Mr. Speaker, for several years now the commuter railroads serving our large metropolitan areas have found it increasingly difficult to render the kind of service our expanding population wants and is entitled to have. The causes of the decline of the commuter railroads are many and complex -- high taxes, losses of revenue to Government subsidized highway and air carriers, to name but two. And the solutions to the problems of the commuter lines have been equally varied, ranging all the way from Government ownership to complete discontinuance of this important service.

There have been a number of sound plans proposed. But none of these has been implemented. Instead we have stood idly by, watched our commuter railroad service decline, and have failed to offer a helping hand. Though the number of people flowing in and out of our metropolitan areas each day has increased tremendously since World War 2,, total annual rail commutation dropped 124 million from 1947 to 1957. Nowhere has this decline been more painfully evident than in the New York City area. Here the New York Central Railroad, one of the Nation's most important carriers, has alone lost 47.6 percent of its passengers since 1949.

At this time of crisis in our Nation's commuter railroads, a new threat to the continued operations of the New York Central has appeared in the form of the Chesapeake + Ohio Railroad's proposal for control of the Baltimore + Ohio railroads.