Pennsylvania Project : Train Station: All Dressed Up but Few Places to Go

From Italian marble laid in the waiting room floor to colorful awnings placed over its windows, the Harrisburg railroad station appears the same today as it did to passengers in the glory days of train travel.

With a $13.5-million restoration project nearing completion, there is only one problem. Just weeks after officials rededicated the 99-year-old terminal, Amtrak eliminated six of the 24 trains entering or departing the station daily.

The railroad said it had to cut service because Congress had reduced its subsidy by 10%. To local officials, the cuts seem self-defeating. To Amtrak, the cuts highlight the dilemma ahead if Congress continues to reduce the railroad’s funding.

Hub of Activity in 1925

The station was completed in 1887 as the end terminal for the Pennsylvania Railroad’s famous Main Line. Seven million passengers moved through the building in 1925, when 250 trains connected Harrisburg to such cities as Buffalo, Washington, New York and Chicago every day.

The deterioration began as the fortunes of the Pennsylvania Railroad, and then the Penn Central, waned in the 1960s. The station became a “necessary evil” for travelers, said Wilmer Faust, an official with the Harrisburg Redevelopment Authority.

“Its present condition is deplorable,” an consultant to the authority wrote in 1981. Broken windows, loose mortar, peeling paint, damaged plaster and a leaky roof threatened the station’s existence.

The authority embarked on a massive restoration project, believing that the station’s rebirth as a train and bus depot would help Harrisburg’s downtown redevelopment effort.

With the station saved from possible demolition, the elimination of three round-trip Harrisburg-to-Philadelphia trains early this year seemed particularly ironic.

The cuts do not threaten the project’s financial viability, since the authority plans to put the terminal to commercial use as well. Still, local officials had hoped for more passengers moving through the terminal, not fewer. The cuts struck at the very heart of the project.

“If it were not for the existing train service, this project would never have happened,” Faust said.

“The juxtaposition of the shrinking of service and what we are in the process of completing is glaring. It’s totally inconsistent,” he said.

Timing Called ‘Unfortunate’

Amtrak reduced service on nine other routes as well. Spokesman John Jacobsen called the timing of the Harrisburg-Philadelphia cuts “unfortunate” but unavoidable, in part, because of reduced subsidies and Amtrak’s goal of keeping all routes in its 24,000-mile system.

Amtrak cannot rule out more cuts in the future if provisions of the Gramm-Rudman balanced budget law squeeze the railroad’s funding, he said.

For Amtrak, the cuts also come at a difficult time, Jacobsen said. Congress has poured more than $2 billion into track improvements and station renovations in the Northeast, he said. Nationwide, ridership had been growing, helping Amtrak cut its dependence on subsidies from 60% of its budget to 40%.

“The irony just starts in Harrisburg,” he said. “Amtrak has never been in better financial and operating shape.”