Hotline #877 - May 12, 1995

The Senate Budget Committee released a budget resolution on May 9 and approved it yesterday on a 12-10 party-line vote. It phases out Amtrak operating grants, apparently in $78-million steps to zero in 2000.

The budget merely sets overall spending targets the appropriations committees must achieve. However, there is a document showing Chairman Domenici's assumptions that is circulating on Capitol Hill. It shows elimination of the Northeast Corridor project. This was not part of any committee debate.

The House Budget Committee approved its seven-year plan yesterday. The House plan freezes Amtrak through 1998, then cuts back operating, capital, and mandatory payments from 1999 through 2002. It ends Northeast Corridor funding after 1999, ignoring capital needs on the south end. It ends the Penn Station project and high-speed rail research now.

The House resolution also phases out transit operating grants and new rail transit starts. It kills the Federal Transit Administration, shifting its duties to the Federal Highway Administration. It cuts the federal match for transit projects from 80% to 50%, but leaves the highway match at 80%. It cites "a DOT study by Harvard economists that busways can be built and operated for one-fifth the cost of new rail systems." It ends highway demonstration projects, intelligent vehicles, and Essential Air Services.

Under the House plan, Amtrak does fairly well in the early years. The House plan "call for Amtrak to continue negotiating with states where it operates at a loss." We think states are unlikely to fill the vacuum created by the end of federal operating grants, and certainly unlikely to do so with the elimination of capital grants. In the long run, the best hope is that unprecedented labor cooperation on cost-cutting and great marketing by Amtrak reduces operating grant needs enough to make a majority in Congress willing to continue funding.

The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee approved S.440, the National Highway System bill, on May 10. The Roth-Biden Amtrak Access Act, S.733, was not offered as an amendment. Roth-Biden would allow states to use certain road and transit funds for passenger rail and make certain corridors part of the National Highway System. Roth-Biden may be offered when the NHS bill goes to the Senate floor. That could be weeks off, since the committee also repealed Davis-Bacon prevailing-wage provisions, which labor will fight hard.

Roth-Biden was the target of a big Highway Users Federation ad in the May 8 Roll Call and of a U.S. Chamber of Commerce news release issued May 10. The release called Amtrak subsidies "an affront to Chamber members who expect their tax money to be spent on the more than $212 billion of highway needs." Please tell your local chambers of commerce to complain!

Federal Railroad Administrator Jolene Molitoris signed a positive Record of Decision on May 9 on the Boston electrification project. That closes the environmental impact process.

The Shuster bill referred to here last week taking transportation trust fund projects off-budget is numbered H.R.842.

The next Federal Railroad Administration high-speed rail outreach session is at Portland, Ore., May 15, at the BPA Federal Office Building auditorium, 9th and Holliday, from 5:30 pm to 8:00 pm. On May 17, another one will be at Sacramento at the Grand Hall, 1215 J St., from 5:00 pm to 7:30 pm.

NARP Region 3 will meet in Philadelphia tomorrow at 9:30 am, in the DVRPC conference room in the Bourse Building, at the Fifth Street Market-Frankford subway stop. Scott Leonard of NARP will speak.

Region 8 will meet at Tacoma on May 20 at 12:00 noon at the Ramada Hotel near the Tacoma Dome. The speaker is Gil Mallery, head of Amtrak West.