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Capon Praises Grants on NBC

Tuesday, February 02, 2010

This segment featuring NARP President & CEO Ross Capon appeared Saturday evening (Jan. 30) on NBC Nightly News:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Posted by Malcolm Kenton

Rail Grants Are Answering People’s Demands

The following letter to the editor was published in the Washington Examiner:

Since passenger train improvements have enjoyed bipartisan support on Capitol Hill, we reject your suggestion that White House unveiling of passenger-train Recovery Act grants constitutes turning a deaf ear to the recent Massachusetts election.

Indeed, polls—and Amtrak’s rising ridership—show that Americans want more trains. Put “travelers” atop your list of “those who are quite pleased by the projects.”

The majority of dollars will go to upgrade existing trains, producing tangible service improvements within one or a few years. At the other end of the spectrum, our children may look back and thank those who pushed the California and Florida very-high-speed projects. Very high energy prices threaten the future of short-distance air service.

—Ross Capon

Posted by Malcolm Kenton

Near-Term Rail Upgrades are Excellent Job Creators

Monday, February 01, 2010

The Associated Press’s Joan Lowy wrongly downplays the importance of the good American jobs that will be created through the Obama Administration’s investments in higher-speed intercity passenger trains in a Jan. 29 article. “There will be U.S. manufacturing and engineering jobs for slower trains often described as ‘higher speed’ or ‘midspeed,’” she writes, in a tone that suggests that these endeavors are not worthwhile compared to the kind of super high-speed trains that Europe and Asia have. In reality, the Administration’s current strategy is absolutely necessary to reboot domestic railroad manufacturing and engineering industries.

Fifty years ago, while the U.S. let railroads wither while pouring billions into new highways and airports, other industrialized countries did exactly what we are now beginning to do: make important outlays towards expanding and improving their rail networks. This laid the building blocks for their high-speed lines by providing connecting systems that feed passengers to the bullet trains and fostering a culture in which the train is a vital mode of travel.

Admittedly, it will be necessary for the U.S. to gain from other countries’ expertise in the short term, but by awarding contracts to foreign companies now, we will enhance our own knowledge base and quickly become more independent in the rail field.

We cannot simply build brand new high-speed railroads overnight. By gradually strengthening the existing rail network to allow for faster, more frequent passenger (and freight) service, we not only create jobs, but we also enhance the quality of many Americans’ travel experiences.

—Malcolm Kenton

Posted by Malcolm Kenton

CNBC Looks at New Intercity and High Speed Rail Grants

Thursday, January 28, 2010

In a report broadcast today, CNBC’s Brian Shactman gave a brief overview of President Obama’s intercity and high speed rail program.  While briefly acknowledging the national scope of the effort, Shactman was quick to focus on the three states that will receive the lion’s share of the money—California, Florida, and Illinois.

This focus is perhaps inevitable, and I think it shows the wisdom in the Administration’s choice to spread the $8 billion around the country instead of throwing it all into one or two corridors.  $8 billion is not nearly enough money to build even a single high speed rail line—and the spokesman for the California High Speed Rail Authority admits that their line won’t see significant construction until 2012.  An incremental ramp-up to high and higher speed passenger trains will allow people (and media sources) around the country to see new jobs, steady decreases in trip times, and steady improvements in on time performance.  And this will give transportation officials something to point to when preparing requests for the second round of funding.

The fact that the CNBC anchor introduces the piece by asking “is [high speed rail] a magic economic bullet?” tells a lot about the kind of yardstick the media are using to judge this program.  But it is important for rail and transit advocates to keep this in mind, because these are the people who will be telling the general public whether these projects are successes or failures—and CNBC anchor Erin Burnett’s alluded-to labeling of the program as “rail to nowhere” gives a sense how eager some commentators are to write American passenger trains off.

See the video below.

-Sean Jeans-Gail
Communications Director
NARP

Posted by NARP

Flag Stops: Informed Decisionmaking (Or Lack Thereof)

Friday, January 15, 2010

Many reasons cited for car ownership drop, a way to show that conventional intercity trains actually do make money, Schwarzenegger’s missteps, and more.

—Malcolm Kenton

Posted by Malcolm Kenton

New Jersey Paper Speaks Out Against Dead End ARC Alignment

Thursday, January 07, 2010

North New Jersey’s The Record ran a piece by Editorial page editor Alfred Doblin on December 21 of last year which offers a refreshing corrective to New Jersey Transit’s new interstate rail tunnels, planned to run under the Hudson River. 

It’s no secret that NARP—along with a number of other groups, including the Lackawanna Coalition and the New Jersey chapter of the Sierra Club—has been a vocal opponent of this project, also known as the Access to the Region’s Core (ARC).  Not because there is not a need for the tunnels.  Rather, it is because the need to expand the rail capacity of the region is so dire; the New York City region remains one of the nation’s most congested train, automotive, and air transit hubs, and solutions are desperately needed.  And with more than $9 billion in Metropolitan Transit Authority, New Jersey state, and federal funds needed to bring this project to completion, the stakes are too high to settle for not-good-enough.

Doblin does an excellent job of explaining why the ARC, as presently conceived, is not the solution (bold added):

The new tunnel under the river makes sense. Bringing more New Jersey commuters into Manhattan makes sense. Building a deep-tunnel train station a block from Pennsylvania Station and just footsteps from an existing PATH station makes no sense to the commuters who – well, commute.
...
New Jersey commuters will end up where they always have. NJ Transit cannot take its trains to Grand Central because it would have to bore below a massive tunnel supplying water to Manhattan. Until an additional water tunnel is operational, there will be no NJ Transit trains to Grand Central. This should be the deal-breaker for the project as planned. It makes little sense to expend billions and billions of dollars for a less-than-perfect solution.
...
The Hudson River tunnel project is monumental. But if it isn’t done right, it’s a monument to excess. The advocates for building it now, regardless of where it terminates, are not the everyday people who have to travel back and forth on the trains. Exactly where are the thousands of new commuters going to go after they arrive at 34th Street? Can all those new commuters be absorbed into the existing subway infrastructure at 34th Street? Not likely. It should be Grand Central or bust.

NJ Transit continues to award contracts—two and counting so far, adding up to hundreds of millions of dollars—and the window to correct the flaw of the deep cavern terminal is closing.  Transit advocates will have to hope that Governor-elect Chris Christie is paying attention to the voices of reason.

—Sean Jeans-Gail

Learn more about NARP’s proposed fix for the ARC project.

Posted by NARP

V.P. Biden: Amtrak is “powerful and indespensible” vehicle for the future

Wednesday, January 06, 2010

Vice President Joe Biden penned the following column for publication in the January/February 2010 issue of Arrive, Amtrak’s on-board magazine geared towards Northeast Corridor travelers. It is reprinted in the Huffington Post.

Why America Needs Trains

One of the Capitol Hill newspapers estimated that I’ve taken more than 7,000 round trips on Amtrak over the course of my career. But the one I made on Jan. 17, 2009 was a bit different. When I got there, there were 8,000 people standing in the freezing cold. And I wasn’t racing to reach the 7:46 a.m. Metroliner (later, the Acela) that I had taken thousands of times before.

I was meeting up with the train that would carry President Obama and me to our inauguration.

That day, Gregg Weaver, a conductor who started riding Amtrak the same year I did—1972—introduced me to the crowd. As Gregg spoke, it struck me that over the years, Amtrak provided me with more than a way to get to Washington to serve the people of Delaware every morning and a way to get home to my family each night. It has provided me another family entirely—a community of dedicated professionals who have shared the milestones in my life, and who have allowed me to share the milestones in theirs.

And it has provided me with one thing more, an understanding of—and a respect for—the role of rail travel in our society and our economy.

Though I don’t get to ride the train nearly as much anymore, those were the lessons I brought with me on that final trip to Washington as a United States Senator.

I began making the 110-mile commute shortly after I was sworn in as a Senator. It was the only way that I could have been a Senator at all. I had to be able to get home to spend evenings with my two sons after we lost their mother and sister in an auto accident a month earlier.

Since then, on those many trips down to Washington, I got into a routine. From Wilmington to Baltimore I’d read the papers and make phone calls. At Baltimore, I’d start preparing for that day’s hearings, amending my opening statement or going through the list of witnesses. And by the time I arrived in D.C., I’d be ready to jump right in.

Getting home was sometimes a sprint, too. One year, on my birthday, my daughter had planned a party for me. She really wanted to give me a gift and blow out candles. Senator Bob Dole was the Majority Leader at the time, and we were voting that night. I told him that I really had to be home for my daughter, which meant that I needed to catch the 5:54 p.m. train. Senator Dole backed up the votes until 9 p.m. I boarded the train and, in Wilmington, my daughter was standing there on the middle platform. She and my wife sang “Happy Birthday,” I blew out the candle, took a piece of cake, opened her gift, gave her a kiss, and caught the 7:23 p.m. going south—and managed to be there for the 9 p.m. vote.

Amtrak doesn’t just carry us from one place to another—it makes things possible that otherwise wouldn’t be. For 36 years, I was able to make most of those birthday parties, to get home to read bedtime stories, to cheer for my children at their soccer games. Simply put, Amtrak gave me—and countless other Americans—more time with my family. That’s worth immeasurably more to me than the fare printed on the ticket.

When I took the train every night—and I still do whenever possible—I always noticed the lights on in the houses flickering in the passing neighborhoods, dotting the landscape speeding by my window. Moms and dads were at their kitchen table, talking after they put their kids to bed. Like Americans everywhere, they were asking questions as profound as they are ordinary: Should Mom move in with us now that Dad is gone? How are we going to pay the heating bills? Did you hear the company may be cutting our health care? Now that we owe more on the house than it’s worth, how are we going to send the kids to college? How are we going be able to retire?

I would look out the window and hear their questions, feel their pain. And every time I made that trip, it would inspire me to get up the next day, head back down to Washington, and give them the answers they’re looking for. Those moments looking out the window and seeing the lights on, they told me things that the briefing folders in front of me never could. They gave color and meaning to the problems I’ve spent my career trying to solve. They reminded me why I made that trip back and forth 7,000 times.

But my support for rail travel goes beyond the emotional connection. With delays at our airports and congestion on our roads becoming increasingly ubiquitous, volatile fuel prices, increased environmental awareness, and a need for transportation links between growing communities, rail travel is more important to America than ever before.

Support for Amtrak must be strong—not because it is a cherished American institution, which it is—but because it is a powerful and indispensable way to carry us all into a leaner, cleaner, greener 21st century.

Consider that if you shut down Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor, it is estimated that to compensate for the loss, you’d have to add seven new lanes of highway to Interstate 95. When you consider that it costs an average of $30 million for one linear mile of one lane of highway, you see what a sound investment rail travel is. And that’s before you factor in the environmental benefits of keeping millions and millions of cars off the road.

In 1830, the first steam-engine locomotive, the Tom Thumb, graced America’s railways. Its first run was a rickety 13-mile trek from Baltimore to Ellicott Mills, Md., but it became much more than that. It marked the beginning of a new journey, heading straight into a better, more imaginative American future.

We are on a similar journey now. We are at the dawn of a new age, where the very best ideas of today will shape our tomorrow, where renewable clean energy and new transportation systems and more efficient technology will revolutionize American life the way the Tom Thumb did some 180 years ago.

On Jan. 20, 2009, pulling out of the Wilmington train station, embarking on that same short trip I made thousands of times before, I thought again about the journey America was about to take as a nation. And I saw our future the same way I always did: looking out Amtrak’s windows.

Posted by Malcolm Kenton

LaHood trumpets trains on Daily Show

Thursday, December 17, 2009

Department of Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood appeared on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart on Dec. 15, and spent much of the time talking about Amtrak and high speed rail.

Stewart asks if the DOT has anything groundbreaking in store, thinking along the lines of a new kind of fuel, a car of the future or hovercraft. Yes, says Secretary LaHood, “because of the President’s vision [...] we’re going to have high-speed passenger rail in America,” to thunderous applause.

While LaHood didn’t reveal much in the way of new information—unless you’re willing to read into his mentioning every part of the country but the Northwest when identifying possible targets for high speed rail funds (sorry Cascades!)—it’s always promising to see a prominent Administration official spreading the word to the general public.

—Sean Jeans-Gail and Malcolm Kenton

Posted by NARP

In Florida, The Fourth Time Could Be the Charm

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Reasons to hope for speedy improvements to make rail travel more convenient in the Sunshine State.

Hundreds were in attendance at the Florida Department of Transportation’s rail forum on December 2nd in Orlando, including every manufacturer of railroad vehicles in the world and many other industry professionals. The conference came in advance of the Florida legislature’s historic vote to invest in a new commuter line in the Orlando area and make a down-payment towards Orlando-Tampa-Miami high-speed rail. This is the fourth time that Florida has tried to jumpstart construction of a new system of fast trains, but the momentum seems to have built to a crescendo this go-round.

DOT officials speaking at the forum emphasized that these investments are only a first step. The state is looking eventually to buy new trainsets capable of 220-mph operation, though speeds on the initial line segment (Orlando-Tampa) will be limited to 168 mph. Though the DOT is currently operating under a less-than-desirable framework of running this segment down the median of Interstate 4, precluding downtown-to-downtown service to existing stations between Orlando and Tampa, the final routing will largely be determined by the contractor that makes the best bid.

Beyond the initial start-up, the state plans not to contribute a penny towards the service. The DOT wants future capital funding to come from federal grants, while the private sector covers the operating costs. It remains to be seen whether this scheme will prove viable once work begins.

Here’s hoping that the encouraging news out of the Sunshine State this month will lead to real results. Florida still lags far behind many states that have made serious strides in passenger rail over the past two decades, but its involvement is better late than never. While many aspects of the plan still need to be worked out, rail advocates cannot afford to make the perfect the enemy of the good. If this first phase is successful, we should begin to see incremental progress towards fast, frequent service connecting all the peninsula’s population centers that will begin to chip away at the state’s worsening traffic and suburban sprawl.

—Malcolm Kenton

Posted by Malcolm Kenton

Flag Stops: Who’s Gonna Pay For It

Wednesday, December 02, 2009

—Malcolm Kenton

Posted by Malcolm Kenton

Flag Stops: Emerging Trends

Thursday, November 12, 2009

Real-estate experts acknowledge a shift is afoot, Amtrak raises expectations, and even more advances on the other side of the Atlantic.

—Malcolm Kenton

Posted by Malcolm Kenton

Flag Stops: October 2009 Roundup

Friday, October 30, 2009

—Malcolm Kenton

Posted by Malcolm Kenton

NARP Reaches Out at Green Festival

Friday, October 16, 2009

As part of our ongoing effort to spread the word about our work and its timeliness to receptive audiences, NARP exhibited a booth at what is billed as “the nation’s premier sustainability event.” The Green Festival, now in its seventh year in four US cities, was held October 10th and 11th at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington. Thousands were in attendance over the course of the exposition, which featured over 350 exhibitors, primarily vendors of a variety of Earth-friendly products.

NARP’s booth featured large posters showing how unsustainable the US transportation system is, proclaiming trains’ environmental benefits, and giving reasons for becoming a member of the Association. Copies of our brochures and the August/September issue of our newsletter were on hand and were well-received. Eleven NARP members from the Washington area volunteered to staff the booth. Each enjoyed the chance to talk to others about passenger trains and why more of them are needed, and partook of the Festival’s exciting atmosphere. Twelve passers-by signed up for membership, while a host of others said they would join online.

While the Green Festival was a high-caliber event with a significant price tag, there are festivals and fairs in almost every community in the country that welcome nonprofits to host a table, tent or booth either free or at low cost. We encourage those of you who would like to improve NARP’s publicity and boost membership to participate in these kinds of events. Our staff will help you get prepared, answer your questions, and send you materials to display and hand out.

Spending an afternoon sharing with others the reasons why you are committed to bringing more and better passenger trains to the US is both fun and satisfying. Small organizations get bigger primarily through word-of-mouth. Anything you can do in your spare time to advance our cause is greatly appreciated.

Click “Read More” to see a few photos of NARP’s Green Festival volunteers and our display.

—Malcolm Kenton

» read more...

Posted by Malcolm Kenton

Coming Together for Smarter Development

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Expert panelists call attention to the burgeoning demand for homes that are convenient to transit and the challenges to making such housing widely available and affordable.

The American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) Public Policy Institute, the National Housing Trust and Reconnecting America held a panel discussion at Washington’s Union Station on September 30 on integrating affordable housing with better transportation for more livable communities. It is good to see that people in the various professions that relate to housing, transportation and the design of cities are coming together to address these issues in a coordinated way.

The qualities that make homes near transit lines desirable also drive up their prices, so the need for affordable housing accessible to transit is critical. As you get farther from the center of a city, housing gets less expensive, but transportation costs grow at a higher rate than the cost of a home drops. The opposite occurs as you get closer in. Residents of outlying suburbs who depend on their cars spend an average of 25% of their household income on getting around vs. 9% for those living in walkable neighborhoods with good transit connections. If transportation costs were considered as a factor in the affordability of housing, the whole equation would change in favor of denser, less car-dependent neighborhoods.

Nationwide, only 20% of housing units lie within half a mile of a bus or train stop, but in many larger cities, that figure is over 60%—even in places like Houston, Salt Lake City and Denver. Transit-oriented development doesn’t necessarily mean high-rise apartment buildings. It can also include townhomes and small single-family homes that are close together and laid out well enough to encourage walking.

Availability of affordable, pedestrian-friendly housing means greater independence for older adults who cannot/don’t want to/should not drive and whose personal mobility is limited. Those 65 and older make up over half of the residents of affordable housing units in the US; by 2050, senior citizens are expected to comprise 20% of the American population, up from 12% today.

A major obstacle to transit-friendly, affordable housing is market pressure to turn the existing housing stock into higher-priced condos and townhomes. Currently, there is much more demand for transit-oriented housing than there is supply. Properties in transit-oriented developments are holding their value despite the recession, and are some are seeing values increase. Codes and zoning laws often make infill development, mixed-use buildings, and repurposing of existing buildings difficult. Add to that the pervasive lack of integration of transportation and land-use planning, and you get a sense of the breadth of the challenge facing policymakers.

Rodney Harrell, Strategic Planning Advisor with the AARP Public Policy Institute, noted the irony of transit service cuts even as federal capital funding has grown. In response to this, Congressional leaders’ plans for the next surface transportation authorization include the reestablishment of federal operating assistance to keep the buses and trains that were bought primarily with federal dollars running. Keeping transit accessible and attractive to the entire public also means addressing safety issues and physical obstacles that make it difficult to get to train stations and bus stops, as well as providing better information (including the use of advanced technology) about how often trains and buses run, where they go and what connections are available.

Despite the enormity of the challenge, a sense of progress emerged in the conference room. The Obama Administration was given high marks for its attention to these matters. The rapidly changing American demographic and urgent need for solutions to the energy and climate crises make the transition of the American lifestyle back to one based on more cohesive communities and more reliance on public transportation, particularly rail, all but inevitable.

—Malcolm Kenton

Posted by Malcolm Kenton

Hopping the Local: News from State Rail Advocacy Groups

Monday, October 05, 2009

The first installment of an occasional blog feature reporting interesting news from NARP’s state-level cousins.

—Malcolm Kenton

Posted by Malcolm Kenton

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• Capon Praises Grants on NBC
• Rail Grants Are Answering People’s Demands
• Near-Term Rail Upgrades are Excellent Job Creators
• CNBC Looks at New Intercity and High Speed Rail Grants
• Flag Stops: Informed Decisionmaking (Or Lack Thereof)
• New Jersey Paper Speaks Out Against Dead End ARC Alignment
• V.P. Biden: Amtrak is “powerful and indespensible” vehicle for the future
• LaHood trumpets trains on Daily Show
• In Florida, The Fourth Time Could Be the Charm
• Flag Stops: Who’s Gonna Pay For It

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