THROWN INTO the caboose at birth, shuffled around Congress as an unwanted foster child, and abandoned by the absentee fathers of public policy, Amtrak is now 31, a product one would expect from the crumbling stations of the transportation ghetto. The same forces of willful neglect now condemn the rail company for looking for handouts. Unlike the damsel in distress pulled off the tracks just in time, Amtrak is about to be run over as if it were just another welfare mother.

Amtrak's new president, David Gunn, has said that the latest shortfalls of the passenger rail company are so severe that the system will be shut down in July unless it receives a loan guarantee of up to $200 million. Gunn has tried to win support by being candid about Amtrak's past.

''The company had lost credibility on many fronts, and its management structure was ineffectual,'' Gunn said. ''The company made bad decisions while pursuing an impossible goal of self-sufficiency.''

The response from the White House was to pour more coal into the locomotive and come around the bend at full speed to bear down on Amtrak. It wants to break up the company altogether. The Northeast Corridor between Boston and Washington would become its own line in a state-federal partnership. Other routes might either be privatized or require states interested in maintaining service to provide the operating funds.

For a split moment after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, it looked as if Americans, through the momentary fear of flying, might explore the possibilities of better rail service between big cities. Fear turned into an obsession by the nation to get back to ''normal,'' with Americans soon complaining more about airport check-in times than whether the random checking of people's shoes has anything to do with security.

The obsession for normality meant that Amtrak was sent back to the waiting platform of double standards. Last year alone the nation's highways and roads received $32 billion from the Department of Transportation, more than the $24 billion Amtrak has received in its entire 31 years. Air travel, at $13 billion last year, receives more funding in two years than Amtrak has in its three decades. The General Accounting Office this year said the cost of modernizing America's passenger rail system would be $30 billion over the next 20 years. That is still less than what America spent last year on highways.

In its budget request for 2003, the Department of Transportation spent most of the section devoted to Amtrak complaining about the money it has lost, $20.4 billion since 1971. The White House says that Amtrak has ''utterly failed.'' The White House says that Amtrak's stupid mortgaging of Penn Station in New York to cover losses was a ''financial absurdity.'' It concluded that Amtrak is ''clearly in desperate financial condition.''

Amtrak is so beaten down by this bad-mouthing that it has asked for only $1.2 billion next year, less than half of what GAO says it would take for modernization. There is no such bad-mouthing for highways and airlines.

The roads get their money even though last month Kenneth Mead, the inspector general of the Department of Transportation, reported that the amount of money recovered from highway construction fraud has tripled in the last three years to $43 million. The Big Dig will get finished by the feds and Massachusetts taxpayers even though a project that began with a projected pricetag of $2.5 billion will now cost about $15 billion.

Airports get their subsidies, and the nation's airlines got a $15 billion Sept. 11 bailout even though they, too, suffer from ineffectual management that barely cared about passenger security. The major American airlines lost a combined $7 billion last year and $2.4 billion in the first quarter of this year. In 15 months, the airlines have lost nearly half of what Amtrak has lost in 31 years.

The proposal by the White House to foist the cost of Amtrak on the states is the real financial absurdity, given that they are reeling from more than $40 billion in revenue shortfalls. There are some efforts in Congress to get Amtrak its $1.2 billion, but nothing like the lobbying for the roads. Bush's proposal to cut roads down to $23 billion has been met by a Congress that has all but insured appropriations of closer to $30 billion.

The highways and airlines did not need to wait until the nick of time to be saved. The damsel representing Amtrak is still wriggling on the tracks. She can see the cowcatcher coming at her head.

© Copyright 2002 Boston Globe Company

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