Amtrak transparent about its dependence on subsidies

Amtrak trains don't even slow down for Wyanet, Ill., 131 miles west of Chicago on the BNSF Railway.

Just west of the prairie town, the BNSF crosses above the Iowa Interstate Railroad on an overpass. Connecting the two lines is key to bringing passenger-rail service to Iowa City.

Amtrak's feasibility study for the proposed service includes that connection, estimated in 2008 to cost $5.6 million. That same study put the cost of establishing twice-daily service, including new equipment, at $310 million. The federal government has appropriated $230 million, Illinois has committed $45 million, and the Iowa Legislature has appropriated $11.5 million for planning, with another $20 million pending.

Planning is under way for the Wyanet connection and for other work, including improvements to track and signal systems to allow passenger trains to operate up to 79 mph on Iowa Interstate's track. The Cedar Rapids-based railroad, operating over the former Rock Island line to Omaha, has been freight-only since 1970.

The two states would share responsibility for ongoing operating costs, estimated at $6.2 million to $7 million a year. Iowa's share will be about $3 million.

That raises the subsidy question. Amtrak critics call out the agency for its by-design need for ongoing taxpayer support. Its defenders point out every transport mode is subsidized; Amtrak is just more upfront about it.

“To suggest that the other modes of transport don't receive other-than-user-fee support is a misnomer,” said Marc Magliari, Amtrak spokesman in Chicago. “It's not true the motor user fees pay all the cost. It's just that this mode (rail) is particularly transparent.”

Staff at the Environmental Law & Policy Center in Chicago are preparing a study on states' transportation spending.

Kevin Brubaker, the center's deputy director, said Iowa raised about 56 percent of its highway spending from gas taxes and user fees between 2004 and 2008. The state and local governments in Iowa spend about $560 million annually.

The Federal Highway Trust Fund “is spending money faster than it is being raised,” Brubaker wrote in an email.

Congress has supplemented the Highway Trust Fund with $34.5 billion in appropriations beyond fuel tax revenues, most recently $19.5 billion in March 2010.

Craig Sanders - professor of journalism and public relations at Cleveland State University and author of “Amtrak in the Heartland,” a study of state-supported services like the Iowa proposal - notes economists often consider highways and passenger trains fundamentally different.

“A conservative economist would say a highway provides a transport channel,” said Sanders. “The highway is open to everyone who has a vehicle. Amtrak is not a highway. It's a company; it's an enterprise.”

Supporters make the case that passenger-rail service is worth assisting for social, environmental, energy conservation and other benefits. Service like that planned for Iowa - and operating for years in Illinois - is just an incremental step compared with the 250-plus-mph trains rolling in Europe and Asia.

“Although we've decided as a nation ever since Amtrak was formed to subsidize it, it's never made as much of an inroad” as other nations' rail service, said John Fuller, professor in the University of Iowa's School of Urban and Regional Planning,

Amtrak serves well-patronized corridors in California and the Northeast, “but those are heavily populated and they're very congested,” Fuller said. “The comparative advantage is not really there for much of the U.S., certainly not for Iowa.”

He called rail service here a matter of prestige.