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House T&I chairman says Amtrak not up to running high-speed trains in busiest lane
House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman John Mica took Amtrak to task in a field hearing Thursday in New York City, saying the passenger rail agency "will never be capable" of running a true high-speed service in the congested Northeast Corridor.
Taking testimony in New York's Grand Central Terminal, Mica said "this 437-mile stretch of incredibly valuable real estate" is an example of the government wasting federal assets. He said only by pulling in private investment could truly high-speed rail service be realized in an area that links the major cities of the Northeast Atlantic Coast.
Mica has been a critic of President Obama's expansion of Amtrak under the high-speed rail grants program. He wants to refocus the government's effort on projects that get more bang for the buck. He also wants to shift more freight as well as passengers onto rail service to ease burdens on highways. But Mica said Amtrak's plans for the corridor will not get the job done as fast or as well as bringing in private investors.
Joseph Boardman, president and CEO of Amtrak and the former Bush-appointed head of the Federal Railroad Administration, disagreed with Mica's approach. "It is critical for the Northeast Corridor to remain a public asset," he said. "Amtrak was created by Congress precisely because the privately owned railroads could no longer sustain the vital public service of intercity passenger rail," Boardman said, and "no other operator or company is prepared to mobilize to take over the operation of the Northeast Corridor. Nor are they funded to cover the long-term capital and operating costs."
Many Republicans in Congress have long criticized the federal support for Amtrak and the George W. Bush administration at one point tried to cut the federal allotment to Amtrak to nothing, saying the move was meant to trigger needed reform of the rail system.
Rep. Bill Shuster, R-Pa., who chairs the panel's rail subcommittee, said "crippling congestion and poor roads cost businesses and commuters almost $115 billion a year in wasted time and fuel," while trapping highway travelers for over 4 billion hours each year stuck in traffic.
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Seems the GOP's answer to everything is to privatize it. Private operators are going to want to make a profit at it, so watch your fares go up, public be damned! And unlike airlines, there's only one set of tracks, so no competitive reason to keep fares reasonable. There's a reason why Amtrak exists as the private railroads could not make a go of passenger service at the level that allowed for the massive reinvestment necessary in the infrastructure.
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Let's remember that passenger service doesn't cover all fixed and variable expenses anywhere in the world. The French, Japanese, Chinese, and other peoples subsidize their passenger rail operations. Americans might be willing to do the same, but our politicians are so fixated on the ideologies that American citizens are the last ones consulted - and then they are largely ignored by their elected representatives.