Penn Station, For Sale
Amtrak’s latest move should be the last straw.

By Kathryn Jean Lopez, NR associate editor
June 14, 2001 9:55 a.m.

ast week Amtrak got the green light from the Secretary of Transportation to mortgage New York City's Pennsylvania Station.

As Amtrak celebrates thirty years with a $3-billion dollar debt, what better gift to American taxpayers than to make it work? By selling it.

Acting as if they were meeting the needs of their constituents, Republicans have happily teamed up with Amtrak bureaucrats bent on keeping the ailing federal boondoggle alive on life support.

Earlier this year Amtrak unveiled a 20-year plan, marketing itself as an alternative to overcrowded airports and jammed roads, promising to modernize and expand, and to develop eleven new high-speed rail corridors.

Amtrak president and chief executive George Warrington has complained that Amtrak's problems stem from a lack of funding, and that the rail service has been denied adequate funding since its creation in 1971. But throughout its history, Amtrak has seen a steady flow in federal subsidies, totaling over $23 billion. It has averaged $812 million in annual losses over the past decade.

"It's time to slay this albatross. The request to mortgage off Penn Station should be the last straw for Congress, which has oversight over Amtrak" says Ron Utt of the Heritage Foundation. The move, he says, is a sign of "financial desperation of an Amtrak swiftly drifting toward financial insolvency. With losses mounting and worsening, there's no way this loan can ever be paid back except through more taxpayer subsidies."

America's railways are too important for the federal government to manage. "Secretary Mineta's recommendation to cut back the route system should be adopted, and Amtrak's delusional plan to expand the route system should be rejected," says Utt.

Amtrak loses nearly two dollars for every dollar it earns; the more it sells the more it loses. And so, any proposed expansion inevitably burdens the taxpayer. Cut Amtrak loose, and you cut everybody's losses.