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TODAY Friday 14 November 1997 Each weekday. Conn Nugent on what's new in the world, on the site.

 

TODAY IN THE WORLD: Amtrak, My Amtrak

There are people with principled attitudes towards our quasi-socialist national passenger rail service, but not many. You hear chronic fulminations about the national shame of subsidizing a railroad from people who enthusiastically support the national pride of subsidizing interstate highways. Western politicians are particularly interesting in this regard: ingenious defenders of tax-funded ranching, timbering, and mining; stalwart opponents of tax-funded mass transit.

On the other hand, Amtrak's defenders in Congress and environmental groups don't like to say aloud what everyone knows is true. Amtrak is a second-rate railroad (other than the cosseted Metroliner service), and its employees include some of the rudest and most apathetic customer-tenders in the country. (Appoint me Emperor of the Rails and I fire 20 percent of the workforce, in order, as the French used to say when shooting deserters, pour encourager les autres.) Most of the support for Amtrak comes from politicians of both parties who come from states or districts where a significant fraction of the voter population actually relies on it. It should surprise no one that Delaware's Republican Senator William Roth, a stringent fiscal conservative on almost everything else, is one of Amtrak's strongest proponents. And if you've ever taken the Metroliner from Washington to Wilmington -- 90 minutes, reliable service -- you'll know why.

Late yesterday the Congress -- eager to adjourn -- finally agreed on an inelegant compromise between the bashers and the defenders that should keep Amtrak on a life-support system for a few more years. Under the deal Amtrak will have access to $2.3 billion in capital investment funds that Senator Roth was able to attach to this year's tax bill. According to Amtrak, that money will go "to modernize equipment and facilities." For operating subsidies and additional capital expenditures, Amtrak President Tom Downs will have to walk on his knees each year to Capitol Hill, where he will endure extended lectures on the free-enterprise system in exchange for a share of $5 billion of additional federal money authorized for Amtrak through 2002. Authorized, not appropriated. And starting in 2003, Congress has decided, there will be no more operating subsidies at all.

In exchange for approving the Roth bonus and the $5 billion authorization, Republican legislators were able to impose what Amtrak is now describing as "provisions to increase efficiency." According to Matthew Wald in this morning's New York Times, those provisions include: the dismissal of the presidentially-appointed Amtrak board of directors and the appointment of a new board jointly selected by the President and Congress; recission of the statutory rights of unionized workers to six years of severance pay and to union-shop repair-and-maintenance service (both will now be up for grabs in collective bargaining); and easing of the requirements for Congressional approval of route abandonments.

What does it all mean? Almost certainly the new bill's capital funds will help Amtrak management's determination to run a world-class high-speed rail line between Boston and Washington. The Metroliner between New York and Washington is already pretty good: comfortable, punctual, three hours, $105. Anybody in Manhattan or downtown DC who takes the air shuttle is crazy, unless they're leaving before 7am and there's not a cloud in the sky. New money will go for tracks, electrification east of New Haven, station improvements, and those neat Swedish trains that tilt as you go into a turn; by 2000 passengers should be able to go from South Station, Boston to Penn Station, New York (225 miles) in three hours or less. Amtrak is betting that it will be a money-winner in the post-2002 era, and I think they're probably right.

I also think you'll see lots of route abandonment, particularly west of St. Louis. Amtrak managers will probably keep a north and a south transcontinental line, but otherwise they'll be looking hard for revenue-generating analogs to the Metroliner: San Francisco - San Diego? Seattle - San Francisco? Detroit - St. Louis? Miami - Jacksonville? New York - Montreal? The new board will probably pick a fight with the unions and see if they can lay off workers on the costliest routes and outsource more of the labor for the cash cows.

One may reasonably ask why you need a socialized passenger line if it's in the business of shutting down service to most of the regions of the country. It's a question that's occurred to Congress, certainly, and this past June the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure received a report from its bipartisan Working Group on Intercity Passenger Rail. The majority report agreed with a proposition first floated in the Economist magazine a few years ago: that the US government should treat rail just as it treats road and air travel. Subsidize infrastructure but don't subsidize the carriers. Were that infrastructure subsidy ample enough and geographically far-enough flung, enviros could have good reason to go along.

Of course none of these interesting national questions is half so important as what happens to the service between New York City and stops along the Connecticut River. I told you nobody is really disinterestedly principled on this subject, and I rely on those trains almost every weekend. The local congressional delegation has been briefed fully, and next year I expect legislation that will turn over the route to the German Federal Railways to run on a lavishly budgeted basis. The cafe car concessions go to the Italians.

 

TODAY ON THE SITE

Luckily, Lib Tree readers have an authority on hand who can link you up with the world's best Websites on high-speed rail. Climb aboard for Howard Learner's whistlestop cyber-tour.

 

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