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Flag Stops: Digging a Little Deeper

Wednesday, June 24, 2009

A major transportation bill charts new territory, Chinese rail investment attracts major corporations, two passenger rail critics miss the point, and more on this week’s roundup of reactions and ruminations related to rail.

  • Last week, Chaiman James Oberstar (D-WI) of the House Transportation & Infrastructure Committee unveiled his much-anticipated draft of the Surface Transportation Reauthorization Act. Transportation for America has the executive summary and full text (90 pages), and a discussion of how it would affect states and locales seeking money for new transit systems. The Transport Politic and Streetsblog DC also have commentary worth reading. NARP is encouraged that a rail title was included, representing a change from initial plans and a first for a major surface transportation bill. However, to our knowledge, the $50 billion authorized for the new high-speed rail program over five years still lacks a funding source.
  • China’s $87.9-billion rail investment is generating a lot of economic activity, and not just in China. IBM and General Electric are joining other multinational companies in producing the technology and infrastructure that could soon make China the world leader in rail volume and sophistication. Ramped-up rail investment on the home front would make a similar impact, generating a sizeable number of both blue- and white-collar jobs.
  • Bill Farley’s Charleston (SC) Post and Courier op-ed calling for an Amtrak shutdown shows that hostility to passenger trains is alive and well among the usual suspects. Distances between many U.S. cities are comparable to those in Europe. The key to the success of intercity trains there is that pedestrian- and transit-friendly urban development patterns enhance their accessibility and proximity to final destinations. but many depend on Amtrak even in less populated areas. The main reason why some foreign intercity passenger rail lines seem profitable is that their balance sheets do not account for the massive public investments that went into their construction nor the urban and suburban transit lines that feed into them, which nobody expects to be profitable. The U.S. is making progress on this score—consider Dallas whose train station is the hub of light rail and commuter rail services, and St. Louis where the new multimodal terminal has linked Amtrak to the highly successful light rail service and Lambert Airport. Farley also whined, “There are vast areas of this country where nobody lives and/or nobody wants to go.” But many depend on Amtrak even in less populated areas, not just in Montana, North Dakota and East Texas but in many of the other smaller cities that Amtrak serves. More and more Americans are taking trains, and with the proper investment and guidance, they can once again become “a major mover of people.”
  • A known critic of rail investment and smart growth policies once again focuses on the non-issue of passenger rail’s profitability. Why doesn’t anyone ever ask why highway construction and maintenance isn’t profitable, or why the air traffic control system doesn’t make money? Because that’s not the point. We invest in transportation infrastructure because society and the economy benefit from the dividends, and because almost all other profitable enterprises depend on efficient mobility.
  • LCL: Secretary LaHood talks up DOT’s guidance for high-speed and intercity passenger rail proposals; rail industry leaders discuss electrification in the US, Canada & Britain; Switzerland and Italy are working on the world’s longest railroad tunnel (35 miles Zurich to Milan); Michiganders hear a dubious proposal for a privately-financed hydrogen-powered maglev line while their cash-strapped state threatens to cut its operating grant for Amtrak and potentially terminate a route in the state; Michigan’s top transportation official defends high-speed rail; dramatic on-time performance gains draw riders back to the rails in Missouri; Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) wisely shelves maglev support in favor of the more acheivable Desert XPress proposal (meanwhile, the Las Vegas Sun evaluates the competing bullet-train proposals);federal rail money turns heads in Atlanta; and an op-ed in New Jersey’s Daily Record echoes NARP’s concerns about the new tunnels under the Hudson River.

    • —Malcolm Kenton and Ross Capon

    Posted by NARP

    Tags: amtrak, china, congress, corporation, critics, economy, oberstar, passenger rail, profitability, reauthorization,

    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,

    Pre-Application Excitement

    Thursday, July 16, 2009

    The possibilities are virtually endless as states begin jockeying for federal passenger rail improvement money.

    For passenger rail advocates, this has been a great week for imagining possibilities that may be coming one step closer to fruition. The Department of Transportation announced today that the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) has received a whopping 278 pre-applications from state governments and interstate authorities, each seeking a piece of the $8 billion included in the Recovery Act for “high-speed intercity passenger rail.” The news comes a full five weeks in advance of the final application deadline, and indicates a high level of interest from those who would do the work of constructing and upgrading rail infrastructure to support the desired level of service.

    Here is a mere sampling of projects that are now in the running, based on news reports compiled by NARP. Each heading links to the full story. The FRA has complete summary data [PDF] of the pre-applications.

    1. State of Illinois: Undisclosed sum to boost top speeds to 110 mph on Amtrak’s Chicago-St. Louis, Chicago-Milwaukee/Madsion, and Chicago-Detroit routes, and lay groundwork for 220-mph Chicago-St. Louis express service.
    2. California Nevada Super Speed Train Commission: Undisclosed sum for a maglev line from Los Angeles to Las Vegas. Estimated total cost: $12 billion.
    3. State of Kansas: $500,000 to study implementation of state-supported Amtrak service from Kansas City to Oklahoma City (via Topeka and Wichita).
    4. States of Texas, New Mexico and Colorado: Undisclosed sum to study viability of a dedicated high-speed rail line from El Paso to Denver via Albuquerque and Santa Fe.
    5. State of Virginia: $2 billion plus for Infrastructure improvements allowing higher-speed trains between Washington and Petersburg.
    6. State of Connecticut: Undisclosed sum to establish high-speed service between New Haven and Springfield, MA.
    7. State of Pennsylvania: $6.8 billion for four projects, including Pittsburgh-Harrisburg upgrades and maglev between Greensburg and Pittsburgh International Airport.
    8. Arkansas Highway Commission: at least $500,000 to study high-speed connections from Little Rock to Texarkana and Memphis.
    9. State of Wyoming: Depending on what Colorado does, may be interested in extending the El Paso-Denver line north to Cheyenne.
    10. State of OklahomaUndisclosed amount to initiate 150-mph service from Tulsa to Oklahoma City and make track improvements from Oklahoma City south to the Texas state line to speed up Amtrak’s Heartland Flyer.
    11. State of Indiana: $49 million for Amtrak service from Chicago to Toledo via Fort Wayne.
    12. Ohio Rail Development Commission: At least $250 million to initiate service on the 3C (Cincinatti-Columbus-Cleveland) route, as part of a more expansive planned network.
    13. State of North Carolina: $4 billion to pursue 90 proposed projects to upgrade tracks & signals between Charlotte and the state line north of Raleigh, including reconstructing a direct rail link from Raleigh to Richmond.

    As a side note, the $31 billion “Illinois Jobs Now Act,” signed by Gov. Quinn on Monday, contains significant rail and transit investments. Included is 322 million for CREATE, a massive project led by a public-private partnership to reduce railroad traffic congestion in and around Chicago, the nation’s busiest freight rail hub and a major Amtrak hub. The Act also contains $150 million for the state’s share of Amtrak operating grants, $1.8 billion for public transit, and loan repayments to freight railroads. The state funding bolsters Illinois’ odds of winning stimulus grants for passenger rail. Here’s a full list [PDF] of the projects funded.

    —Malcolm Kenton and Sean Jeans-Gail

    Posted by NARP

    Tags: amtrak, applications, congress, create, funds, high-speed rail, illinois, passenger rail, states, stimulus, transportation,

    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.

  • The well-regarded annual Emerging Trends in Real Estate report for 2010, after a survey of over 900 industry experts, determined that outer-fringe suburban developments “have no staying power” and that all the smart money is being invested in transit oriented development and housing that is convenient to non-auto transportation, job centers and 24-hour amenities—showing once again that the kind of lifestyle that is most in demand can only be sustained by a strong passenger train network.
  • An Amtrak spokesman tells the Train Riders Association of California (TRAC) that Amtrak will make a “dramatic and bold” announcement on new equipment purchases in January, reports NARP Council member Jim Loomis. We should expect nothing less.
  • European countries are leaping even farther ahead of the US on the passenger rail front, writes Arthur Frommer in the Cape Cod Times. New high-speed lines are being built from Amsterdam to Brussels, Florence to Bologna (Italy), and Helsinki to St. Petersburg. Frommer also highlights changing demographics that contradict the low-U.S.-population-density argument, and plugs NARP’s vision for America’s future mobility. Meanwhile, British cities are organizing a push for escalated high-speed rail development.

  • The Transport Politic sizes up the implications of the results of last Tuesday’s elections in New Jersey, Virginia, Cincinnati, Chicago’s Indiana suburbs, Atlanta, Charlotte, Miami, New York City and Seattle on rail and transit interests.

  • Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood talks up rail at a major transportation policy symposium, saying “this Administration will not leave the future of railroads in this country to chance,” adding that he wants passenger and freight trains to be just as relevant to the US economy in the future as they were in the 1800s.
  • Once again, Ryan Avent says it well: “If you think there’s no substitute for the automobile, then the decline of the auto industry looks like running headlong off a cliff. But in reality, there is something just fine on the other side of the transition: a world in which people drive less and don’t mind it.”

  • The Midwest High Speed Rail Blog highlights two ways that passenger railroads are, and should be, generating more interest in train travel: by transporting popular sports teams and taking advantage of movie tie-ins.

  • A head-to-head comparison between living in Almeria, Spain (a country where trains have the lion’s share of the intercity air-rail market), and Milwaukee: in the former you see people out and about; in the latter you see an overabundance of “access roads, parking lots, highways and bridges.”
  • LCL: Light rail may be on its way to Monterey County, connecting it with regional rail in the San Francisco Bay area. * * * Take a ride in the cab of a Eurostar high-speed train from Paris to London, in 12 parts on YouTube. * * * Speakers at Wisconsin’s “Freight Rail Day” offer lobbying advice.

    • —Malcolm Kenton

    Posted by Malcolm Kenton

    Tags: amtrak, development, equipment, europe, future, high-speed rail, housing, marketing, passenger rail, population density, procurement, ray lahood, real estate, ryan avent, smart growth, suburbs, survey, transit-oriented, trends,

    Infrastructure Investment Makes Business Sense

    Wednesday, January 19, 2011

    A 10-minute video segment from PBS’s Need to Know compares the lives of two commuters. One takes Amtrak two days a week between Normal, Illinois, and Chicago, and says he would do so more often if trains were faster and more frequent and reliable—a desire that is likely to be fulfilled thanks in part to Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn’s commitment. His hometown is planning a downtown revitalization around a new train station, making it possible for overnight visitors to stay, eat, shop, be entertained and attend meetings and conventions downtown without needing a car.

    The other lives in Madison, Wisconsin, and has to go to Milwaukee frequently for business meetings. While he would rather commute by train, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s decision to reject federal funds for a Madison-Milwaukee train project that was ready to be built means that he will be forced to continue to drive an arduous three-hour round-trip on an Interstate that is often treacherous in the winter.

    Kevin Conroy, the latter commuter, says Walker’s move is not an example of how businesspeople make decisions. “[Walker] turned away an investment in transportation between Wisconsin’s two biggest cities over a 90-second political add,” Conroy says, obviously frustrated. He’s not the only one at a disadvantage—scores of railcar manufacturing jobs and railroad construction jobs will not be coming to Wisconsin.

    This tale of two travelers—and two governors—centers on this question: Do you generate economic development by cutting spending or by investing in the infrastructure that keeps the economy, and people, moving?

    Watch the full episode. See more Need To Know.

    —Malcolm Kenton

    Posted by Malcolm Kenton

    Tags: amtrak, chicago-st louis, governors, illinois, infrastructure investment, milwaukee-madison, passenger rail, pat quinn, pbs, scott walker, wisconsin,

    Federal investment must precede private investment

    Friday, June 24, 2011

    Say you’re a looking to buy a home in a medium-sized city, and your choice is between two neighborhoods. Neighborhood A is a well-established, thriving, middle-class neighborhood with a stock of postwar-era homes that are generally in good shape. Its streets and sidewalks are well-maintained, its crime rate is low and it’s in a high-ranking school district. Yet there are no stores within walking distance, a fact that concerns you as the city has bad traffic congestion and gas prices are constantly rising.

    Photo by TCDavis on Flickr.

    Neighborhood B is an historically working-class neighborhood of modest Victorian homes, many of which are in need of major repairs. It has had some crime issues, and its schools are ranked slightly below average. Yet there is a diversity of retail within walking distance, recent city government investments have fixed up the streets, crime is starting to go down thanks to a greater police presence, and a light rail line is planned to be built within blocks of the house you’re considering.

    The city is offering mortgage assistance to homebuyers in neighborhood B, but not enough to make the decision a no-brainer. Meanwhile, a budget crunch is forcing the City Council to consider making cuts in public education, safety and infrastructure maintenance, making it highly uncertain whether neighborhood B will continue to improve.

    Extrapolate this analogy to the national level, where Neighborhood A is the United States’ road and highway network and the many thriving car-oriented places it has generated, and neighborhood B is its passenger train network, and the walkable inner cities and small towns that once thrived on their rail connections but have fallen on hard times. Like a city trying to encourage people to buy homes in disadvantaged neighborhoods, Congressional leaders want to spur private investment in passenger rail. Yet most are unwilling to make the substantial public investments that any private contractor would require in order to enter the business. House leaders are even threatening to make devastating cuts to passenger rail just at a time when it is beginning to revive thanks to earlier federal investment (the Recovery Act and subsequent appropriations for High-Speed and Intercity Passenger Rail).

    » read more...

    Posted by Malcolm Kenton

    Tags: economic development, highways, neighborhoods, passenger rail, public-private, transportation investments, us infrastructure, walkability,

    The Bigger Crisis We Must Address

    Friday, November 25, 2011

    CNN World’s “On the Move” column features a worthwhile debate between two experts who support high-speed rail. One, Friends of the Earth’s Tony Bosworth, tempers his support for HSR with skepticism that it can draw enough people away from cars and planes, and that governments facing defecits and financial stress will be able to undertake such large infrastructure projects:

    Photo by L.C. Nottaasen on Flickr

    One of the main factors is cost. Despite soaring fuel prices, motoring and flying are still expected to be cheaper than high speed rail. If faster rail travel is to become a realistic alternative it must be affordable too.

    The UK’s [planned London to Manchester] high speed rail link is expected to cost a whopping $54 billion. But living as we do in cash-strapped times there’s surely a strong case for investing some of that that money in less grandiose, but more effective, projects.

    Affordability and cost-effectiveness are important considerations. Several high-speed rail lines around the world, though, manage to be financially sound and attract lots of riders while offering very attractive fares. Most notably, France’s TGV more than covers its operating costs and owns more than half of the air-rail travel market on its key routes, while its lowest fares are cheaper than driving (especially considering France’s higher gas taxes) and flying.

    » read more...

    Posted by Malcolm Kenton

    Tags: clean transportation, energy crisis, high-speed rail, mode share, national debt, oil consumption, passenger rail, petroleum,

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