The national passenger railroad has said that the service was ineffective and made little financial sense for a company with limited resources. But that explanation doesn’t satisfy U.S. Rep. Corrine Brown, D-Fla., who chairs a rail subcommittee and whose district felt the impact of suspended service.
Thanks to Brown, comprehensive Amtrak legislation recently signed into law includes a requirement that the railroad come up with a plan to bring back the Sunset Limited.
That case illustrates a central paradox of Amtrak: Despite decades of pressure to run the national passenger railroad efficiently and even profitably, its managers aren’t free to make their own business decisions if Congress disagrees.
Amtrak is a “two-headed beast,” said David Laney, a Texas lawyer who chaired Amtrak’s board from 2003 to 2007. “On the one hand, it’s a private company that’s told to run itself efficiently to make money. On the other hand, you have the concept of Amtrak as a public service provider.”
Congress created Amtrak in 1970 from the wreckage of the nations unprofitable private passenger rail service. Lawmakers structured it as a private corporation with most of the stock held by the federal government with the hope it would one day become self-supporting.
That goal has largely faded. Amtrak officials point out that passenger rail is subsidized throughout the world, and it gets about $1.3 billion in federal funding a year.
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