Rail Advocate: Biden Ascension Wouldn’t Necessarily Help Amtrak

By Brad Aaron
Sep 2, 2008

The Washington Post today has a piece summing up Joe Biden’s ties to Amtrak. There’s not a lot of new material in the story (Biden takes the train between Delaware and DC, he has a pro-rail record in the Senate, his son serves on the Amtrak board, etc.), but what caught our attention was a quote from David Johnson of the National Association of Railroad Passengers.

Johnson said an Obama-Biden victory wouldn’t necessarily translate into an avalanche of federal funds for Amtrak. He noted that Al Gore was a big booster of passenger rail when he was in Congress "and yet some of the biggest cuts in service came during the Clinton-Gore administration."

In 2000, President Bill Clinton proposed a $989 million funding package for Amtrak. According to the Post, the FY 2008 Amtrak allocation was around $1.3 billion.

Photo: relvax/Flickr

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