US: A game of brinkmanship that may strand hundreds of thousands of US commuters within days is being played out between the Administration and the country's largest rail company - the beleaguered Amtrak, writes Patrick Smyth
Emergency aid or loan guarantees, of the order of $200 million, are needed to keep the trains rolling from today, although comments on Monday by the Transportation Secretary, Mr Norman Mineta, expressing confidence that the company will not close, appear to have given the firm a few days breathing space.
"I am confident that we will be able to avoid a shutdown of services," Mr Mineta said during a break from an emergency meeting with Amtrak's board of directors. Mr Mineta is attempting to force radical restructuring, increased openings for competitors to run services, and job cuts on a reluctant company as a precondition for aid. Yesterday he met rail unions to discuss his proposals.
Amtrak's president, Mr David Gunn, and the board chairman, Mr John Robert Smith, said Mr Mineta's pledge would delay today's threatened shutdown, the first in the railroad's 31-year history, but would not prevent it.
"There has been no reconciliation of the simple fact that Amtrak is running out of cash and no agreement on how to provide a loan guarantee or appropriation that will continue train service to the end of the fiscal year," the Amtrak officials said.
Meanwhile, the senate yesterday intervened in the crisis, voting an emergency appropriation, although it is likely to be vetoed in its present form by the White House.
Amtrak, formed as a commercial company in 1971, has never made money and lost $1.1 billion in 2001, the most in its history.
The company's total debt runs to $4 billion and it has made no progress toward meeting the Congress's order of 1997 to wean itself from annual government operating subsidies by this December.
Democrats argue, however, that no rail system internationally survives without state subsidies.
A full shutdown of the rail company would not only disrupt the 60,000 passengers who travel on Amtrak's 260 trains each day, but would halt or seriously interfere with hundreds of thousands using commuter services in the north-east, around Chicago and in California.
Amtrak owns tracks and tunnels, which are used by some commuter rail lines, and operates other systems for state or regional authorities.