6.25.02 @ 12:06AM
Amtrak is about to experience some much needed derailing.
David Gunn, the new president of Amtrak, says that if Congress
doesn't pony up an extra $200 million for the railroad by midweek
this week, he'll begin to shut down its lines. This is rather like
the school superintendent, on the eve of the election, saying that
if the bond issue doesn't pass, football, school band and the
library will close down.
That was Mr. Hyde-Gunn. At about the same time, Dr. Jekyll-Gunn
was telling an interviewer, "I want to change the way we do
business. My goal is to turn (Amtrak) into a much more focused
organization with tight fiscal controls." Inasmuch as passenger
rail travel has been its only focus in the 30-plus years it has
been in business, one wonders what kind of focus he has in mind.
For that matter, brave words similar to Mr. Gunn's have been issued
by each of his eleventy-seven predecessors over three decades. To
date, all such words have had the same effect. That is, none.
The problem is, as policy wonks like to say, systemic. Back in
1970, the railroads breathed a sigh of relief when the crosses they
were bearing in the form of passenger trains were lifted from them.
To do that, Congress created for itself a Gordian Knot. It gave
Amtrak several million dollars to get started, but insisted that,
in due course, it become self-supporting. Yet, every time
management wanted to eliminate a consistently money-losing line,
some senator, representative -- or a clutch of them -- would
threaten dire consequences if the "vital" line was cut. Result: the
line wasn't cut and the threats disappeared. This happened
countless times.
Faced with politically protected money-losing routes, Amtrak had
to save funds in other ways. For years this took the form of
delayed maintenance. That made the eventual maintenance even more
costly than had it been done on schedule. It might even have
figured in some derailments along the way.
It is possible -- just possible -- that things may be different
this time. Speaker of the House J. Dennis Hastert, a man not given
to dissembling, says, "I think there are some places that they
could shut down....They haven't taken a look at that and done that.
It's time that they do that."
Quite sensibly, Speaker Hastert added, "When you take a train
that runs from New Orleans to Los Angeles, and we subsidize each
passenger (by) about $350, we could put them in a pretty nice
airplane and fly them there."
If he is as determined in his behind-the-scenes work as his
words suggest, Amtrak may get its short-term reprieve with strings
attached in the form of a mandated slimming-down of consistently
unprofitable routes. Amtrak has one profitable and very popular
route: the Washington-New York-Boston corridor. Short corridors of
this sort elsewhere might be developed (e.g., Chicago-St. Louis;
Houston-Dallas), but who will pay the capital costs?
Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta says that failing
routes should be dropped unless the states involved want to take
over their subsidies. Makes sense. Like tolls on bridges it amounts
to a "user" tax. It could also be applied to building new corridors
which would service primarily the citizens of the states
involved.
A commission appointed for the purpose of developing a plan to
reform Amtrak recently came up with a scheme that would divide the
organization into two or three, each with a different -- but
related -- function. The cost would be several hundred million
dollars more than the $200 million Amtrak insists it needs this
week just to stay open. It also sounds like a recipe for endless
jurisdictional bickering between rival bureaucracies.
So far, Congress hasn't got it right, despite many
opportunities. Is it too much to hope that, this time, its members
will finally lay aside sentimentality and the impulse to please a
few constituents in order to make sensible decisions on behalf of
all the nation's taxpayers? Let us hope so.
topics:
Transportation, Business, NATO
