Privatize Amtrak, council says

Associated Press

WASHINGTON — 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.

"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.

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.

The second would conduct train operations.

The third would oversee the tracks, property and stations Amtrak owns in the Boston-Washington, D.C. corridor.

After a transition of two to five years, Amtrak 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.

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.

The House Transportation Committee has scheduled a Feb. 14 hearing on the report.

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.