Word: warrington
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...news that Amtrak president George Warrington is stepping down to run New Jersey Transit is a serious blow, and it comes at a particularly bad time as the troubled agency tries to make the case for a big increase in federal funding to an increasingly skeptical group of Washington legislators...
...Warrington may be getting out just in time. Last October, the Amtrak Reform Council, a federal oversight board, concluded the nation's floundering passenger-train operator has no chance of becoming self-sufficient by the end of 2002, as Congress mandated six years ago. Now that it's clear Amtrak can't go it alone, Congress will have to decide to pony up, or essentially give up on intercity passenger service altogether. The big questions: Does America need Amtrak? And should we expect a national rail system to exist without federal help...
...Bush administration has pledged $521 million to the ailing rail system, but Warrington says at least $1.2 billion is needed in 2003 - without which, he says, the railroad will be forced to suspend most or all of its long-haul routes, the least profitable but, because they run through a lot of states, most politically sensitive components of its service...
...continues, the government will have resigned itself to infusing boatloads of cash into the floundering rail system. Amtrak, critics grouse, has proven itself incapable of surviving without federal aid. Warrington counters that Amtrak is expected to perform like a profitable business but to provide services - like those sparsely-ridden long-haul routes - like a non-profit organization. And, he argues, while everyone complains about the money that's been lavished on Amtrak - $22 billion since the agency's inception - no one mentions that the government spent $27.5 billion in 2001 alone to keep our highways moving...
...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...