James Oberstar: “I thought we spent most of last night on amendments to kill the operating account of Amtrak and then kill the capital…”

“I thought we spent most of last night on amendments to kill the operating account of Amtrak and then kill the capital account of Amtrak. The only thing that wasn't offered was burial funds for Amtrak. But now comes the dismemberment amendment. This route is part of a national passenger rail system. It's the only route connecting California to the Southwest, to the gulf, and on to Florida. This route touches one-third of the Nation's population. Many of the people living in those communities along this route have no other passenger transportation, mass transportation alternative than the Sunset Limited. The gentleman from Texas talked about the time it takes to traverse that route. What he didn't say is that most of that time is spent by Amtrak on sidings waiting for freight rail trains to pass. Now, if you give passenger rail priority consideration on those routes, those trains would pass very quickly. We could cut a substantial, maybe a third or more of the time out of their passenger service. What's happening here is, going back to the origins of Amtrak, when freight rail companies started as passenger rail service found they could make more money carrying freight than passengers, they were carrying U.S. mail on the overnight railway post office, they petitioned to the Interstate Commerce Commission to discontinue passenger service when U.S. Postal Service moved to carrying their mail by truck.”