Train wrecked

Amtrak's board of directors has fired President David Gunn. Gunn, while not a great favorite among rail advocates, had been successful in cutting costs and improving management on Amtrak and maintaining service on long-distance lines that the board wants to kill - eagerly pushed by jackasses such as Transportation Secretary (and Amtrak board member) Norman Mineta, whose repeated lies and fables about Amtrak would shame Baron von Munchhausen.

In fact, the board, backed by the Shrub gang, wants to shut down all long-distance lines and turn Amtrak into little more than a series of disconnected transportation hubs, useful primarily for ferrying business executives between cities that are too close for convenient air travel. In September, it even

approved a resolution authorizing splitting off the Northeast Corridor, which accounts for the largest share of the railroad's ridership.

That would destroy Amtrak and the board knows it. Gunn was not willing to destroy the system, so despite his aggressive cost-cutting, he's out.

Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., who has fought against a Bush administration effort to end subsidies for the struggling passenger rail service, praised Gunn as "a brilliant manager."

The senator called Gunn's removal "a crushing blow to Amtrak's hopes for success and reform."

The praise is certainly overdone, but Schumer's underlying point that there is a conscious, on-going attempt to destroy long-distance passenger rail service in this country, a service which was never intended to succeed, is absolutely unquestionable.