The Only Way to Fly

As John Madden might say, with great energy, “Hey! Whaddya mean, sell Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor passenger-train system?” The latest ploy from the Office of Management and Budget sounds like a plot to keep the former Raiders coach out of any National Football League stadium on the Eastern Seaboard.

Madden, now a television sports analyst, won’t fly. So he takes the train from one week’s football game to the next. Amtrak has capitalized on that by featuring the excitable, arm-waving Madden in commercials that declare: “America Is Getting Into Training.” But the Reagan Administration does not share Madden’s enthusiasm for rail travel.

The early signs are that the budget office has shifted strategies this year in its vendetta against Amtrak, the National Railroad Passenger Corp. Failing since 1981 to kill Amtrak’s $602-million federal subsidy outright, OMB is considering the sale of its Northeast Corridor service, which carries more than half the system’s 20.5 million passengers a year. The assumption may be that if the popular eight-state Northeastern network is amputated, the rest of the 43-state system will be left without political and financial life support, and thus will expire quietly.

The argument for selling the Northeast Corridor service also seems to be based on the perception that the Boston-New York-Washington segment would be economically attractive to buyers, in contrast to the financial disaster of Amtrak’s long-haul lines. But that is wrong. The corridor actually loses an estimated $277 million a year in spite of its high ridership. This is due in part to burdensome fixed costs and the expense of Amtrak’s effort to provide more trains at higher speeds with ever-mounting maintenance bills. Such efforts have failed to attract additional riders. Analysts say that the real potential for Amtrak’s economic vitality rests with long-distance routes, which carry only 20% of Amtrak’s riders but produce more than half its revenues.

Money can be saved in the Northeast Corridor by running longer trains less frequently and without attempting to match the airlines in speed, says Andrew C. Selden of Minneapolis, considered the dean of the Amtrak critics who support rail passenger service. The reform of Northeast Corridor management and operations could save $100 million a year, Selden says.

Even with the Northeast money drain, Amtrak’s federal subsidies have been reduced by about one-third in constant dollars since 1980. The system could become self-sustaining with investment in new equipment, improved management and a restructuring of rail routes a la the airlines’ hub-and-spoke systems, Selden argues.

The sale of the Northeast Corridor service might be justified if achieved as part of an integrated program that acknowledged the importance of railroad passenger service to the nation and was dedicated to making it work. But the Administration derides Amtrak as an “amenity” that the nation cannot afford, even though the government spends $20 billion a year on highway, air and water transportation.

America is getting into training, anyway. Amtrak continues to reduce its subsidies, improve service and generate public support. For John Madden and millions of Americans, the train is the only way to fly.