U.S. Subsidy Cutoff Would Derail Amtrak, Chief Says

The chairman of Amtrak said today that there is no way the passenger railroad could continue operations if federal subsidies were eliminated as proposed by the Reagan Administration.

“I don’t think there’s anything you can do except shut everything down,” W. Graham Claytor Jr. said at a news conference.

Transportation Secretary Elizabeth Hanford Dole earlier this week insisted during appearances before congressional committees that elimination of Amtrak subsidies would not mean an end to passenger rail service and that a combination of state, local and private sources of financing would emerge in some parts of the country.

No Financing Seen

But Claytor said he has seen no signs of such sources of financing available and insisted that Amtrak would go bankrupt without federal support.

He said labor protection costs covering 25,000 workers that would become unemployed would cost the government $2.1 billion over six years, including $645 million in the first year.

The same labor costs, he said, would prevent the railroad from shrinking its operations to highly traveled areas such as the Northeast Corridor.

Dole on Thursday ran into sharp opposition to the proposed Amtrak cuts in an appearance before a subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations Committee.

“What you’re doing is pushing people back into their automobiles,” snapped Sen. Lowell P. Weicker Jr. (R-Conn.), strongly challenging the need to cut Amtrak and transit funds.