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Trains Help Revitalize America’s Cities and Towns
Monday, November 12, 2007
I recently took Amtrak’s Pacific Surfliner train from San Diego to Los Angeles Union Station, one of America’s great scenic train rides and Amtrak’s busiest route outside of Boston to New York and Washington, D.C.
During the trip into Los Angeles, I discovered that there was a large contingent on the train heading to a concert at the recently opened Nokia Theater at the new
L.A. Live
center in Downtown Los Angeles, which is just a short distance from Union Station via the Metro Rail. Before the Nokia Theater opened, these folks taking the train would have had to drive to non Metro Rail accessible concert venues scattered across the Los Angeles area. Whether they came from San Diego or San Luis Obispo or the many suburban and rural communities along the route of the Surfliner, the train allowed them to avoid traffic and ride in comfort.Downtown Los Angeles is undergoing a renaissance of residential, entertainment, and commercial development. Thousands of new residences are being built in Los Angeles’ long neglected center.
Planners now realize that America’s neglected city and town centers should revitalized as a sustainable strategy to accommodate growth into the future. This pattern, emulated around the country, is usually called smart growth or transit oriented development. Intercity rail and rail transit play a large role in this. Those that have access to trains put out much less climate changing carbon emissions than people who have to drive more.
And as anyone who can take the train regularly for work or pleasure can attest, train travel leads to much better quality-of-life than driving and flying exclusively. Whether you’re taking a commuter train or the spectacular Empire Builder across Montana, train travel is a much more civilized, sensitive way to experience our great country.
Recently our Executive Director Ross Capon was interviewed on NPR’s The Diane Rehm Show to discuss Senate Bill 294, Amtrak, and other passenger rail issues. One caller to the show lamented that, while she would like to take the train to Cleveland, Ohio, the early morning time of the train’s arrival combined with the economically distressed state of downtown Cleveland dissuades her.
Trains thrive especially on vibrant destinations in America’s cities and small towns. Recently our board of directors traveled to North Carolina and took the state supported Amtrak route The Piedmont. North Carolina’s DOT over the past few years has undertaken renovations at many of the region’s old railroad stations. Once run down stations are now assets to their communities and focal points for the revitalization of their host communities, from cities to small towns.
What can you do to help? Call your member of the House of Representatives and let them know that you support Senate Bill 294, the Passenger Rail Investment and Improvement Act. This bipartisan reauthorization of Amtrak recently passed the Senate by a resounding 70 votes to just 22 against. It must now be introduced in the House’s Transportation and Infrastructure Committee and voted out for consideration by the House Rules Committee and, eventually, the full House. It’s important that this vital piece of legislation get to the President soon.
By increasing investment in Amtrak in partnership with the states, S.294 will help Amtrak connect communities and improve them – just as it is already doing along The Piedmont in North Carolina and along the Pacific Surfliner route in Southern California.
—Dennis Lytton
NARP Board Member
Los Angeles, California
Posted by NARP
Tags: amtrak reauthorization, dennis lytton, transit-oriented development,National Streetcar Conference in Los Angeles
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Thursday afternoon at Los Angeles’ historic Orpheum Theater, myself and 250 others attended the National Streetcar Conference. Sponsored by Reconnecting America, The Seaside Institute, and a local Los Angeles City Councilmember, the conference brought engineers and other experts from around the country together to discuss bringing back streetcars to America’s towns and cities. (For more coverage, see BlogDowntown and Streetsblog LA).
Streetcars, trolleys, or trams were a familiar part of cities and towns in America before World War II. They are making a comeback, however, in places as diverse as small Kenosha, Wisconsin to Portland, Oregon.
Streetcars, unlike their close cousin light rail, are designed for “place making” (as one panelist called it) as much as they are about “through” transportation. Streetcars help create walkable, sustainable, and attractive communities. They help integrate people with other transportation resources like intercity rail (Amtrak or commuter rail), rail transit, car-sharing, or bicycling. They allow people the option of having only one or no cars in their households and using them far less often and otherwise encouraging “transit-oriented development”.
What impressed me most, however, was how much local businesses and residents were involved in the planning and financing of their streetcars. In the various case studies that we went over, stakeholders elected to assess themselves special fees to pay for a part of construction. And given innovative construction techniques such as using a very light sub-base for the track structure (therefore no underground utility relocation is necessary) and running in existing streets and mediums, construction costs are very low, in the range of $10 to $25 million per mile.
Are streetcars a good idea for your community?
Dennis Lytton
Member, NARP Board of Directors
Posted by NARP
Tags: dennis lytton, streetcars, transit-oriented development,Lytton Op-Ed: CAHSR “Would Save Lives and Fuel”
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Kudos to NARP Board Member Dennis Lytton, whose op-ed piece, “High-speed rail would save lives and fuel,” the Daily Breeze (Southern California) published yesterday. Dennis does a fantastic job bringing into focus the long-term safety and environmental benefits the California High-Speed Rail project would bring. For more analysis, see the CAHSR Blog.
—Matthew Melzer
Posted by NARP
Tags: california high-speed rail, california proposition 1, california proposition 1a, dennis lytton, oil, safety,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,©2010 National Association of Railroad Passengers | » NARP website
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