Well, the Amtrak Reform Council has made their vote and it is not a good one. They have voted for Amtrak to be divided among the private sector as they refuse to admit that Amtrak will never make money. They now have 30 days to come up with an exact plan. Here is the AP article: Russ WASHINGTON (AP) - Countering Amtrak's pleas for more money, a congressional advisory panel said Thursday that private companies should be given the chance to make passenger trains more efficient and successful. The Amtrak Reform Council called for competition in passenger rail, currently the exclusive domain of Amtrak. Two companies expressed some interest. ``The system we have today, the old Amtrak, has not worked and is not working,'' said Gilbert Carmichael, chairman of the reform council. The council finished nearly four years of work by sending a 111-page report to Congress and briefing officials from the Bush administration. Amtrak, in a statement, said the report sidestepped questions about what kind of rail system Americans want, or how much it will cost. The council said Amtrak, created in 1971 to relieve freight railways of the burden of carrying passengers, should no longer make policy or own land. It would break Amtrak into three pieces. One would make policy and another would oversee the tracks, property and stations Amtrak owns in the Boston-Washington Northeast Corridor. The third would conduct train operations. After a transition of two to five years, it would accept bids for franchises to run various routes. ``The council believes that, as is the case throughout our free-market economy, competition would drive down costs and improve service quality and customer satisfaction,'' the report says. The council voted 9-1 in a mail ballot to approve the report. Charles Moneypenny, who represented rail labor on the council, voted ``no.'' Transportation Secretary Norman Y. Mineta, the Bush administration's representative, abstained. The next step is up to Congress, due to vote this year on whether to authorize Amtrak's continued existence. The House Transportation Committee has scheduled a Feb. 14 hearing on the report. The plan faces a hostile reception from Amtrak supporters on and off Capitol Hill. ``By choosing to ignore the fundamental problem ... of chronic federal underinvestment, the ARC report has proposed a magic wand solution that misses the mark,'' said Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y. ``I think this report should be rejected out of hand,'' said Amtrak chairman Michael Dukakis, the former Massachusetts governor. He called decentralization ``a prescription for bureaucratic paralysis'' and said the real issue is money. Amtrak, which lost a record $1.1 billion in 2001, says it has a $5.8 billion backlog in work needed on its trains, tracks, rail yards and stations. Last week, Amtrak said it will cancel long-distance routes unless it receives $1.2 billion in the 2003 budget year, which begins in October. President Bush has proposed $521 million. Carmichael said Amtrak's problems stem not from funding, but from ``an organization that is obsolete, can't do all the things it is supposed to do, and has to change.'' The council's vice chairman, Paul Weyrich, president of the Free Congress Foundation, warned that if Congress resists change, ``the day will come when there will be no Amtrak.'' Rep. John Mica, R-Fla., an Amtrak critic who has proposed spinning off two profitable routes, said the report does not go far enough. He said Amtrak's successor should be required - not just permitted - to turn over train routes to the highest bidder. Critics have questioned whether private companies would be interested in entering the passenger train business. But there was some early interest. ``What we heard today is certainly encouraging for the private sector to enter the market,'' said Scott Spencer, president of Railway Service Corp., a Delaware company seeking to break into intercity passenger rail. Massachusetts-based Peter Pan Bus Company has also expressed interest in taking over Amtrak's operations in the Northeast. There has even been talk of freight railroads bidding for the passenger routes they happily turned over to Amtrak three decades ago. Congress created the council as part of an overhaul that gave Amtrak until Dec. 2, 2002, to begin operating without government subsidies. The council said by a 6-5 vote in November that Amtrak would not achieve that goal, a finding that gave it 90 days to come up with its restructuring plan for Amtrak.
Amtrak will never make money. They are just going about the wrong way in continueing to have long distance passengers trains in the US.
I think if I was Amtrak right now i'd just go for it, ditch every service outside the NEC that wasn't state funded, and see how much the rest of the country want's passenger rail. Not a pleasant or a subtle move, but their point is not getting across. From the distinct lack of a flood of interest in taking it over, I'd say it's doubtful that most routes will have any takers. I can see folk bidding on the NEC franchise, the freght railroads themselves taking it back over is probably the best outcome you could get from this, but there are too many "maybe's" out there. Will the politicians believe an indepandant company that some of these services just plain lose money, the same thing that Amtrak has been saying for years, and the freight railroads said before that? Will they let the private operator introduce & cut services as it sees fit, or is this a "franchise" to run the service the way that a government agency (the policy making part of Amtrak I guess will stay a political animal,) tells it too. If a company discovers it can't make money & declares itself bankrupt what happens, do the trains stop? Does "old Amtrak" take over again? How can the government force the major railroads to let other private operators use their tracks? Amtrak got away with it as part of the agreement to get them out of running passenger trains, I doubt they would be happy to let a private company run over their trackage, particularly if they are still using the mail & express business as a crutch, (this is the main incentive I can see for a freight railroad to be getting involved.) Too many questions........
There's no way anyone, Amtrak, st. govts or the private RRs can do it w/out money PERIOD. In other words Congress &/or st. govts will have to provde the money or long distance passenger service is dead sorry to say.
