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House Subcommittee Considers Expanding Passenger Train Service at Pittsburgh Hearing
Wednesday, July 08, 2009
NARP Council Member Kenneth Joseph reports on the hearing at which he testified.
The Subcommittee on Railroads, Pipelines and Hazardous Materials of the House Transportation & Infrastructure Committee held a field hearing in Pittsburgh on June 22. I was one of the witnesses, testifying on behalf of NARP. Click here for information about the hearing and copies of all witnesses’ testimony, including mine.
Alongside me at the witness table was Henry Posner III, Chairman, Railroad Development Corporation. RDC owns Iowa Interstate but also runs some passenger trains abroad. This caused Rep. Bill Shuster (R-PA), the subcommittee’s top Republican to remark, “I’m glad to know someone can run passenger trains at a profit,” a subject that seemed important to him. Posner submitted as testimony his recent Pittsburgh Post-Gazette op-ed column arguing for public-private partnership to invest in expanding track capacity on the Norfolk Southern Harrisburg-Pittsburgh mainline to permit introduction of much faster, more frequent passenger train service.
I endorsed this in my statement, while also urging a more immediate action—reinstatement of the Three Rivers to give Pennsylvanians a second schedule choice across their state and direct, daily service between Philadelphia, other Pennsylvania points and Chicago.
Maglev got more attention in this hearing than it deserved. At least three times, Dr. Fred Gurney, PhD, President and CEO of Maglev, Inc. assured the Congressmen that the Maglev line in China is “what President Obama and Vice President Biden mean when they say ‘high speed rail.’ ” Rep. Jason Altmire (D-PA), who chaired the hearing, was sympathetic and expressed hope that Maglev Inc. would soon receive $45,000,000 to prepare construction drawings for its Pittsburgh-Greensburg maglev line.
In response to questions, Lorenzo Simonelli, President and CEO of GE Transportation, suggested that GE’s new generation of clean, diesel-electric locomotives would be a better option than maglev. Simonelli’s excellent presentation elicited support, partly of course because the units would be built near Erie, PA.
The strangest testimony came from Patrick J. McMahon, president of Amalgamated Transportation Union Local 85, the local transit operator’s main labor union, who dismissed the whole idea of high speed rail and stated that we should build light rail instead. He suggested various specific extensions to the Pittsburgh light rail system that I—as a lifetime Pittsburgh resident—did not think were very well thought out. He also criticized the proposal to run commuter rail from New Kensington to Pittsburgh on the Allegheny Valley Railroad. Reasonable people can disagree about the merits of this concept, but it has many supporters, including Rep. Altmire.
Rep. Shuster provided a light moment when he asked Dr. Gurney, “I read somewhere that maglev could go straight up.” The maglev advocate replied, “You probably could, but you wouldn’t want to for passenger comfort reasons.”
Unfortunately, I was the only witness to address what could be done to improve service to Western Pennsylvania in the near future. Rep. Altmire was particularly interested in improving Pittsburgh to Cleveland, although it was not clear if he was looking for near term or long term improvments.
—Kenneth Joseph
Member, NARP Council of Representatives
Posted by NARP
Tags: congress, expansion, ge, high-speed rail, light rail, maglev, passenger rail, pennsylvania, three rivers(3) Comments
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