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TRAINS: A travel choice Americans want

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Flag Stops: Limited Resources Edition

Tuesday, July 07, 2009

Good news from Washington and Oregon, not-so-good news from New York and Florida, and more subsidies for automobile use, both explicit and disguised.

  • Good news: The Canadian customs agency has cleared the way for the long-awaited second daily Amtrak round-trip from Seattle to Vancouver, a route with high ridership potential.
  • Bad news: Due to New York State’s severe budget shortfall, Amtrak’s Adirondack, one of the most scenic routes in the US, may be in jeopardy. Despite Amtrak’s stated interest in maintaining the service, the state (which provides $5 million each year for its operation) has only guaranteed enough funds to operate the train until Sept. 30 of this year. The Adirondack represents a crucial link in the national system, connecting one of Canada’s largest cities to Albany and New York City, and by connection, to Boston, Chicago, Washington and other points. It also shows a great potential for higher ridership with modest trip-time improvements. If you live in New York State, be sure that your legislators and Governor Paterson’s office know that keeping the Adirondack running is a priority, even with limited resources.
  • Vermont journalist Caroline Abels would like to take the train from Vermont to Florida, but the schedules don’t quite work for her, a sad condition experienced by even the staunchest rail advocates. But she remains hopeful: “Vice President Joe Biden, who used to commute ... on Amtrak, could be a real advocate for trains in Congress. But so must we.” She calls on readers to become activists and organize for expanded service, which is precisely NARP’s raison d’etre.

  • The United States isn’t the first country to offer its residents incentives to trade in older cars for new ones. European and Asian predecessors to our “cash-for-clunkers” program have given a significant boost to car markets (French new-car registrations went up by 7.1% in June), and many are pushing their respective governments to continue the incentive. Meanwhile, the US car scrappage plans amounts to a very generous subsidy to automakers (and, by extension, to car travel) with very little impact on overall fuel economy and emissions, given that an improvement of as little as 2 miles per gallon qualifies a consumer for $3,500 in taxpayer money. At least some of the other countries with such schemes are balancing them with significant outlays for alternatives to the automobile.
  • Another, largely-unreported, auto-related general-taxpayer subsidy looms, according to “independent pension consultant” John Ralfe. GM’s restructuring has left in place pension plans for both hourly workers and salaried employees. Thus, the “new [GM] is still liable to fund the huge pension deficit, so its pension problems will continue,” Ralfe writes in the Financial Times. “As long as GM’s pension plans continue, the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC) remains on the hook to insure them.” He calls GM’s government-backed pension plans “a hidden transfer of $3.5 billion a year from the federal government, backing the PBGC, to GM’s 670,000 plan members.”

  • While we mourn the loss of the monorail engineer who died on Sunday, it’s a good time to think about what it means that the Walt Disney World monorail is the ninth most-used “rapid transit system” in the country and how experience with it shapes people’s expectations about public transportation.
  • LCL: Transportation for America (and NARP) applaud the completion of the first rail transit vehicle in decades to be assembled in the US by an American-owned company and hope that the continued growth of rail and transit networks keeps generating American jobs; British Prime Minister Gordon Brown makes electrifying rail lines a key point in his green initiative; the sale of Amtrak’s 30-year-old Turboliners is symbolic of the company’s handicapped condition; and as Amtrak moves towards paperless ticketing, a reminder to be careful with your tickets.

    • —Malcolm Kenton and Ross Capon

    Posted by NARP

    Tags: adirondack, advocacy, amtrak, auto industry, budget, cars, disney, monorail, new york, oregon, rail, seattle, shortfall, streetcar, subsidies, trains, vancouver, vermont,

    Federal Railroad Administration Going Full Steam

    Wednesday, September 28, 2011

    The U.S Department of Transportation and Federal Railroad Administration have had quite the productive week, delivering $225 million to five states to improve train service as part of the High-Speed & Intercity Passenger Rail Program.  That brings the Septmber-total for FRA HSIPR grants up to around $415 million.

    The projects announced this week will go to upgrade tracks and stations across the U.S., and includes:

    Empire Corridor
    Amtrak’s Wilmington Station

    These funds will upgrade existing Amtrak service by increasing top speeds, easing congestion at key choke points to reduce delays and improve on time performance, and improve reliability throughout the corridors. 

    The projects will also create good paying jobs.  The FRA received a lot of harsh criticism from opponents of the Recovery Act who believed they weren’t getting the money out the door fast enough.  But with the chances of an additional stimulus bill slim-to-none and even regular transportation budgeting caught up in partisan wrangling over the debt, these projects are hitting at just the right time.  With economists warning of the increasing prospects of double dip recession, we should all be thanking the FRA for employing skilled American workers to build things of lasting value (“value” being a key word…rail has received enough partisan heat without being the subject of the controversy that has overtaken renewable energy initiatives with the bankruptcy of solar panel manufacturer Solyndra).

    That, however, adds a bitter flavor to the fiscal year 2012 budgeting going on in Congress at this very moment.  Just as this program is finally hitting its stride, House leaders are doing their best to kill it.  The best-case scenario for HSIPR funding is the Senate’s propose $100 million—less than a quarter of what the FRA moved out the door in this month alone.  It’s up to transportation advocates to broadcast the HSIPR successes far and wide to discredit the “train to nowhere” fallacy wherever it rears its head.

    Posted by NARP

    Tags: amtrak cascades, delaware, empire corridor, federal railroad administration, high-speed rail grants, hsipr program, infrastructure funding, new york state, oregon, wilmington de,

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