IP: Big money fuels scheme to derail Amtrak for good

[Dave Farber <dave@farber.net>]

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From: Richard Jay Solomon <rsolomon@dsl.cis.upenn.edu>

>
>Big money fuels scheme to derail Amtrak for good
>By Douglas Turner
>
>March 5, 2002
>
>
>
>WASHINGTON - Just 15 miles south of here, the federal government is building
>a $600 million spaghetti-bowl interchange at just one of the zillion
>intersections of the Interstate Highway System. This follows an investment
>of at least $200 million to add four lanes to Interstate 95 immediately
>south of this crowded interchange.
>
>There is enough spent there to build a great university campus - complete
>with medical school, linear accelerator and chemistry laboratories. This
>mindless splurge, which is being replicated all over the country, will
>accomplish nothing.
>
>The four new lanes are now bumper-to-bumper by 11 most Saturday mornings.
>This is because motor vehicle traffic abhors a vacuum. Buses, cars and
>trucks go where the capacity is. And traffic is expanding faster than road
>capacity.
>
>Despite this investment of taxpayer dollars, the capacity of this particular
>interchange is locked in for the next 40 years simply because of the bridge
>abutments and other built-in arrangements.
>
>State and federal highway agencies throw hundreds of billions around like
>this without blinking, with no public debate and virtually no media notice.
>It's on automatic.
>
>Similarly, federal agencies and airport authorities dump tens of billions
>into new runways, aprons and other projects. That, too, is on automatic.
>
>It doesn't take a nuclear physicist to figure out why. The combination of
>forces favoring sprawl, concrete and steel - automakers, contractors and oil
>companies - is virtually unbeatable here.
>
>The hired guns in pinstripes representing the major airlines are likewise
>unstoppable. Witness last fall's congressional $15 billion bailout of the
>major airlines, whose callous and reckless indifference to security concerns
>played a role in the hijackings of Sept. 11.
>
>These same forces have traditionally thwarted attempts by former Democratic
>Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York and other progressive thinkers to
>advance rail solutions to inter-city transportation problems. These
>interests have succeeded in preventing Amtrak from fulfilling the promise
>made when President Richard Nixon created it three decades ago.
>
>Now, with the support of White House Budget Director Mitchell E. Daniels
>Jr., this combine has hatched a cabal to kill off Amtrak when it is most
>needed.
>
>This conspiracy - and it is not too strong a term - centers on a report
>concocted by the so-called Amtrak Reform Council. This was a 1997 creation
>of then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich of Georgia and then-Senate Majority
>Leader Trent Lott of Mississippi.
>
>This elitist exercise in anti-urban, regionalist bias was forced on Congress
>by those two Republicans as a condition of continuing the modest level -
>compared with the subsidies given the airline and highway businesses - of
>operating subsidies provided to Amtrak.
>
>According to the 1997 law, Amtrak had to show a profit by 2002 or this
>Amtrak Reform Council would call on the passenger system to come up with a
>liquidation plan.
>
>No national or regional passenger system in the world shows a profit, any
>more than the airline or trucking industries could operate without
>government money. All transportation - other than canoes, bikes and scooters
>- is subsidized.
>
>The council also produced a plan to "reorganize" Amtrak. Complaining loudly
>about the modest subsidies Amtrak receives to run a national passenger
>system, the council proposes to break up and sell off the entire system,
>including the only tracks Amtrak owns - the northeastern corridor, running
>from Washington to Boston.
>
>Already under the reform council's pressure to cut costs, Amtrak has
>announced it will cut 18 long-distance trains from service this fall,
>including trains running through the district of New York Republican Jack
>Quinn, chairman of the House Transportation Subcommittee on Railroads.
>
>The reorganization "plan" crafted by the council is a predictable one,
>considering the council's makeup. Mr. Gingrich and Mr. Lott saw to it that
>the panel would be dominated by the most dedicated, right-wing,
>anti-government ideologues they could find - people who would be indifferent
>to the interests of Amtrak's middle-class customers.
>
>The plan the reform council produced is an audacious union-busting grab for
>government property, with a death grip on the public purse. It would sell
>off Amtrak's assets, liquidating some, and offer parts of its system to
>private operators. These private operators would be subsidized, of course,
>according to the reform council scheme. One estimate is $100 billion over a
>decade.
>
>Privatization moves in Massachusetts and Britain have proved disastrous. The
>$100 billion is a good estimate of what Amtrak should have gotten but didn't
>because of its well-heeled opponents. This outrageous plan for Amtrak is a
>classic case study of what can happen when entrenched big money is pitted
>against the common citizen in this town.
>
>
>Douglas Turner is the Washington bureau chief of The Buffalo News. Readers
>may write him at 1141 National Press Building, Washington, D.C. 20045.
>
>
>Copyright © 2002, The Baltimore Sun
>


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