Washington -- About 40,000 Bay Area passengers could face commuting headaches Friday if railroad unions carry out their threatened one-day walkout on Amtrak lines across the country. þþAmtrak went to U.S. District Court in Washington on Monday to seek an order blocking the six-union walkout, which is directed at Congress and the Bush administration for slashing the national passenger rail corporation's $1.8 billion annual budget request. A court hearing could come Wednesday. þþIn the Bay Area, Amtrak crews work under contract to operate the Caltrain service on the Peninsula and the nine daily round-trip trains on the Capitol Corridor between Sacramento and Oakland and San Jose. Officials at BART, which hires Amtrak to run the Capitol trains for a multicounty agency, and at the three-county agency that operates Caltrain were meeting Monday to come up with contingency plans for a walkout. þþOn its own, Amtrak also operates six San Joaquin trains between Oakland and Bakersfield, the daily California Zephyr between Emeryville and Chicago, and the Coast Starlight, which runs through the Bay Area as it travels from Los Angeles and Seattle. þþÿThis is a political protest to protest years of underfunding of Amtrak,ÿ said Charles Moneypenny, railroad division director of the Transport Workers Union of America. ÿIt is directed at Congress and the Bush administration,ÿ added Moneypenny. He said Bay Area service will be affected if the strike goes ahead. þþBush has proposed a national Amtrak budget of $900 million, the amount the House voted this month. The Senate has approved $1.36 billion. Amtrak wants $1. 8 billion. þþThe White House has sided with those who favor breaking up the national system, which carries about 23 million passengers a year in 46 states. Most of the line's 23,000 miles of track are owned by private railroads. The Bush plan calls for a greater role for the states, which might favor California because it already spends more than any other state on Amtrak service. þþAmtrak President David Gunn, a transit industry veteran who has headed the passenger rail service since April 2002, warns that without the full $1.8 billion budget, the system will break down and intercity train service could die. þþMoneypenny said he rarely sides with Gunn, but on this issue he said the president was correct. þþÿI agree with him that Amtrak is in dire condition,ÿ he said, adding the strike should serve as a wake-up call to the public that Amtrak equipment is aging and potentially dangerous. þþIn going to court, Amtrak management said the possible walkout involving 8, 000 of its 23,000 workers was ill advised and illegal. The unions will fight the bid for a restraining order, said Moneypenny. þþIf there is a walkout, it isn't possible to gauge how effective it would be. þþA spokeswoman at Amtrak's Western headquarters in Oakland said that while officials hope there won't be a strike, they haven't been able to ascertain how much service might be hit. þþAt Caltrain, spokeswoman Jayme Maltbie-Kunz said Santa Clara Valley Transit, þþSamTrans and the Municipal Railway would probably be asked to provide buses to replace lost service for the 28,000 daily passengers. About 300 Amtrak workers have run Caltrain service since 1992. þþBART spokesman Mike Healey said if there is a walkout, Capitol Corridor service will be canceled for the day. ÿThe only thing we could do is to join Amtrak in getting get the word out,ÿ he said. The trains carry 3,500 people a day. þþÿThe irony is that the Capitol Corridor is one of the top-performing Amtrak services in the country,ÿ he added. The trains carry 1 million passengers a year, up from 300,000 in 1998. þþ
Source: San Francisco Chronicle
