Intercity Passenger Rail: Assessing the Benefits of Increased Federal Funding for Amtrak and High-Speed Passenger Rail Systems

摘要

Amtrak made minimal progress in 2000 toward achieving operational self-sufficiency. Although Amtrak is required by law to achieve operational self-sufficiency by the end of 2002, the outlook for it doing so is not bright. In 2000, it reduced its budget gap the gap that Amtrak says it has to close to become operationally self-sufficient by only $5 million. It must achieve an additional $281 million in savings by the end of next year. If it does not, Amtrak must submit a plan to the Congress for its liquidation. In addition to the uncertainty over Amtraks future, this is an opportune time to begin examining the future of intercity passenger rail. Federal costs are expected to be large. For example, Amtrak proposed last month that the federal government provide it with $30 billion over 20 years to support an expanded Amtrak system and to invest as seed money in helping develop high-speed rail corridors. The ultimate cost of developing these high-speed rail corridors is unknown, but certainly in the many tens of billions of dollars. Much of the funding could be expected to come from the federal government.