NEW YORK -- David L. Gunn is a former top executive of the transit systems in Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Washington, according to the New York Times. He will turn 65 on Friday but was called out of retirement last month to be the president and chief executive of Amtrak, the national passenger railroad company.

The company, subsidized by the government, has recently dropped all pretense of reaching self-sufficiency, a requirement imposed in 1997 by Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, and others in Amtrak's last authorization, and says it needs billions of dollars in federal subsidies in coming years just to maintain the level of service it now provides. In an interview last week in Washington, Mr. Gunn spoke about Amtrak's future.

Q. You told employees recently that Amtrak would have to shut down in July without new financing in place by the end of June. Why would a bank lend Amtrak money?

A. We're going to get an appropriation. I'm fairly confident that we'll get it. We've had expressions of support from large numbers of people on the Hill. We have signatures of support from the House, over 160, and from the Senate, 30 or 40.

Even Senator McCain, for example, has come out and said he wants to work with Amtrak to see us through this period, and he's been a long-term critic.

Q. How critical is Amtrak's condition?

A. Amtrak's had problems for years, financially, but if you just look at the history, you look at what's happened in terms of cash flow, and in terms of the maintenance activities and so forth, we've basically done all the tricks that are in our control to avoid needing cash.

With the cash problems that we've had, a lot of heavy maintenance has been stopped or deferred. For example, on the car fleet, we used to do an overhaul every four years. The car might be 30 years old but the passenger compartment would look fairly fresh.

That all stopped. The cars look a little tired, and we're short of cars.

Wrecked or damaged cars — we have 97 of them. These are cars that should be in service. All that stuff's got to be restored. We're going to do it. My philosophy is, you've got to do it. I don't know how. My management philosophy is, I'd rather beg forgiveness than ask permission.

Q. Why should the government subsidize Amtrak?

A. No passenger operation in this country today, even the airlines — except maybe for Southwest — covers capital costs. They certainly don't pay for the airports and all that stuff.

You have this desire to say we have to do what the airlines can't do, operate without a subsidy. Highways are even more subsidized, although a lot of it's hidden. Look at Manhattan. It's the most valuable real estate in North America, and yet what percent of it is paved over for the automobile, which they don't pay for? It's an incredible subsidy. The problem is, we are a creation of the federal government. When they set it up, we were supposed to be off subsidies in three years. It's nuts. I knew it was nuts then. We have this absolutely Jekyll-and-Hyde situation, where you go up on the Hill for support you need to run trains. What you get is 50 cents of support and it costs you a dollar.

Q. Would cutting the long-distance trains help?

A. Mathematically, there is no way you can take this company, carve it up, and get the service you require. The long-distance trains require subsidy, the Northeast Corridor requires less subsidy. The long-distance trains don't need that much capital, but the corridor needs lots of capital.

You can't be all things to all people. We need national support for any part of the system, even the Northeast Corridor. There's no way you're going to get the money out of Congress for the Northeast Corridor if you don't have broad-based support in other areas.

Q. The Amtrak Reform Council, the advisory group established by Congress, raised the idea of competing companies to run trains, and giving ownership of the Northeast Corridor to a separate entity. Others have talked about high-speed rail corridors in the Midwest run by new companies. Would that work?

A. This business of saying someone else is going to run the Midwest corridors — where are these people going to come from? It's going to be another one of these situations where you're starting from scratch. This isn't a new business. There are certain skills you need to run it. We have those skills and do a pretty good job at it.