TRINIDAD, La. — One of several proposals before Congress would not only save Amtrak and continue its routes through small towns like Raton and Trinidad, but would improve the passenger rail routes, according to the Raton Range Correspondent.
Jon Esty, a Denver resident, professional psychologist and president of the Colorado chapter of the National Association of Railroad Passengers, referred to the congressional bills during a talk at the Trinidad/Las Animas County Chamber of Commerce luncheon last week.
“This is the best hope,” said Esty. “It’s Senate Bill 1991, the “National Defense Rail Act.”
Not only does “S. 1991” offer solid funding to the railroads, it actually adds services and provides for security upgrading for tunnels and bridges. “Tell anyone you phone or write to that this is the bill to support,” Esty said.
The Trinidad chamber has recently begun a letter-writing campaign to save the Southwest Chief line-which runs through Raton and Trinidad-from Amtrak’s chopping block if Congress refuses to subsidize national rail service in its next budget. Raton officials have also been lobbying in support of congressional funding for Amtrak.
“I think that it is the small communities of America that are going to keep the service going,” Esty said. “Not the urban centers.”
Federal budget decisions are being made this month. Amtrak has threatened to cut 18 of the country’s long-distance rail lines, including the Southwest Chief, if its requests for major refunding (in the billions of dollars) isn’t approved.
“Federal funding for rail service has been very irregular,” said Esty. “They underwrite the airlines and build highways, but when it comes to railroads, they keep forgetting.”
In 1997, Esty said, Amtrak asked for $1.5 billion so it could make long-promised capital improvements and be operating in the black by 2002. The railroad received only half of what it was promised, he said, and has now begun to mortgage properties like Penn Station in New York.
Amtrak inherited a decaying rail system when it was formed in 1971, explained Esty. “Old equipment in desperate shape: the trains, the stations, everything was falling apart,” he said. “And some people wish the railroads would just go away. There’s even one congressman who introduces a bill every year to abolish the railways.
“That would be like abolishing a way of life,” said Esty.
Funding through six presidential administrations has been very intermittent, but there is hope, he said, in one-S. 1991-of the six or seven bills going through the process in Congress right now.
The National Association of Railroad Passengers has 16,000 members nationwide. It can be reached at www.NARPrail.org.