Chicago, IL
Amtrak serves a vital national interest that must be supported with a long-term public investment. Since its inception more than 30 years ago, Amtrak has been forced to operate a national network with too few resources. Today, Amtrak is at a crossroads. Years of anemic funding now threaten the future of passenger rail in this country. Resources are spread too thin, infrastructure is crumbling, needed equipment sits idle as repairs are not budgeted, and a workforce that has made significant wage sacrifices year after year to keep the trains rolling faces additional cutbacks and demands from some in Congress and the White House for concessions.
The Administration and Congress must face up to the basic Amtrak dilemma - namely, that we must stop demanding that Amtrak provide national passenger rail service and then refuse to provide adequate funding for such service. No other form of transportation is held to the standard that it must survive free from federal investment. Furthermore, no other passenger rail system in the world operates at a profit and subsidy?free.
Unfortunately, the Bush Administration's plan to "save" Amtrak will likely hasten the passenger carrier's demise. The Administration's call for "reform" is a thinly disguised plan to force privatization, thereby ending the existing national network of passenger rail transportation and selling off its most desirable parts to the highest bidder. It is especially egregious that the Administration would propose unworkable privatization plans for Amtrak when the beneficiaries of a broken-up, parceled out railroad will be private corporations that have no interest in passenger rail unless they can profit from lucrative contracts. The recent revelations of widespread accounting scandals and other corporate abuses motivated by corporate greed at the expense of workers and shareholders underscores how risky and foolhardy it would be to turn over the safety and preservation of our national rail system to profit-maximizing corporations.
The privatization experiment in Great Britain is a testament to what happens when bottom line-driven interests operate public transportation services. Once the envy of industrialized nations, the British rail system has been "franchised" and today delays are commonplace, service has plummeted and fares have increased exponentially. Worst of all, passenger fatalities have increased 700 percent.
Privatization of our national system will not work. Any attempt to move forward along this path misleads the public and ignores the painful lessons learned over many decades when vital public services are turned over to the private sector. Amtrak was created in 1971 precisely because the freight carriers were no longer willing or able to sustain the financial burden of operating passenger service. Because passenger rail service was on the brink of permanent collapse, President Nixon and Congress decided it must be made a federal priority and thus created Amtrak.
In addition to its call for unworkable privatization schemes, the Administration has proposed only $521 million for Amtrak in its FY 2003 budget. This is about half of its 2002 congressionally authorized level and clearly a level that will force Amtrak to shut its doors. Millions of passengers will suffer and some 23,000 workers will lose their jobs.
Amtrak should be given the resources and stability it needs to become a first-class passenger railroad. The world's greatest economic power can surely find the resources to support a national passenger rail system that lives up to the nation's growing need for better and expanded transportation choices.
The AFL - CIO calls on Congress to appropriate at least $1.2 billion for Amtrak in FY 2003, and next year to provide Amtrak a multi-year, multi-billion dollar federal financial commitment commensurate with the expectations we as a nation place on the rail passenger carrier. Congress must also repudiate any effort to condition Amtrak funding on flawed and ill-advised "reforms" that assure Amtrak's destruction.
The AFL-CIO pledges its full support to ensure our government does not abandon Amtrak and its passengers and workers.