Amtrak's President Is Fired by Its Board (Published 2005)

WASHINGTON, Nov. 9 - Amtrak's board of directors fired the company's president this morning after months of disagreement over a Bush administration plan to privatize parts of the national passenger rail system and spin off other parts to partial state ownership.

The president, David Gunn, who came out of retirement to take the job three years ago, is widely credited with improving the railroad's management, cutting costs, imposing better financial controls and improving the state of repair of Amtrak's locomotives and aging passenger cars, as well as its tracks, signals and electrical systems, which are truly antique.

But Mr. Gunn also opposed the Bush plan to turn over the Northeast Corridor - the tracks from Washington to Boston that are the railroad's main physical asset - to a federal-state consortium.

And while ridership has risen to record levels recently, costs are also up sharply, with government auditors predicting that Amtrak's budget deficit will grow sharply larger in the next few years. The Bush administration has said it is determined to end the perennial subsidies to the railroad, which was created 30 years ago to take over passenger service as the commercial railroads abandoned that business as unprofitable.

In a statement, the chairman of the board, David Laney, said that Mr. Gunn had helped make improvements but that "Amtrak's future now requires a different type of leader who will aggressively tackle the company's financial, management and operational challenges."

"The need to bring fundamental change to Amtrak is greater and more urgent than ever before," he said.