Amtrak Funding Long a Target in Washington

Proponents say aging equipment, infrastructure need repairs

The cause of Tuesday night’s deadly Amtrak crash in Philadelphia is still under investigation, but funding for the national passenger railroad has long been a source of friction amid complaints of aging infrastructure and unprofitable routes.

From Amtrak's beginnings in 1971 as a for-profit company, it has been under pressure to make money. Republicans have repeatedly promised to end its subsidies, and have tried to privatize the profitable Northeast Corridor — the busy line that Amtrak Northeast Regional Train 188 was traveling on Tuesday when it derailed.

David Gunn, a former Amtrak president, said that designating the railroad as a for-profit entity was never reasonable.

"The whole idea was they were going to just gently lower the passenger train into a grave," he said.

Hours after eight people were killed and 200 hospitalized in the Tuesday night crash, the House Appropriations Committee began Wednesday considering a transportation and housing bill that would slash $251 million from Amtrak's budget for next year, leaving it with $1.1 billion. An amendment to fully fund Amtrak failed along party lines.

"Every day, tens of thousands of passengers travel our nation's railways on Amtrak — a majority of those along the Northeast Corridor where yesterday's tragic accident occurred," said Democratic Rep. Chaka Fattah, who represents Philadelphia. "These riders deserve safe, secure, and modern infrastructure."

But Chairman Harold Rogers of Kentucky said that the Republicans, who are in the majority, are hamstrung by automatic spending cuts.

President Obama had asked for almost $2.5 billion for capital investments in tracks, tunnels and bridges, $400 million of it for construction along the railroad's Northeast Corridor.

The Appropriations Committee's budget falls far short of the amount the House had authorized in March in longterm funding for the railroad -- $1.7 billion a year over four years for Amtrak, just above the $1.4 billion the often beleaguered railroad now receives. The money must be appropriated before it goes to Amtrak.

The last longterm funding plan was approved by Congress in 2008, to run through 2013.

Even the earlier $1.7 billion amount disappointed rail proponents who had hoped for more money for repairs and upgrades. Conservatives, meanwhile, wanted to end all subsidies. The White House supported passage of the bill, which then moved to the Senate. But in a statement the White House said that while it would improve service, it did not address safety. 

The head of the AFL-CIO’s Transportation Trades Department, Ed Wytkind, told The Associated Press that the $1.7 billion failed to provide money to replace 100-year-old tunnels on the railroad’s Northeast Corridor between Boston, New York and Washington, D.C., and to make other improvements.

The earlier House bill did separate the Northeast Corridor service from other long-distance routes and allow Amtrak to reinvest its profits in the popular route to improve service. Those profits are now used to help subsidize the 15 unprofitable routes elsewhere in the country.

Amtrak carried 11.4 million passengers on the Northeast Corridor in the fiscal year ending in September 2013, making it the busiest railroad in the country. More than 2,200 trains operate on some portion of the route each day.

Across the country, the railroad had a total of 31.6 million passengers that year, the largest total in its history, according to the railroad.

Amtrak has struggled since it was created in 1970 with the passage of the Rail Passenger Service Act. It began service in May 1971 with a total of 21 routes.

Gunn, who was fired by Amtrak's board of directors in 2005, said the railroad was formed to relieve freight lines of the obligation of having to carry passengers.

"Amtrak was not set up with a vision that there should be a high-speed or an inter-city passenger network," he said. "It was set up to help the freight railroads get rid of a deficit.

From the start Amtrak was operating against federally subsidized highways, he said. Even the Northeast Corridor would not be profitable if it had to cover both its operating costs and capital improvements, he said.

"You don't have a policy on the part of the federal government," he said. "It hasn't figured out what role it wants passenger rail to play."

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