NARP’s Warning About Amtrak Shut-Down Bill Echoes Across the U.S.

Furor over a House transportation spending bill budget that would force a shutdown of the entire Amtrak system—and which explicitly directly attacks short corridor passenger train service across the U.S.—has spread in the days following last week’s disclosure of the draft-bill’s details.

The GOP-led House Appropriations Subcommittee on Transportation & Housing on September 8 approved a fiscal year 2012 spending bill that would slash Amtrak’s operating grant by 60 percent, prohibit the use of federal operating dollars to fund operating expenses for state-supported routes, and zeroes-out the High-Speed and Intercity Passenger Rail Program.

In an effort led in large part by NARP, transportation groups and media outlets across America are warning the public about the very real threat this budget proposal poses to hundreds of passenger trains across the country:

• NARP’s Action page lets you reach out directly to your Representative and let them know you support trains in America;
• Streetsblog picks up NARP’s warning about the shut-down budget;
• The Albany Times-Union quotes NARP Board Member (and President of the Empire State Passengers Association) Bruce Becker in saying the bill would be “devastating for New York.”  The Times-Union also publishes an illustrative Amtrak map of the corridor trains targeted by the bill [Also: Amtrak PDF listing short corridors];

• The Longview News-Journal speaks with NARP Vice-President Sean Jeans-Gail about a worst case scenario, and how the bill would undermine the transportation improvement efforts of “hundreds of communities”;
• The Kansas City Business Journal looks at the danger to service in Missouri;
• The Baltimore Sun’s editorial board calls the budget proposal a “short-sighted assault on passenger rail”;
• The Charlottesville Daily Progress mocks the logic behind killing successful short intercity corridors like the recently launched Lynchburg-Washington, D.C service (which also serves Charlottesville) that has been selling-out trains since its inauguration.