frequent service. But 42 stations (including Dallas and Fort Worth) would lose all service. Here are the basics:

• These trains will be made daily -- Empire Builder, California Zephyr, City of New Orleans, Crescent (which already is daily since the Olympics).
• The Texas Eagle will be eliminated south of St. Louis, ending all service to Arkansas and northern Texas, including the huge Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area.
• The Pioneer will be eliminated, ending all service to southern Idaho and Wyoming.
• The Desert Wind will be eliminated, ending all service to Las Vegas.
• The Boston section of the Lake Shore Limited will be replaced with a Thruway bus -- although there is apparently some consideration of a coach-only Boston-Albany train.
• The Sunset Limited will be terminated at Sanford, Fla. At NARP's request, Amtrak is looking at having it run the remaining 24 miles into Orlando, the biggest travel market in Florida.
• The Three Rivers will be extended from Pittsburgh to Akron and Chicago and renamed the Broadway Limited.
• A third Florida train, the Silver Palm, will run from New York to Charleston, Ocala, Tampa, and Miami, replacing the Tampa section of the Silver Star. It will have roughly the old Palmetto schedule north of Jacksonville.
• There will be more equipment shared between trains for better utilization.

Several elements remain to be decided, including Thruway bus opportunities in various places. Amtrak is in discussions with state and local officials about a possible Los Angeles-Las Vegas train, a Seattle-Portland train to fill the Pioneer's slot, and possible, undisclosed changes to the Michigan service.

Amtrak says the changes are needed to reduce operating deficits and concentrate resources in places that give Amtrak the greatest chance of survival in the next few years. But the loss of service to so many places, and particularly a huge market like Dallas, must serve as a wake-up call to the public and to Congress that Amtrak's capital and operating needs must be funded adequately -- or there will be more bad news in the future.

Part of what needs to happen for passenger trains to have a future is for Congress to approve higher capital funding for Amtrak, when appropriators meet in a conference committee after Labor Day. Tell your Representative and Senators that the Senate numbers for Amtrak in the 1997 DOT funding bill must stand.

A wire service story says that the State of Connecticut's Department of Environmental Protection has made a tentative decision to give approval to state permits allowing electrification of the Amtrak Shore Line to advance. Connecticut had been the site of the only significant opposition to the project, which came from NIMBY's and marina owners concerned about bridge openings.

Voters in St. Charles County, Mo., rejected a tax measure this week that would have allowed an extension of the MetroLink light-rail system into that county.