Word: amtrak
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Both airlines and highways have dedicated sources of federal funding: gasoline and ticket taxes. Until rail gets its own lifeline--like an extra penny of federal gasoline tax, which would bring in more than $1 billion a year--Amtrak may have to continue "fighting for table scraps," as CEO George Warrington puts...
...most recent fiscal year, which ended Sept. 30, Amtrak had an estimated operating loss of $365 million (which doesn't include capital expenses) on total revenues of around $2.5 billion. This summer it took out a $300 million mortgage on New York City's Penn Station to keep the trains running. When the nation's skies were shut down after Sept. 11, Amtrak did enjoy a brief spike in traffic, especially on its faster, new Acela trains between Washington and Boston. But with leisure travel across the country slipping, Amtrak's overall September ridership was actually 6% lower than last...
Members of Congress have proposed a host of bills to fix that, by giving Amtrak and the states anywhere from $20 billion to $70 billion in tax-exempt bonds and loan guarantees. But despite a diverse coalition of passenger-rail supporters, from Senate majority leader Tom Daschle to his Republican counterpart Trent Lott, it's unlikely that Amtrak will control all the funding or that it will survive much longer in its current form...
...Amtrak Reform Council will probably recommend that Congress create a new entity to take over Amtrak's responsibility for managing the busy, 700-mile Northeast Corridor, from Washington to Boston. The corridor is the only part of the nation's rails that Amtrak actually owns--the freight rails control the rest--and it costs $400 million to $600 million a year to maintain...
...market is still too small and fragile to have multiple carriers enter routes between cities, as the airlines have. But separate regions that have already formed high-speed corridors could open up their service contracts to competitive bidding--as many now do with commuter service--from a scaled-down Amtrak or private companies that operate commuter and passenger-rail services around the world, such as Connex and Herzog. "We see potential there, and we'd like to see opportunity," says Jim Stoetzel, a vice president at Connex North America, a division of France's Vivendi, which runs passenger trains...