Amtrak Strike Looms as Ridership Tops Record

There's an unsettling series of headlines today about Amtrak. Breaking just now is word that the unions representing Amtrak employees are expected to reject an offer this week for binding arbitration with the passenger rail service, which sets up a possible strike at the beginning of 2008.

The news comes on the same day that Amtrak is reporting a record year of ridership. 25.8 million passengers took Amtrak in the last fiscal year, up 1.5 million over 2006. The growth was primarily fueled by increased ticket sales in the Northeast, noted especially in the surging popularity of the Boston-to-Washington Acela Express line.

As the AP points out, Amtrak has never had an employee strike in its 36-year history, though one was seriously threatened in 1997, and another in 2004. Congress is likely to intervene in this current deadlock, as it has done in the past, to attempt to prevent a strike. Considering how many more people are relying on Amtrak than ever before, even a short January strike would likely be a huge disruption along the Northeast corridor.