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Biden’s infrastructure plan is ‘very comprehensive’: Amtrak CEO

Bill Flynn, Amtrak CEO, joins Yahoo Finance’s Kristin Myers and Alexis Christoforous to discuss Biden’s infrastructure plan, GOP’s counter proposal for infrastructure, and the future of Amtrak.

Video transcript

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: Senate Republicans are out with their counteroffer to President Biden's $2.3 trillion infrastructure proposal, and it's a fraction of the cost, coming in at $568 billion, as lawmakers seek a bipartisan compromise on fixing our roads, bridges, and rails. Joining us now is the CEO of Amtrak, Bill Flynn. Bill, thanks so much for making time for us. So this GOP proposal earmarks about $20 billion for our nation's rails, including Amtrak. I believe President Biden's proposal earmarks about four times as much. I'd love to get your reaction to what Senate Republicans are putting forth today.

BILL FLYNN: Well, thanks, Alexis. And it's great to be with you and Kristin this afternoon. So that proposal just came out. And from an Amtrak perspective, look, we look forward to working with Congress on, really, any and all proposals to invest in Amtrak that will help us serve more passengers across America. From our perspective, the $80 billion that's in President Biden's plan, I think, really catalyzes those efforts and I think will help us indeed expand the range of services that we can offer.

KRISTIN MYERS: Now, Bill, of course, we heard Alexis just mentioning a little bit of what would come through Biden's infrastructure plan. I'm curious to know, if you could wave a wand and essentially get everything on your wish list, what would it be? What's missing from either proposal that you would love to see?

BILL FLYNN: Well, I think the proposal from President Biden, of course, is a very comprehensive one. And as we understand it, we haven't seen all the details that are embedded in those $80 billion. But about $40 billion would go for the-- would be invested in the Northeast Corridor, so that's Washington to Boston.

And there's a huge backlog of major infrastructure projects that need to begin to take place. There's the Hudson River tunnels. There's the repairs and upgrades to the East River Tunnel. There's this gateway project. That's the 10 or 12 miles from New Jersey into Penn Station into the Hudson River Tunnel. There's bridges across that infrastructure, the tunnels themselves. We're talking 100 to 20, 110 year old bridges and tunnels. And then, of course, as we come down, there's a bridge require-- new bridges required over the Susquehanna, the Baltimore and Potomac Tunnels. So there's just a lot of work there.

Now, the other part of that proposal, the other $40 billion or so, that's about expanding Amtrak services across our nation. Really, it's better service, new places, and serving more people. So that's our corridor strategy that we've talked quite a bit about. And it's gotten a lot of attention over the last several weeks. We would expand service to 160 different stations, new routes, some almost 40 new routes, and increased frequencies on another 20 or so.

So that would be the long term plan that would occur over a 15-year period or so. And we believe we could add 20 million riders to our services through that period, or at the end of that period, on top of the 32 million riders that we were handling-- serving on an annual basis pre-COVID.

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: How far, though, Bill, does the proposal go in sort of forcing a rail revolution, if you will, and helping Amtrak better compete with places like China and Japan, where they have successful high speed rail systems in place?

BILL FLYNN: You know, and I've lived in Japan. So I've had the-- back in the '90s. So I've taken the high speed rail of the shinkansen services across Japan over a number of years. And I've traveled extensively in Europe. I believe Amtrak can absolutely deploy a competitive-- trip time competitive service across many corridors that'll be attractive to our riders, attractive on the service side. But also, if you think about our environmental impact, which is substantially lower than other modes of transportation, our ability to provide convenient services from between major metropolitan areas and cities in between, and then the opportunity to serve places we just don't serve today or don't serve very well.

Back in 2000-- sorry-- back in 1971, when we were formed-- we're going to celebrate our 75th anniversary on May 1st in a few weeks-- the population of the south was about 63 million people. Today, it's 127 million people. And our services are essentially the same as they were in 1971. And the same thing is really true in the west, from 35 million people in the west in 1971 to 80 million today, with substantially not much more service than we had almost when we started our operations in 1971.

And I think there's something really important to consider when we talk about high speed rail. The trains that travel between Tokyo and Nagoya, for example, the two biggest population centers in Japan, 35 million people in metro Tokyo, 10 million people in metro Nagoya, now while those trains are capable of speeds well in excess of 200 miles an hour, it's a 165-mile route, several stops along the way, and the average speed is 99 to 100 miles an hour. So there's theoretical high speed, and there's practical services and higher speed. And I think we can certainly deploy those services and attract the growth that we're talking about.

Just one more point. You know, we're making substantial investments in our fleet. We're going to deliver and deploy our Acela 21s, about a $2.3 billion-- sorry, $2.7 billion investment between-- on the Washington, DC and Boston corridor at the beginning of '22. And you might have seen a press release we had just the other day, where we've identified Siemens North America as the provider of 83 new-- our initial order, 83 new train sets that will replace our current Amfleets across the country in certain of our long-distance routes.

So-- so we're investing. And we think we have a very attractive product to deploy and serve an ever-larger part of our population, our country.

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: Well, you-- those are a lot of initiatives and a lot of ambitious initiatives at that. Can you offer any kind of a time frame on sort of a high-speed or bullet-type train that we might see in this country?

BILL FLYNN: Well, again, I'm going to be cautious on bullet train, Alexis. We're going to deploy our Acela 21s in '22. And, you know, we're talking at 160 miles an hour there. But again, we have to look at the schedules and stops in between, right? Because you're not getting 250 miles an hour even in Japan, for example.

But the broader investments that I'm talking about here really occur over the next decade and into perhaps even ending, you know, in 2035. Because that's the amount of time it's going to take to invest, to acquire new equipment, to fund it and build out the infrastructure that we're talking about.

KRISTIN MYERS: Bill, especially as we received this very slimmed down Republican package, do you have concerns that perhaps once everything is said and done, that the situation that we're going to be in once this infrastructure plan is finalized, that we're not going to be able to make the kinds of changes that we really need to make inside of the United States to be as competitive as some other nations, like Japan, as you were highlighting moments ago? And we instead spend most of our time and our money kind of just fixing a broken system that we already have.

BILL FLYNN: Well, there are many ways to invest in Amtrak and invest in inter-city passenger rail. We are-- we were founded by the US government to serve inter-city passenger rail and ultimately to grow and serve a greater-- a greater part of-- a greater part of America.

We may not get $80 billion of investment at this time. I certainly hope we do. But I don't believe it's a one and done either. I believe Amtrak does have bipartisan, bicameral support. I testified to the Senate Commerce Committee back-- back at the end of last year and-- and certainly engaged in discussion with senators from across the country on that committee from both parties. And there was a strong support, and I believe there is still a strong support for Amtrak.

Yes, we need more investment. However, I can certainly point to, you know, our Northeast Corridor, and I've talked about that quite a bit. But, you know, 25% of our riders originate in California. We-- pre-COVID, we handled 8.25 million riders in 2019 in California on a corridor between San Diego, Los Angeles, and beyond, on corridors in and out of Oakland and the Bay Area, Sacramento down into Bakersfield, across the length of California, on some of our long-distance services, and then the services that go cross-country and feed into California.

So 25% of the population there. Good growth around our hubs in Chicago, into the Midwest, you know, north into-- into Wisconsin and Minnesota, out across through Indiana into Michigan, down into Missouri. So there's a great story at Amtrak already. Yes, we need the investment. But I think with that investment, we can certainly grow.

I think we'll have great support. It is an environmentally sound solution when you look at, you know, it's 83% less greenhouse gas emissions per passenger mile in our corridor compared to driving, 73% less compared to flying. And in fact, on our tickets now, we're going to be piloting in the corridor for you, the individual passenger, on your ticket, we'll let you know how much less of an environmental impact you had in selecting our services, for example.

It's about infrastructure. That's what these investments will-- will bring. And of course where we serve, the communities where we serve. There's a huge economic impact from rail connectivity. So I think ultimately there is a strong story here, and it will attract investment. We'll see how it develops.

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: Yeah, and part of that story is equitable train service. Amtrak CEO Bill Flynn, thanks so much for joining us today.