MILWAUKEE, Wisc. -- With Mayor John O. Norquist casting the deciding vote by cell phone, a federal watchdog panel Friday forced a showdown on whether Amtrak will survive as the national passenger railroad, reports the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

The Amtrak Reform Council voted 6-5 to declare that Amtrak could not meet a congressionally imposed deadline to free itself from federal operating subsidies by Oct. 1, 2002.

That means Amtrak now has 90 days to come up with a plan to dissolve itself, at the same time the council is drawing up a plan to restructure passenger train service nationwide. Those plans will go to Congress, which then has another 90 days to decide the fate of passenger rail.

"I don't think it's a threat to Amtrak," Norquist said later of the declaration. "I think by facing reality, we're more likely to come up with a strong, sound passenger rail system in this country."

Meanwhile, "The Amtrak trains are running today, they will run tomorrow and throughout the coming months as Congress takes up this important national debate," U.S. Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta said in a written statement.

In Wisconsin, Amtrak's Hiawatha line runs six round trips daily between Chicago and Milwaukee, a route that enjoys higher ridership and better on-time service than much of the system. One long-distance train, the Empire Builder, also stops in Milwaukee and other Wisconsin cities on its daily round trip between Chicago and the Pacific Northwest.

Tuesday's vote was a rebuke to a railroad that has long insisted it could ride out of a tunnel of red ink aboard the gleaming new Acela trains that run along the East Coast at 150 mph. But the Acela has been plagued by delays and technical glitches, and its manufacturer Thursday filed a $200 million lawsuit blaming the problems on Amtrak interference.

Former Wisconsin Gov. Tommy G. Thompson, who served as chairman of Amtrak's board until earlier this year, was the railroad's chief cheerleader, despite operating losses that reached $405 million in the first eight months of the last fiscal year alone. However, Norquist said Amtrak managers, not Thompson, were responsible for "this kind of Pollyanna-ish whistling in the dark, saying everything was going to be OK when they knew it wouldn't."

Thompson, now the U.S. secretary of health and human services, was in meetings and unavailable for comment, said his spokesman, Tony Jewell.

Norquist said he expects Amtrak to continue in some form but believes the council will recommend letting private railroads bid against Amtrak to run passenger routes under contracts with states or groups of states. He compared that to Chicago's Metra system, where private railroads run commuter trains under contracts with the Regional Transportation Authority.

That would give a commanding role to consortia such as the Wisconsin-led Midwest Regional Rail Initiative, a nine-state group trying to establish fast, frequent train service, starting with a 110-mph line from Milwaukee to Madison in 2004. The initiative's $4.1 billion plan would link Chicago, Milwaukee, Madison, the Twin Cities, St. Louis and Detroit with 110-mph trains, with a 79-mph line from Milwaukee to Green Bay.

By contrast, Amtrak critic Joe Vranich said he would like to see Amtrak dismantled and unprofitable cross-country trains such as the Empire Builder shut down, while private companies take over popular short-range routes such as the Hiawatha. Vranich, a California writer, said only private management could "keep the wacko trains out of the system," like the failed Chicago-to-Janesville Lake Country Limited.

Council member Paul Weyrich, a Racine native, said private companies should bid to provide service along the 13 routes under study for high-speed rail, including the Chicago-Milwaukee-Twin Cities route. Businesses could turn an operating profit on those relatively short routes, said Weyrich, the founder of the Free Congress Foundation.

However, the federal government still will have to invest substantially to upgrade tracks and buy trains to make passenger rail service attractive, Norquist and Weyrich said. Congress is considering several plans to increase funding for high-speed rail.

It's also possible that nothing will happen. Speaking on behalf of Mineta and President Bush, Federal Railroad Administration official Mark Yachmetz had urged the council to delay action until January.

The National Association of Railroad Passengers agrees that Congress should not be forced to deal with this issue while it's still grappling with the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, said Scott Leonard, the association's assistant director. Leonard said his group believes the Senate should exercise its option to end the debate next year by voting to reject Amtrak's liquidation plan.

Amtrak itself issued a statement calling the council's vote "the wrong decision at the wrong time." The railroad said the council should have taken into account both the national emergency forced by the terrorist attacks and the federal government's long-term failure to give Amtrak enough capital funding.

Through a spokesman, Wisconsin Transportation Secretary Terry Mulcahy declined to comment.

In a March report, the council laid out five options for replacing or restructuring Amtrak. All five would require billions of additional federal dollars in capital investment, and all five would separate the business of running trains nationwide from the business of owning and maintaining tracks in the northeast.

Options in the March report range from turning both the Northeast Corridor infrastructure and the national train operations over to separate private companies to organizing them as separate government agencies. Handing the states a key role in planning and operating the system also is among the options.

However, Norquist said he did not believe the council would limit itself to those options in coming up with a final plan.

Norquist participated in the council meeting by conference call from Milwaukee but was not continuously connected to the session in Washington, D.C. Instead, the mayor - who has previously been criticized for missing local events - hung up to cut a ribbon at the grand reopening of the remodeled Boston Store at the Grand Avenue mall.

While he was doing that, the council split 5-5 on whether to approve the declaration. With tensions running high, the panel adjourned while staffers tried to get Norquist back on the line to cast his vote.

"The future of Amtrak rests on whether we can find the mayor of Milwaukee in the next 10 minutes. This is absolutely nuts," said council member Charles Moneypenny, who represents rail unions and supports a continued role for Amtrak.

Finally, an aide persuaded Norquist to take the call on his cell phone. When the meeting resumed, Norquist asked several other council members how they voted and why.

Chicago lawyer Jim Coston and Yachmetz, who was sitting in for Mineta, urged Norquist to vote against the declaration. Weyrich and former ambassador Bruce Chapman urged him to vote for it. Only after all four spoke did Norquist announce his vote.

"It was very dramatic," Weyrich said. "You couldn't have scripted it if your life depended on it."