As Amtrak officials announced last week that brake problems will suspend Acela service until summer, the company’s financial and organizational future was debated in Washington:

• Amtrak president David Gunn asked a Senate subcommittee for an additional $682 million in funding, for a total of $1.8 billion next year. President Bush has suggested zeroing funding for the system unless Congress finds a way to reorganize and reform the "money-losing" company. But even Trent Lott, Chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, deemed that option "ridiculous."

• The Amtrak Board of Directors announced a reorganization plan that largely relies on states splitting Amtrak costs with the federal government in a 20% to 80% agreement. The plan is similar to the Bush Administration’s in that it loads more Amtrak burden on states, although the Bush plan calls for a 50/50 split. Both plans would lead to opening routes to private "competition," discontinuing less lucrative routes in central and western states, and transferring routes like the Northeast Corridor to smaller federal-state partnerships.

• The plan was quickly denounced by NY-NJ congresspeople, who said the states are already dealing with massive infrastructure funding problems, and are not able to provide funding to take over Amtrak. "States can’t afford at this time to simply pick up the federal contribution to Amtrak," Sen. Frank Lautenberg, told Associated Press. "Expecting them to do so would be yet another unfunded mandated, and it would sink state budgets in a sea of red ink."

The very idea that transportation systems are supposed to make money is a fiction applied selectively by the Bush Administration. Of all the rail systems in the world, only a few busy routes in Japan and New Zealand turn a profit, according to the Christian Science Monitor. Most developed countries invest far more than we do in rail travel- Germany invests $9 billion a year, and even developing India invests $3.4 billion a year. These countries, among others, see a national transit system as an economic investment, similar to our government’s support of air travel, roads, education, and security.

While profit making transit companies are a fiction, the disastrous impacts of privatization of transit service are not. Britain’s privatization of its rail system in the 1990s lead to more accidents, worse service, and increased government subsides.

As global trade, travel, security, and general mobility needs increase, a large country that relies too heavily on automobiles, trucks and roads is threatening its environmental and economic future. 

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