Michael Dukakis: Congress should commit to Amtrak

Michael Dukakis on CNN, Thursday

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WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A congressionally appointed committee is recommending that Amtrak should be broken up to give the free market an opportunity to improve the nation's passenger train system.

Amtrak, created in 1971 to relieve freight railways of the burden of carrying passengers, should be replaced at least in part by private operators working under franchise, the Amtrak Reform Council says in its report scheduled to be delivered to Congress on Thursday, according to The Associated Press.

Congress is expected to vote on the future of Amtrak later this year.

Michael Dukakis, the former Massachusetts governor and former presidential candidate is now acting chairman of Amtrak. He took some time Thursday to speak with CNN’s Jack Cafferty.

CAFFERTY: Let's talk about the five-year period that Congress gave Amtrak to get its house in order, and while we talk about it, we're going to look at some staggering numbers. Amtrak is continuing to hemorrhage money, beginning with a loss of $762 million in 1997, and growing to a loss of over a billion dollars last year. What's wrong, what's the problem?

DUKAKIS: Well, for one thing, those numbers are wildly overstated. I don't mean that they're inaccurate, but they include depreciation, they include nearly $200 million a year we have to pay into the railroad retirement fund, on account of employees that never worked for us.

Our actual operating gap is about $285 to $295 million, and we are working every day to cut that down. On the other hand, Amtrak has performed magnificently over these past several months. The new high- speed train is going gangbusters. About 10,000 people a day take that during an average business day. We responded to the September 11 tragedy by really carrying the country on our backs for weeks and weeks.

What's missing is the same kind of commitment to rail that we've been giving to highways and airports and airlines for the past several decades. And what we're suggesting, and, I think Congress is going to respond, is no more than four or five percent of what we put into airlines, and airports and highways every year for a first-class, modern, high-speed rail system. I think we need it. I think the Congress believes we need it. And that's essentially the kind of support that we need in order to give you that kind of service.

CAFFERTY: The critics will counter and say, "Well, we just keep throwing money at this problem and Amtrak keeps losing money." This outfit called the Amtrak Reform Council, under the leadership of a guy named Tom Till, is going to recommend today that Amtrak be split into three different parts.

DUKAKIS: That's right.

CAFFERTY: One division would run the trains, one would be in charge of the Northeast corridor, and a third would create some sort of federal oversight agency. Your reaction? Is that the answer?

DUKAKIS: It doesn't make any sense at all. We're going to create three government agencies instead of one? We're going to take the basic infrastructure in the Northeast corridor, the most successful thing we do, away from Amtrak and give it to somebody else? And then, apparently, we're going to privatize the system. Now, the British tried that, and it's a disaster. And I'm old enough to remember when we did have privatized passenger railroads, and the service was awful. That's why we created Amtrak.

CAFFERTY: That's one of the other considerations on the table is opening this thing up to competition. Is that a bad idea?

DUKAKIS: Well, the British tried it. It's been a disaster. Incidentally, this isn't really a competitive system that they're talking about. These would be monopoly franchises given to certain operators. And you know what lines they'd be going after. The thing that the council simply refuses to do, is to step up and tell us exactly what kind of commitment to capital investment we need in high speed rail in this country.

And everybody agrees, regardless of what the form of the organization is, that that's the most important question. And I hope this year, that Congress will address it. I think they will. But I hope people also understand that under very difficult circumstances, Amtrak has been doing a hell of a job. As a matter of fact, the inspector general of the Department of Transportation said it was it was a miracle that we had done as well as we had done, under the circumstances.

So that's what we need -- a commitment to a modest but consistent amount of capital investment in the system. And let me tell you, if we get it, we'll give you a passenger rail system that will knock your socks off. And we can -- we see already what it does in the Northeast corridor.

DUKAKIS: Look at what is going on there. A first-class train, people are riding it, thousands every day. That's what we need all over America.