Lawmakers fight over future of AMTRAK

Will culminate in Transpo Bill

Jay Blazek Crossley, May 31, 11.

At a recent hearing on Amtrak and high speed rail, Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) defended AMTRAK, saying that the Northeast Corridor “makes our region work” and noting that federal funding for AMTRAK over its entire 30 year history is less than a single year of federal funding for highways, according to The Hill. “If we shut down the Northeast Corridor rail service, you’d have to build seven new lanes on Interstate 95 just to carry all the travelers that use these trains every day,” Lautenberg said. The Federal government spent $40 billion on highways last year, while having spend about $38 billion on Amtrak over the 30 years of its existence, according to Lautenberg.

House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman John Mica (R-Fla) presented a proposal to privatize AMTRAK, which he believes is necessary to deploy High Speed Rail for America in a timely manner, according to the Wall Street Journal. “I believe that we have great potential in the Northeast corridor,” Mica said. “The only thing standing in the way is Amtrak or the federal government or Congress.”

The Obama administration has developed a plan to develop High Speed Rail across the nation with the goal of giving 80 percent of Americans access to high-speed rail within 25 years. The future of AMTRAK and how High Speed Rail in the United States would be implemented will be greatly determined in the massive Federal Transportation Bill that Congress and the President continue to negotiate.