Amtrak makes bid to take over Union Station

Fox 5's David Kaplan reports that Amtrak is asking a court to allow the company to take over D.C.'s Union Station under eminent domain.

WASHINGTON - In a filing last week, Amtrak says it’s trying to take over Union Station.

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Amtrak is making a case in court that it should be allowed to take over the property using eminent domain.

Amtrak currently owns 13.4% of the station, according to the filing, mainly just the rail and platform itself: not the terminal.

The rest is operated by a sub-leaser based in New York City.

Fox 5 spoke with passengers who would like to see upgrades.

"I love it. I love it. It is gorgeous architecturally. Its’ historic, so yeah. Someone needs to get a hold if it and make it what it could be," Gwen Dillard said.

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Amtrak is an entity that has a special status: a for-profit company, but chartered and overseen by the government. Federal law says if Amtrak wants to use eminent domain to improve passenger rail, it can.

That’s the argument they’re making in this filing: From a safety perspective, there are $75 million in upgrades that haven’t been made, and Amtrak also has plans to upgrade the terminal that haven’t been done either.

Michael Bright has government experience with government-chartered companies like Amtrak.

"I mean, it’s very heavily relied on. Anybody in this area is familiar with the Acela corridor, it’s used quite a bit, Union Station, I can tell you anecdotally, needs improvements, and anecdotally, I can tell you there’s a lot of people between Boston and DC that rely on the service, so, yeah, it seems to be within reason from the type of mandate that they have," Bright told Fox 5.

Fox 5 made multiple attempts to reach the operator of the terminal, but did not hear back.

Indications are they have a lease from the government, and have sub-leased parts of that out.

Going to eminent domain isn’t the first step in this process. Amtrak says earlier this month, it offered $250 million to the subleaser, who turned it town.

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Amtrak says it had the property assessed at price.