At 10 p.m. Wednesday, the Amtrak train that should have arrived in Atlanta by about 7:40 p.m. wasn’t too far away to the west, but the agent had no idea when the No. 20, known as the Crescent, would arrive.

“Amtrak should stop jerking people around,” was one of the more polite responses to the agent’s announcement from the people around me in the station.

The Government Accountability Office says Amtrak needs “fundamental improvements.” And Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta calls the service “one of the worst-performing business enterprises in America.”

But Amtrak seems to be going in reverse. Bush crony David Laney, the board chairman, recently fired the man even he credited with making great strides toward turning things around in the last three years, David Gunn.

“The administration is trying to save Amtrak like the Big Bad Wolf is trying to save Little Red Riding Hood,” says Sen. Chuck Schumer. “Don’t be fooled. The administration wants to kill Amtrak, not save it.”

Mineta, the spear carrier for Bush on Amtrak, has advocated zero funding, something Congress has so far resisted. This administration would never be as dismissive of the airlines and the highway system as it is the trains, which haul 25 million passengers each year.

Of course, the trains have problems – often they don’t run on time. The other night in Atlanta, we were told, the problem was freight congestion. Because passengers are not as valued as freight, trains like No. 20, bound for New York City, have to make way. Amtrak owns tracks along its Northeast corridor, but otherwise uses tracks owned by freight companies like CSX.

On my way down to Atlanta on Christmas Eve, it was apparent that service on the Crescent – long my favorite in the system – was on the decline.

The entertainment systems so grandly unveiled in 1996 had been removed from individual rooms. One attendant was forced to do the best he could to serve several dozen passengers in two cars. Stretched thin didn’t begin to describe him. He didn’t get around to telling people in my car, No. 1910, how the mechanicals worked in their rooms until more than two hours after the train had pulled out of Penn Station.

My return trip from Atlanta finally began a few minutes past midnight: four hours late and no apologies offered. During the course of the night we proceeded to lose several more hours, but did anyone even attempt to explain anything to passengers? Not until 11:40 a.m., when No. 20 was somewhere near Charlotte, did a conductor come through the coaches to offer a status report. The train pulled into New York City at 8:43 p.m. – about seven hours late.

If he keeps at it, President Bush may just trigger a desertion by passengers that’s justified by what has obviously preceded it: a desertion by the Bush administration.

This is no way to run a railroad.