Amtrak Threatened With Shutdown Budget

The House Committee on Appropriations came out with their proposed transportation budget for next year, and you should be concerned.  Very concerned.

The House Appropriations Subcommittee on Transportation & Housing proposed yesterday to slash funding for Amtrak to $1.1 billion—a reduction of more than $357 million from what Amtrak received in FY2011.  Significantly, the operating grant would be cut 60%—from $563 million in 2010 and 2011, down to $227 million.

The bill also requires states to pay 100% of costs of operations of short corridors.  Amtrak is warning that this provision would eliminate around 150 weekday state-supported trains.  This would effectively strand more than nine million passengers, annually, in California, Illinois, Maine, Michigan, Missouri, New York, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Texas, Vermont, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin.

The High-Speed and Intercity Passenger Rail program—a highly oversubscribed program that has seen 39 states apply for funds to improve (and introduce) modern passenger trains for the 135 million Americans that live in a community connected to a rail corridor—was given no funding at all.

Fallout & Next Steps

These numbers are all bad news.  Obviously.  But there are two things to take comfort in:

1.) Trains are—for once—not the only program on the chopping block.  The Federal Highway program is getting $27.7 billion, which is $14.1 billion than last year and $42.6 billion less than the President requested.  The House Republican leadership risks mobilizing almost every segment of the transportation community against this bill.

2.) The Senate probably won’t go along with this proposal, which sets us up for a Fiscal Year 2012 Continuing Resolution (the same workaround seen in 2011).

That doesn’t mean we can sit back and watch this play out.  Grassroots action is needed, and it is need now.  If Congress hears nothing in response to this attempt to starve Amtrak and high-speed rail, the final budget numbers for passenger trains will suffer.  NARP will be rolling out a campaign to stop this terrible bill tomorrow morning, so make sure to come back to our homepage tomorrow afternoon (or sign up for our e-mail alerts).