Budgeters derail hopes of Amtrak passengers.

Byline: David Steves The Register-Guard

SALEM - Linda and John Franklin are such devoted antique car buffs that they traveled from their Creswell home to Dearborn, Mich., this summer for the 100th anniversary of the Ford Motor Company.

But they chose the train - not the automobile - to make the trek.

James Yarger says riding the rails is a big part of his business career and his personal life: He travels to Seattle from Eugene at least two times a month as part of his job as a restaurant equipment designer; and with a fiancee living in the same Washington city, one of them is riding the rails just about every weekend.

For Christiana Dugan, a Eugene resident who swore off car ownership a decade ago, the train is an extension of the public transportation she uses to get around, allowing her to travel throughout the Pacific Northwest and beyond - including to Centralia where she meets up with her husband who works at Mount Rainier National Park.

The three Lane County residents are among more than 1,300 Oregonians who have written their legislators in recent weeks, letting them know they consider saving Oregon's two daily Eugene-to-Portland trains a top priority.

But with the Legislature's budget-writers unwilling to include the $10 million price tag as they piece together the next state budget, passenger-train advocates are running out of ways to make their case.

Members of the Oregon Passenger Rail Advisory Council acknowledged as much Friday at their monthly meeting in Salem, where they brainstormed about ways to persuade the Legislature to maintain funding for the twice-a-day Amtrak Cascades train service between Eugene and Portland - and from there to Seattle.

Former Eugene mayor and council chairwoman Ruth Bascom said she was trying to remain optimistic, but reported little headway in trying to change the minds of the lawmakers who oversee the budget-writing process.

"I see these opponents as immovable," she said. "When we work to try to persuade them, it's not working."

The issue is becoming a critical one for advocates of the Willamette Valley rail corridor in part because they worry about giving up a decade's worth of gains.

The regional service started in 1994 with a single round-trip train in addition to Amtrak's Seattle-to-Los Angeles Coast Starlight service.

Ridership has grown to 121,000 per year since the service began in 1994. And improvements to the rails themselves have helped shave nearly a half-hour off the time it takes to travel from Eugene to Portland - bringing the trip time to about 2 hours, 35 minutes.

Oregon transportation officials and rail advocates say that if the Legislature cuts or eliminates funding for passenger rail service, other regional services will buy the Spanish-built Talgo trains that serve the Willamette Valley, and it could take years to rebuild the program.

Sen. Kurt Schrader, a Canby Democrat who serves as the Senate's top budget official, said he thinks it's great to provide a state subsidy for train travel. But at the most, he said, the Legislature is likely to come up with half the $10 million that Gov. Ted Kulongoski had called for to keep train services at their current level. That would mean either funding the two trains only for one of the next two years or reducing the service to one round-trip train between Eugene and Portland.

"It's a good thing, but these are tough times," Schrader said. "We have no general fund for either of them."

Rep. Mitch Greenlick, a Portland Democrat and head of the Legislature's "Choo-Choo Caucus" of passenger rail supporters, said the issue has been frustrating in part because many rank-and-file members - including the entire Eugene-Springfield delegation - support the $10 million item.

With legislative staff and lobbyists traveling from throughout the Willamette Valley to Salem, they provide some built-in support for train service.

Chris Matson, chief of staff to Rep. Bob Ackerman, D-Eugene, called the train "my lifeline." With only the two state-sponsored trains and Amtrak's Coast Starlight, Matson has had to depart Eugene at 5:45 a.m. and doesn't get home until about 8:15 p.m. But he figures the $165 monthly ticket price is a bargain compared to the wear and tear and other costs of driving the 280Z sports car he's been slowly restoring.

Fred Nussbaum, a member of the state rail council, also represents the Association of Oregon Rail and Transit Advocates. He said the threat that train service might be cut has been serious enough that his group, known as AORTA, hasn't sat back and relied on the good will for train service within the Capitol. His association has involved citizens by targeting those who ride the train. And it's been an easy group of people to reach, Nussbaum said; just go to a train station in Eugene, Albany, Salem or Portland or any of the bus stations along the coast or in southern, central and eastern Oregon where state-sponsored coaches connect riders with Willamette Valley train service.

Rep. Phil Barnhart, D-Eugene, said the grass-roots lobbying seems to be working. Although the $10 million train item is a thin slice of the overall budget, Barnhart said he's heard more from constituents on that issue than any other spending item, with the exception of the two big-ticket parts of the budget: education and services for the chronically ill and disabled.

"This is one of the lightning rod issues," said Barnhart, a rail advocate himself.

Linda Franklin, James Yarger and Christiana Dugan, the three Lane County residents who want train service to be preserved, picked up AORTA brochures at the train station and used the enclosed forms to write to their lawmakers.

Yarger, 32, said he appreciates that top priorities, such as adequate funding for education, are coming out ahead of maintaining train service.

Still, he said, with freeway congestion worsening and the Willamette Valley population rising, it would be a mistake to let slip the state's work to build up rail service.

"The idea that cutting the train is a solution is a pretty short-sighted choice," he said. "It will end up causing more harm in the long run."

RIDING THE RAILS

Amtrak ridership has more than doubled in less than a decade:

1994-95: 59,492

1995-96: 58,156

1996-97: 65,616

1997-98: 81,479

1998-99: 89,885

1999-2000: 85,886

2000-01: 119,851*

2001-02: 121,731

*second Eugene-Portland round-trip train added October 2000 - Oregon Department of Transportation