No, Amtrak is still being forced to cut LD routes. The only difference is that instead of the House saying cut these specific routes, they chickened out and won't say which routes should go. They instead put a cap on how much money from the appropriation Amtrak can spend on LD trains. 150M is not enough to support the entire LD network, Amtrak needs more than that.Viewliner said:The only good thing so far is that Amtrak will no longer be forced to cut routes. Click here for an article about that.
This means that if Amtrak follows the mandate, that they will have to pick which trains to cut. This gives the politician an out, since he/she can now point the finger at Amtrak for cutting a route through their state, instead of Congress choosing which routes get cut. They are hoping that the voters of their districts won't see through the farce.
Also remember that David Gunn has said he won't cut any LD routes, unless Congress specifically tells him which routes to cut. He won't make that decision for them. Instead he will just close down all of Amtrak and let the fools in the House explain to this country why they killed Amtrak by giving it less than 1.2B.