NARP September 1999 Hotlines

#101-A - September 1, 1999
#102 - September 3, 1999
#103 - September 10, 1999
#104 - September 17, 1999
#105 - September 24, 1999

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Delivery of the first Acela high-speed train set will be delayed until next spring, according to an announcement today by Amtrak and by the consortium that is building the train.

In July, a problem was identified at the test track in Pueblo, Colo., caused by excessive side-to-side motion of the wheel-sets at high speeds. This was reported on in the press at the time. Since then, engineers have been modifying the wheel sets. But this has led to excessive wheel wear, primarily on the passenger coaches, though it has reduced the previous problem.

The consortium decided in the last few days to delay the testing and delivery process until a final solution to the wheel-set problem can be found. While this is no longer a safety issue, the excessive wheel-wear problem would mean unacceptably high maintenance costs. The consortium stressed that it wants the final product to meet Amtrak's and passengers' expectations.

Amtrak expressed disappointment with the development, but also stated its desire for a product that meets expectations. Amtrak will confirm a new delivery schedule about 60 days from now, after the consortium can make such a commitment. Amtrak said that the delay would have no impact on its long-term goal of operational self-sufficiency by 2003. This would be partly due to the fact that construction on train sets can proceed while the wheel-wear problem is investigated.

Put another way, the original 12-month delivery schedule of all 20 trains -- which was to run from November 1999 to November 2000 -- can be condensed because construction on the remaining trains can go forward. The delay in full service with all 20 trains will not be as long as the delay in delivering the first train set. Amtrak will forego the revenues (and operating costs) of the limited service that would have been offered this winter, but without having as long a delay to the revenues (and costs) associated with running the full 20-set service.

Meanwhile, electrification work continues, with 80% of the wires up, and three of the four substations tested. In early January, Amtrak plans to convert a couple of NortheastDirect trips to Boston to all-electric power, and will gradually convert all remaining trips. These electric trips will be under four hours between New York and Boston, a significant improvement over today.

[Continues with text from #101 of August 27]

Delivery of the first Acela high-speed train set will be delayed until next spring. The problem stems from excessive side-to-side motion of the wheel-sets at high speeds, as identified by test engineers in July. They made changes that stopped that problem, but that led to unusually rapid wear on wheel flanges, especially on passenger coaches.

The consortium building the train decided about a week ago to delay the testing and delivery process until a final solution to the wheel-set problem can be found. While this is no longer a safety issue, the excessive wheel wear would mean unacceptably high maintenance costs. The consortium stressed that it wants the final product to meet Amtrak and passenger expectations.

Amtrak expects to confirm a new delivery schedule in about 60 days, after the consortium can make such a commitment. Amtrak expressed its disappointment, but said that the delay would have no impact on its long-term goal of operational self-sufficiency by 2003. This would be partly due to the fact that construction on train sets can proceed while the wheel-wear problem is investigated, minimizing the impact on net revenues.

Meanwhile, Amtrak plans to convert a couple of NortheastDirect trips to Boston to all-electric power on January 10, and to convert more in late February after new locomotives start entering service. These trips will go from New York to Boston in under four hours.

The Federal Highway Administration published its new regulations for commercial truck drivers who are convicted of certain grade crossing violations, on September 2. Anticipation of these regulations, in the works for nearly two years, increased after a truck derailed the City of New Orleans last spring, killing 11. The new rules call for suspending a driver's license for at least 60 days after the first conviction, at least 120 days after the second conviction, and at least a year after the third conviction that happens in any three-year period. Also, employers who knowingly allow a driver to operate a truck with a suspended license can be fined up to $10,000.

An August 27 letter from the National Transportation Safety Board to Transportation Secretary Rodney Slater repeated a previous recommendation that the DOT develop a standardized hazard index, or a safety prediction formula, to evaluate grade crossings, and require states to use the formula when making investment decisions for upgrades.

The Federal Railroad Administration will conduct the first-ever full-scale passenger train test crash at the test center in Pueblo, Colo., this fall. It has awarded a contract to a company called Simula to lead the part of the testing effort that has to do with human injury and occupant protection.

Amtrak will dedicate its new high-speed rail testing facility on the waterfront in Wilmington, Del., on September 7.

The man accused of stabbing three people on the Lake Shore Limited in Ohio last week, Aaron Hall, was removed from a Greyhound bus the previous day by Illinois State Police. They found that Hall had a two-and-one-half-inch pocket knife, but they did not confiscate it because such knives are not illegal in Illinois. Authorities believe the same knife was used in the Lake Shore Limited attack. Hall pleaded innocent to all charges in county court yesterday.

The National Association of Development Organizations, last weekend in New Orleans, held a conference called, "Transportation: Connecting to Today's Rural America." One featured speaker was Greyhound President Craig Lentzsch, who made strong remarks on the importance of intermodalism to rural areas. He said New Orleans was a good example, where Greyhound serves both the airport and Amtrak station. Amtrak Reform Council Chairman Gil Carmichael made similar remarks, calling for Amtrak and Greyhound to have a unified reservations system.

The Senate's fiscal 2000 transportation appropriations bill took a big step forward yesterday. First, there was a scheduled cloture vote, which was defeated, 49-49. This vote was necessary because the Senate bill would have limited the amount of transit money going to California and New York, and redistributed the excess to other states. The Senators from those two states promised to filibuster the bill because of that provision, and the failure of the cloture vote upheld their right to filibuster. That could have put the whole bill, including Amtrak funding, into limbo for maybe another month.

But shortly after the cloture vote defeat yesterday, Transportation Appropriations Chairman Richard Shelby (R.-Ala.) -- who had authored the transit provision -- backed off from it and indicated he would allow the bill to go forward without the provision. That clears the way for a Senate floor vote relatively free of controversy, and subsequent House-Senate conference.

Nevertheless, there are very few legislative days remaining in the fiscal year, and some sort of continuing resolution for transportation may be necessary to carry programs forward into October.

Amtrak announced at a press conference at Mystic, Conn., on September 8, that a total of eight quad-gate, vehicle-detection systems will be installed at highway crossings in nearby Waterford and Stonington by next August. Additionally, three crossings will be closed. They are in Old Lyme, Conn., Exeter, R.I., and Attleboro, Mass. The closings and improvements are part of the high-speed rail project.

A light rail proposal for the Orlando area suffered what perhaps will be a fatal blow when the Orange County commissioners narrowly voted yesterday against contributing any money. The commissioner who switched to vote "no" said that the local transit system, Lynx, had not answered enough of his questions about who was paying for what.

New Jersey Transit awarded an $11-million contract to a California company on September 8 to design and install a real-time train information system. The system will provide up-to-the-minute train arrival announcements for every train at every station, with future capability to give riders the same information at monitors and kiosks inside train stations.

Washington Metro will start a program on its web site on September 13 allowing visitors to enter in any two addresses in the region and get detailed information on bus and train service, including schedule times and fares. This service will be available 24 hours a day, which is much better than the current telephone service that is limited to business hours.

Civic leaders and organizations from the western half of Virginia will meet October 12 in Farmville to discuss strategy on winning funding from the state legislature next year to allow passenger service to Bristol to go forward.

Press conferences are planned in Ohio at Cleveland, Galion, and Columbus on September 21 to promote state efforts to restore passenger train service between those cities. The Ohio Association of Railroad Passengers is one of the sponsors.

Nine coaches from the former Florida Fun Train were bought at auction recently by the Alaska Railroad for $3.6 million. The cars will be used for service expansion.

The Senate passed its version of H.R.2084, the fiscal 2000 transportation appropriations bill, on September 16. The next step will be a conference committee to reconcile the House and Senate bills, which both have the same funding amount for Amtrak, $571 million. The bill includes a "sense of the Senate" resolution by Sen. Richard Durbin (D.-Ill.). It says communities with emergency services costs resulting from the City of New Orleans grade-crossing accident in March should have claim under applicable laws for recovery of those costs form any party found to be responsible for the accident. Amtrak already expedited insurance payments of more than $300,000, about 80% of what the communities say they are owed.

Even with fiscal 2000 not quite done, the fiscal 2001 budget process is starting. NARP urges an appropriation of at least $989 million, as authorized in the 1997 Amtrak reauthorization law. Amtrak says it will meet the self-sufficiency target with $521 million, which the Administration promised 18 months ago, but this would provide no money for meaningful expansion or corridor development.

Hurricane Floyd's biggest impact on rail earlier in the week was the shutdown of the CSX central operations center in Jacksonville. There were not enough dispatchers to run the whole system. CSX banned passenger train service over much of its system -- though some freight trains still moved.

That meant that for much of the week there was no Amtrak service south of Washington or east of New Orleans. Also, the Crescent one day did not run north of Atlanta; the Capitol Limited one day did not run east of Pittsburgh. The Pere Marquette, Cardinal, and Hoosier State also had cancellations. The Auto Train had already been canceled this week because of scheduled track work at the terminal in Lorton, Va. Tri-Rail, Virginia Railway Express, and MARC commuter systems all had major disruptions because they are dispatched by CSX.

As the storm finally made its way up the East Coast yesterday, all major rail transit operations had some level of impact. Amtrak experienced a mud slide near BWI Airport, causing havoc on corridor operations. Some Metroliner passengers stranded for a few hours by flooding in West Baltimore left the train by removing emergency windows and climbing barbed-wire fences. New York-Boston service also was interrupted. New York-Philadelphia service is still suspended today because of flooding at Trenton. Flooding at Ossining has closed the New York-Albany route.

The National Transportation Safety Board held three days of hearings in Chicago this week on the grade-crossing accident in March that killed 11 Amtrak passengers. The truck driver involved in the wreck, John Stokes, did not testify.

The old Santa Fe station in Merced, Cal., was razed September 13, to make way for a new Amtrak intermodal station on the same site. Caltrans had determined that the old building was too badly deteriorated to be rehabilitated.

The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority signed a controversial contract on September 15, allowing a company called Bay State Transit to perform commuter rail maintenance work formerly done by Amtrak. The Transport Workers Union, which represents the Amtrak employees to be displaced, called this "a secret plan to save money by breaking unions, firing older workers and stealing pensions."

Tomorrow is the grand opening of the central portion of the Metro Green Line in Washington, D.C. The opening of two new stations at Columbia Heights and Georgia Avenue. means that two separate portions of the Green Line that opened in 1991 and 1993 can now run as a single service. The only remaining portion of the Metro system under construction is the southern end of the Green Line between Anacostia in Washington, and Branch Avenue in Prince George's County, Md., due to open in March 2001.

The Northeast Corridor was back in operation over its whole length by September 18, after delays caused by Hurricane Floyd. On September 17, there had been three feet of water over the tracks at Trenton, and eight feet over the tracks at Ossining on the Empire Corridor.

Due to extensive track and flooding between Richmond and Raleigh, the Silver Star began operations September 18 with a detour from Alexandria to Charlottesville, Charlotte, and Columbia. The Palm and Meteor did not begin running until September 23, with the Star restored to its normal route. However, the service is subject to significant delays -- perhaps three-to-four hours -- particularly in the area of Rocky Mount, where CSX built a temporary bridge over the Tar River. The Carolinian won't start running south of Richmond again until September 25.

Another problem area had been at Halifax, N.C., just south of the Virginia state line, where there was a 140-foot-long and 30-foot-deep washout on the CSX main line. CSX had to dump 30,000 tons of fill there to reopen the line by September 22, noon.

The eastbound Capitol Limited struck the back of a CSX freight train on September 20, midday, as it was leaving the station at Cumberland, Md., injuring 37 passengers. The impact derailed the Capitol's lead locomotive and two coaches, though all equipment remained upright. Investigators from Amtrak, CSX, and the National Transportation Safety Board will investigate the accident. The cause of the accident and the speeds of the trains are not yet known.

A House-Senate conference on the fiscal 2000 transportation funding bills might meet September 28 or 29, but Chairman Shuster has been objecting that various provisions infringe on his committee's jurisdiction. The House and Senate bills have the same amount for Amtrak, $571 million. The end of the fiscal year is less than a week away, so it is becoming likely that transportation will be among the programs to have funding continued beyond October 1 by a last-minute continuing resolution.

The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee is tentatively scheduled to consider S.1144 on September 29. This is the bill that would allow states the choice to spend some of their federal TEA-21 transportation money on intercity passenger rail projects.

Funding for the daily Capitol Corridor round trip to Colfax, Cal., has been extended to December 1 by the state legislature. The service has been in danger of being cut all summer.

The general manager in charge of Amtrak Intercity's Silver Service, Dennis Hale, has been named to lead a new service team responsible for the operation of Midwest Corridor trains. Steve McClarty, who previously held the position of general manager of both the Chicago Terminal and Corridor Services, is now assigned to work solely on issues relating to the Chicago Terminal. The Midwest Corridor service team will include Craig Willett, the assistant general manager of operations at Amtrak Intercity, and Jim Bradley, the assistant general manager of customer service.

The grand opening of Memphis Central Station is September 25, marked by an all-day street part at the station, and an 11:00 am ribbon cutting by U.S. Transportation Secretary Rodney Slater. Just ten years ago, the station was easily one of the worst in the country, and was in danger of abandonment due to a proposal by the Illinois Central Railroad to abandon its downtown line and force Amtrak onto a freight beltline. Now a reborn Central Station features a new passenger waiting area and direct connections downtown with a heritage trolley line that opened in 1993.