CORRECTED: House Subcommittee Boosts Highway Spending, Throttles Passenger Train Growth

Note: Yesterday’s release understated the Amtrak budget problem by $396 million, which is the net of the $446 million that Amtrak requested in March to begin acquisition of new cars and locomotives and a $50 million reduction in the FY 2011 figure for ADA compliance.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE (#10-10)

July 1, 2010
Amended July 2, 2010

Contacts: Sean Jeans-Gail and Ross Capon – 202-408-8362

House Subcommittee Dramatically Increases Highway Spending, Throttles Passenger Train Growth

Washington, D.C.—The House Appropriations Subcommittee on Transportation, Housing and Urban Development today marked up a Fiscal Year 2011 spending bill which increases highway spending 10% or $4.1 billion above the Obama Administration’s request while cutting Amtrak 32% or $833 million below Amtrak’s own request, and cutting state grants for high speed and intercity passenger rail $1.1 billion below current funding.

Intercity passenger trains received a total of $3.2 billion in Subcommittee Chair John Olver’s (D-MA) “mark,” which was approved, with $1.4 billion for high speed rail and $1.77 billion for Amtrak.  The subcommittee numbers for Amtrak and for state grants are higher than the Administration requests by $151.5 million and $400 million, respectively.

“When you have multiple objectives, it makes sense to give priority to programs that address them,” said Ross Capon, president of the National Association of Railroad Passengers.  “We appreciate that the subcommittee has strengthened passenger train investment compared with the Administration’s budget request, but the rail levels fall short when considering the sharp growth in proposed highway investment and the public interest in promoting transportation that is energy efficient and environmentally benign and which gives Americans expanded travel choices that they want and need.  Today’s action is the first step in a long process, which people interested in balanced transportation investment should work to influence.”

The subcommittee on a party-line 8-5 vote rejected an amendment by ranking member Tom Latham (R-IA) to cut state grants back to the Obama Administration’s $1 billion level, eliminate completely the TIGER grant program (in which rail has fared well) and dramatically reduce the transit New Starts program.

The immediate concern for passengers is Amtrak, where the subcommittee provided $833 million less than Amtrak requested.  Moreover, the impact on most of Amtrak’s capital investment program will be exaggerated because two major components of the program—Americans with Disabilities Act station compliance at $231 million and debt service at $305 million—are fixed.  This means that, if the subcommittee’s numbers hold, the balance of the capital program—including acquisition of new cars and locomotives—would receive $668 million or about $804 million (55%) less than Amtrak sought for “non-ADA, non-debt service” capital.  At the same time, the operating budget will be tight, as Amtrak would be “level funded” with FY 2010, and thus $29 million or 5% below what the railroad requested.

All this comes when Amtrak is seeing record ridership and is critical to the push to create a national high speed rail network that would transform the way Americans travel.  For the first eight months of fiscal 2010 (October-May), Amtrak ridership was 5% above the year-earlier level, with strong increases nationwide.  May was even stronger, with long-distance trains as a group showing the biggest gains – 9% in ridership and almost 12% in passenger-miles compared with May, 2009.  (A passenger-mile is one passenger traveling one mile.)