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LaHood: If you build it, they will come.
Thursday, March 04, 2010
This morning, the Subcommittee on Transportation, Housing and Urban Development of the US Senate Appropriations Committee heard from Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood on the President’s fiscal 2011 budget for his agency [PDF], as the committee begins work on determining spending levels for the year to begin October 1, 2010. During the question and answer period, Sen. Christopher Bond (R-MO) engaged LaHood in a heated discussion surrounding DOT’s high-speed intercity passenger rail grant program. Even when Bond tried to steer the discussion towards other transportation topics, LaHood remained focused on promoting the high-speed rail program.
Here is a sample of their back-and-forth. Note that this is a rough and incomplete transcription resulting from hurried note-taking. Exact quotes are marked by quotation marks.
Senator Bond: How do you measure [livability]? We [Congress] develop locally-based community plans for neighborhood stabilization and economic development. I support access to [alternative] transportation. The BRT [bus rapid transit] program in Kansas City has been very important. But ... livability means having a decent highway for many of my rural constituents. We lose three people a day [in accidents] on Missouri’s highways. At least one third of those deaths are due to poor highway conditions. It’s a question of staying alive. If we want all these dollars “to go in and build urban livability sections,” there need to be broader criteria.
Secretary LaHood: [To use] an example from your home state: Kansas City’s $50 million [TIGER grant] is for some of the most simple things we take for granted, like making sure people have a sidewalk to walk on. That may sound silly to you, but I took a tour and found an abandoned neighborhood where people can’t even drive down the street. We [DOT] worked with [the Department of Housing and Urban Development] to build affordable housing so people could stay in the neighborhood. That’s what livable communities [means].
Bond: When did it become DOT’s responsiblity to build sidewalks?
LaHood: You all [Congress] did it. I was part of it as a member of Congress.
Bond: I question how much money is spent on sidewalks when we need highways and bridges.
LaHood: [DOT is] just working with the priorities Congress set.
Bond: We could have used a whole lot more for highways and bridges. Every dollar we’re spending is going on the deficit. [...] The Wall Street Journal had an article by Wendell Cox on January 31st called “The Runaway Subsidy Train.” [Read our response here.] Did you see it? [LaHood: No]. I’ll give you a copy of it. [Cox says] only two [high-speed rail] segments have broken even. If you want to make it profitable, there must be high fares. What’s going to be the total cost of high-speed rail? California estimates [their system will cost] $40 to $60 billion, all taxpayer money, while the airlines flying there aren’t being subsidized by the taxpayer. [Highway users] are helping subsidize high-speed rail. What is the justification? [...] Missouri’s $30 million [in HSIPR funds] will provide extra sidings so trains can pull off & others can pass. What are the ridership projections? Can we justify that cost to the nation’s taxpayers?
LaHood: I’ll answer your question for the record. When Eisenhower signed the Interstate [Highway] bill, nobody knew how we were going to pay for it. I know this: Americans want high speed passenger rail. So many around America want good passenger rail transportation. It will connect opportunities for people. If you build it, they will come. The Interstate system is an example of that. European and Asian governments have made big investments and these lines have been huge economic engines. I can cite examples chapter and verse: if you build it, they will come. The contractos will invest a lot of private money in it.
Bond: As Governor of Missouri, I supproted and started subsidizing Amtrak. Have riders come in large numbers? No. Few people ride it. I’m not willing to spend billions more simply on the thought that they will come.
LaHood: But as Governor and Senator, you were willing to build a [highway] bridge [across the Mississippi River] on the promise that people [would] use it. “The same principle is true for high-speed intercity passenger rail.”
Posted by Malcolm Kenton
Tags: appropriations, christopher bond, discussion, high-speed rail, kit bond, missouri, passenger trains, ray lahood, secretary, senate committee, senator, transportation,NARP Leaders Educate and Advocate on Capitol Hill
Thursday, May 06, 2010
Each year, members of NARP’s Council of Representatives, our all-volunteer governing body, meet with Members of Congress and their staff to educate them about passenger train issues and urge their support for more funding and broader policy support for intercity trains. This year, in addition to our perennial, yet always essential, ask for full funding of Amtrak, we also joined with a coalition of other rail advocacy and public interest groups in calling for $4 billion in fiscal 2011 funding for the nascent yet highly oversubscribed High-Speed and Intercity Passenger Rail (HSIPR) grant program to states.
In addition to Council members, several general members of the Association joined our Day on the Hill this year. According to their reports, many Senators, Representatives and staffers—even those who haven’t supported Amtrak in the past—appeared open to hearing our case. No matter where the lawmaker stands on the issue, the most important thing about in-person meetings is to demonstrate the extent of public support for better transportation choices. And that we did very well.
Here is a report from Council member Dennis Lytton, which was posted yesterday on the California High Speed Rail Blog:
Last week I attended the National Association of Railroad Passengers annual meeting in Washington, DC. NARP is the largest national membership advocacy organization for train and rail transit passengers. In fact, it’s the only group in Washington, DC with a staff dedicated to this purpose.
The most important part of our three day meeting is our “Day on the Hill” visiting Senators and Members of Congress followed our reception in one of the House office buildings. This year, along with other NARP council members from California, we visited our two senators, Boxer and Feinstein, as well as our House members. Our primary asks (lesson one visiting your Congressmember, always have a concise “ask”, with a handout) were:
* $4 billion for intercity and high speed rail capital grants, and
* Full funding of Amtrak’s appropriations requests for this year.NARP as well as Californians for High Speed Rail is a member of the Fourbillion.com coalition, which is advocating for this. Please visit and register to let your Congressional representation know that you want HSR and intercity rail. (I think my take away this year may be to always have a website for my “ask” each year!)
Secondly, we were also pushing for passage of the stalled transportation reauthorization bill in Congress and for High Speed Rail to have a dedicated funding source. There is a consensus that this won’t happen before the November election. Which of course scares many of us since the next Congress may not have as friendly a composition as this one. More than one source on the Hill thought that the thorny issue of raising the gas tax would be brought up by the lame duck Congress in November or December.
My overall impression? Having participated in NARP’s Day on the Hill since 2006, things have certainly changed for the better. The Congressional majority and Administration of that time barely noticed that the issue of trains for a sustainable, mobile future for our county existed. The federal DOT famously released a report during these years decrying road congestion but never mentioning rail for passengers or freight. Republican administrations since Reagan had regularly tried to write Amtrak out of the federal budget and even under Clinton a Gingrich inspired reauthorization of Amtrak passed in the late 90s that mandated Amtrak to become profitable with no investment.
Our biggest fight now in Washington will be to get the $4 billion for HSR nationwide. The administration has only asked for one billion, just a year after their groundbreaking inclusion of $8 billion in ARRA (the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act). Anaheim to San Francisco is about $20 billion. We have almost $10 billion from the Prop. 1A bonds. We received a little more than $2 billion from ARRA early this year. Four billion a year, with California getting its fare share as it did in ARRA, will get us to completion of the first segment.
Which leads me back to an earlier point – getting high-speed passenger rail into the transportation reauthorization bill stalled in Congress will be a great accomplishment. Funding HSR isn’t a political football in other countries in Western Europe, for instance. Once we get HSR into our federal transportation funding machinery funding it will be automatic and non-political. Just as it is for highways in this country.
Posted by Malcolm Kenton
Tags: advocacy, amtrak, appropriations, capitol hill, congress, dennis lytton, four billion, funding, high-speed rail, lobbying, narp, passenger trains, representative, senator, volunteers,Amtrak Threatened With Shutdown Budget
Thursday, September 08, 2011
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| Image: Amtrak In the Heartland |
The House Committee on Appropriations came out with their proposed transportation budget for next year, and you should be concerned. Very concerned.
The House Appropriations Subcommittee on Transportation & Housing proposed yesterday to slash funding for Amtrak to $1.1 billion—a reduction of more than $357 million from what Amtrak received in FY2011. Significantly, the operating grant would be cut 60%—from $563 million in 2010 and 2011, down to $227 million.
The bill also requires states to pay 100% of costs of operations of short corridors. Amtrak is warning that this provision would eliminate around 150 weekday state-supported trains. This would effectively strand more than nine million passengers, annually, in California, Illinois, Maine, Michigan, Missouri, New York, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Texas, Vermont, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin.
The High-Speed and Intercity Passenger Rail program—a highly oversubscribed program that has seen 39 states apply for funds to improve (and introduce) modern passenger trains for the 135 million Americans that live in a community connected to a rail corridor—was given no funding at all.
Posted by NARP
Tags: amtrak funding, appropriations, congress, high-speed rail grants, state-supported trains, transportation investment,NARP’s Warning About Amtrak Shut-Down Bill Echoes Across the U.S.
Tuesday, September 13, 2011
Furor over a House transportation spending bill budget that would force a shutdown of the entire Amtrak system—and which explicitly attacks short corridor passenger train service across the U.S.—has spread in the days following last week’s disclosure of the draft-bill’s details.
The GOP-led House Appropriations Subcommittee on Transportation & Housing on September 8 approved a fiscal year 2012 spending bill that would slash Amtrak’s operating grant by 60 percent, prohibit the use of federal operating dollars to fund operating expenses for state-supported routes, and zeroes-out the High-Speed and Intercity Passenger Rail Program.
In an effort led in large part by NARP, transportation groups and media outlets across America are warning the public about the very real threat this budget proposal poses to hundreds of passenger trains across the country:
- NARP’s Action page lets you reach out directly to your Representative and let them know you support trains in America;
- Streetsblog picks up NARP’s warning about the shut-down budget;
- The Albany Times-Union quotes NARP Board Member (and President of the Empire State Passengers Association) Bruce Becker in saying the bill would be “devastating for New York.” The Times-Union also publishes an illustrative Amtrak map of the corridor trains targeted by the bill. [You can also see an Amtrak PDF listing corridor trains];
- The Longview News-Journal speaks with NARP Vice-President Sean Jeans-Gail about a worst case scenario, and how the bill would undermine the transportation improvement efforts of “hundreds of communities”;
- The Kansas City Business Journal looks at the danger to service in Missouri;
- The Baltimore Sun’s editorial board calls the budget proposal a “short-sighted assault on passenger rail”;
- The Charlottesville Daily Progress in Virginia mocks the logic behind killing successful short intercity corridors like the recently launched Lynchburg-Washington, D.C train (which also serves Charlottesville) that has been selling-out trains since its inauguration.
| Image: Amtrak, via Albany Times-Union |
Posted by NARP
Tags: albany, amtrak, appropriations, baltimore, bruce becker, charlottesville, kansas, missouri, narp, sean jeans-gail, short corridors, streetsblog,Congress protects state-supported trains, slashes Amtrak operating funds, and kills high-speed rail
Tuesday, November 15, 2011
House and Senate negotiators last night agreed on a fiscal 2012 “minibus” spending bill that includes transportation.
The bill funds Amtrak at $1.42 billion and protects short distance services from the attack in the House subcommittee’s bill. But there is no new funding for the High-Speed and Intercity Passenger Rail Program of grants to states for infrastructure and equipment investments. The Senate had included $100 million for this, the House nothing.
The Amtrak operating number is alarmingly tight at $466 million, which is $95 million (or 17%) below the 2011 level.
The bill is expected to pass both House and Senate this week.
In a victory for passenger train advocates, negotiators eliminated language from passed by a House subcommittee that would have prohibited the use of federal operating funds on state-supported routes. This targeted such popular services as California’s Capitol Corridor and Pacific Surfliner, the Midwest’s Hiawatha and Heartland Flyer, and Maine’s Downeaster—among many others. Passage of this provision would have eliminated 150 weekday trains and stranded more than nine million passengers each year.
Amtrak capital funding was increased by negotiators above the Senate’s $936 million and the House subcommittee’s $898 million.
But the offsetting price is heavy. Amtrak Operating was slashed to $466 million. While well above the House subcommittee’s proposal of $227 million—which NARP believes would have forced a system shutdown—this was well below the Senate’s $544 million and the 2011 level of $561 million. The $466 million figure is slightly more than the $457.5 million Amtrak needed for 2011.
The new operating level presents a bigger problem than may first appear. Amtrak cannot count on record revenues every year, or on besting the bottom line in its budget (which it did for 2011 by $30 million). A major economic downturn or accident could wreak havoc in fiscal 2012. Legislators, it seems, are looking to provide the bare minimum to keep existing trains running or, as some observers would put it, giving Amtrak “just enough to fail.”
Negotiators also included a provision encouraging Amtrak to build up an operating reserve account:
“The conferees encourage Amtrak to carry $200 million in reserves within their Operating account, and encourage use of any favorable ticket revenue to get to this amount before using this favorable ticket revenue on Capital expenses unless such Capital expenses are necessary to ensure the safe operation and maintenance of the passenger rail system.”
Given the very tight operating grant level legislators have just provided, it is not clear how they expect Amtrak to build up its reserves. This language perhaps is intended as advance warning that appropriators will continue to look at ways to eat away at Amtrak’s grant in future budgeting cycles.
The news was also bad for the High-Speed and Intercity Passenger Rail Program, which saw all funding eliminated. This comes as a disappointment, following a successful summer and fall by the Federal Railroad Administration. The FRA made great strides in clearing the way for states to request bids, hire engineers and workers, and begin upgrading tracks around the U.S. This zero-out could also negatively impact California’s Los Angeles-to-San Francisco high-speed rail project, which has been caught in turmoil over a new business plan which increased the final price tag of the project. Nonetheless, funding already in the pipeline will provide a lot of jobs and service improvements over the next few years—if Congress does not continue to ratchet Amtrak funding down to the point where the trains stop running.
Posted by NARP
Tags: amtrak, appropriations, california, congress, fy 2012, house, hsr, senate, state-supported routes,©2010 National Association of Railroad Passengers | » NARP website
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