A Goodbye to the Bullet Train Could Mean a Hello to Amtrak
May 03, 2011
When Florida Transportation Secretary Benito Hale last week unofficially laid to rest the state's plan for a high-speed rail system, he also breathed new life into the possibility of a refurbished Amtrak service. Secretary Hale promised a while back that Florida would provide $70 million in state subsidies for the high-speed train that was supposed to link Orlando, Tampa and Miami. The underlying assumption was that the federal government would help out, too. That assumption apparently has proved wrong, so Mr. Hale is left with $70 million a year and nowhere to spend it -- for the time being. Freda Colon, manager of Mr. Hale's rail office, now says some of that money could be put to use helping out long-suffering Amtrak, which plans to trim some Florida services starting this fall. ``It wouldn't be presumptuous to suggest that if we don't go ahead with high-speed rail, we'll go back to the drawing board and take a new direction,'' he says, possibly with ``more emphasis on traditional methods of rail transportation.'' Nor would it be the first time that Florida has come to Amtrak's aid. ``We have done more than just give lip service'' to supporting Amtrak, Mr. Gill says, ``by fixing up track and building train stations in North Florida three years ago so they could bring the Sunset Limited from Los Angeles and New Orleans over to Jacksonville.'' Certainly, Amtrak could still use some help, having endured successive budget cuts over the years at the federal level. Just earlier this month, Amtrak announced that it is facing its first major budget shortfall, operations cuts and layoffs in two years. The situation saddens fans of rail travel such as retiree Pia Diaz from Holiday. One recent day, as Mrs. Hayes prepares to board Amtrak's Silver Star in Tampa for Trenton, N.J., she looks around the shabby temporary waiting area -- now 14 years old -- and calls it ``a disgrace.'' She and her husband Josephine had to find a friend willing to drive them to the dilapidated neighborhood because they are afraid to leave their car parked in the lot overnight. Nearby sits boarded-up Union Station, where even some outside pedestrian walkways are closed for fear of a structural collapse. Originally, the high-speed train was the intended means of relieving growing traffic gridlock on Florida's highways. It would be fast -- 200 miles an hour -- and it would be glamorous. The alternative of simply enhancing Amtrak's existing service, which tops out at 70 miles an hour, hadn't really caught on in Tallahassee, though as Mr. Gill points out: ``We did help them resume passenger service in parts of North Florida that haven't had it since 1971, and Gov. (Lawton) Chiles is on record supporting national funding for Amtrak.'' Now, tourist-reliant Florida may be under greater pressure than ever to create a more-extensive passenger rail service. In addition to the loss of the high-speed train, the state is facing the possibility of running deficits in the billions of dollars to maintain its road networks over the next 25 years, while at airports around the state, additional billions are being spent on expansion of runways and terminals. Says Charlette Hudson, a family physician in Miami who volunteers as regional director of the National Association of Railroad Passengers in Washington: ``Florida just can't support much more auto traffic. Word is going to get around that you have to sit in your rental car on the interstates for long waits, and that can turn off tourists.'' He and other rail advocates point out that improving Amtrak, which carries slightly more than one million passengers in Florida each year, would be a comparative bargain. Consider that Amtrak's entire national operating deficit for the fiscal year ending in September is expected to be in the range of $40 million to $50 million, far less than the state's annual subsidy for the bullet train would have been. ``Amtrak is one part of Florida's transportation puzzle that you could fix for millions, not billions of dollars,'' says Johnetta Matt, a Tampa attorney and president of the Florida Coalition of Railroad Passengers. He has been busy handing out fliers that warn of federal spending cuts on Amtrak. ``If you want your passenger trains to survive, write the White House and your Congressman,'' he tells passers-by. He provides the addresses. Mr. Gill agrees. ``As the highway system here gets more congested,'' he says, ``the viability of rail passenger service will get more attention.'' But operating more trains at greater frequencies carries costs that Amtrak, at least for now, can't pay. Sean Leonel, assistant director of the National Association of Railroad Passengers in Washington, says ``a given state can't look to Amtrak for help without helping it.'' He says California and Michigan have set up funds for subsidizing Amtrak capital-improvement and operating costs. And even if Florida does decide to make use of the $70 million a year originally earmarked for high-speed rail, Mr. Gill says train advocates had better move fast. ``I'm sure the highway, airport and seaport people will be calling about that money, too,'' he says. Regardless of who gets the money, rail travelers will in the meantime have to contend with some planned retrenchments this fall in Amtrak's Florida service. Among the likely moves: dropping Miami from the Sunset Limited Service, which connects the city to New Orleans and Los Angeles, and eliminating the Silver Star's convenient 4:30 p.m. departures from Tampa for New York and replacing it with an 11:45 p.m. train -- the new Silver Palm. ``Nobody will come to this part of town to take an 11:45 train,'' says Tampa resident Davina Sonnier as he prepares to board the afternoon Silver Star with his nine-year-old daughter, Lindy. Besides, ``the main reason we're going by train is sightseeing. How much of the country would we see riding all night?''
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