NARP Blog

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.

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NARP blog

NARP Leaders Educate and Advocate on Capitol Hill

Thursday, May 06, 2010

Posted by Malcolm Kenton

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