America's intercity passenger rail company, Amtrak, cannot survive much longer -- at least not in its current size and shape -- on the amount of annual funding that Congress and the administration provide. That was the conclusion of the Transportation Department's inspector general, Kenneth M. Mead, in a report delivered Nov. 18. It ought to be heeded.
The administration wanted to provide Amtrak with $900 million this fiscal year. Congress came through with $1.2 billion, but Mead agrees with Amtrak chief executive David Gunn that even the higher figure is not enough to keep the full operation going.
"Unsustainably large operating losses, poor on-time performance, and increasing levels of deferred infrastructure and fleet investment are a clarion call to the need for significant changes in Amtrak's strategy," the inspector general wrote. "Continued deferral brings Amtrak closer to a major point of failure on the system but no one knows where or when such a failure will occur."
Mead noted that on the Boston-New York-Washington Northeast Corridor, the only substantial piece of railroad that Amtrak owns and controls, century-old movable drawbridges could fail at any time for lack of upkeep or replacement. One such failure would close the line, forcing a massive, expensive and probably unmanageable diversion of the region's business and personal travel to already overburdened highways and airports.
Outside the Northeast Corridor, Amtrak rents track space from the privately owned freight railroads. That infrastructure is more sound, but freight-train congestion and antique signaling throw passenger trains off schedule. Meanwhile, Amtrak's diversion of scarce capital funds to patch track along the Northeast Corridor leaves no money to rebuild or expand its small rolling-stock fleet. Ridership grew by double digits on key corridors in California, Washington state and in the Midwest last year -- but no funds are available for more cars or locomotives.
Whether it's the railroad falling apart in the East or the fleet failing in the rest of the country, Amtrak is not getting the federal support it needs to meet demand.
Mead did not say why this is happening or what needs to be done about it. As a veteran Washington bureaucrat adept at ministering to multiple contending constituencies, he eschews the blame game. Instead, he handed the job of sorting it out to Congress, which, after all, is the body that will have to fund any solution.
"Congress needs to provide clear direction for Amtrak's operating and capital investment priorities as well as Federal funding levels in reauthorization legislation," Mead wrote. He suggested five possible strategies: refocus on under-500-mile corridors, where fast trains outperform air and auto transportation; cut low-performing operations; increase funding to develop the entire existing system; fund only to maintain the status quo; or "any combination of the above."
That's an interesting slate of choices, but all of them amount to micromanagement unless Congress first takes another, global step: It has to stop treating passenger trains as a business and start treating them as a federal transportation program.
What does a federal transportation program look like? Simple: like our highway and airport programs. The federal government doesn't operate the vehicles or market the service. There's no such company as "Amcar" or "Amflight." Instead, Washington helps the states to fund a state-of-the-art infrastructure that private operators can have access to -- highways for private cars and commercial motor coaches, airports for airliners. Congress needs to stop focusing solely on Amtrak, a government-owned train company operating on obsolete private and public infrastructure, so that it can refocus on getting matching funds out to states and communities that want to build up their intercity railroad tracks and start running fast, frequent, comfortable trains that people will pay to ride.
Several impatient states -- California, North Carolina and Washington -- couldn't wait for a federal program, so during the go-go '90s they spent some of their taxpayers' money to build track capacity and buy trains on their own. Their programs are successful -- California's 60 daily departures are carrying more than 4 million riders a year, and growth is quickly surpassing the capacity of the state-owned fleet.
But even rich states such as California have hit the fiscal wall, much as Pennsylvania did in 1939, when it ran out of money to finish its new turnpike and had to wait for an emergency grant sought by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Unless Congress develops a federal-state matching-grant plan for railroad tracks like the highway program it started in 1916 and the airport aid program it passed in 1946, passenger trains will continue to starve, highway and airport backups will grow, and Mead's successors at the Transportation Department will continue to scratch their heads about why the federal government can't seem to run a profitable train business.
Passenger trains used to be a profitable business in this country -- many, many years ago, when railroads enjoyed a monopoly over mechanized overland transportation and the federal government was not yet building and subsidizing two competing travel systems. But those days are gone. To expect a passenger train company to earn a profit on today's underfunded, obsolete and downsized track network is an exercise in nostalgia.
But to expect fast, frequent, efficient trains to carry masses of travelers who now fly, drive or stay home is the height of reality -- provided the funding is there for a railroad infrastructure as modern as the ones government provides for cars and airplanes. The key is our proven federal system of matching grants. It's amazing how much money a state legislature will appropriate for a project when it knows there's money waiting in Washington to match it. And it's amazing how eager entrepreneurs are to provide quality transportation once they're sure government will keep funding the infrastructure.
Look at the airlines. They're broker than Amtrak, but they keep trying, because win or lose, they know government will keep paying for the airports. Infrastructure assistance, not operations, is the federal government's proper role in a better train system.
The writer has worked for Amtrak and served on the Amtrak Reform Council. He
is chairman of NewTrains Leasing System, which provides financing for passenger train equipment and infrastructure.
