Hotline #923 - March 29, 1996

The Senate Amtrak authorization bill, S.1318, has been held up again this week, both by continuing opposition by Senator Breaux to the liability language, and by other demands on Senate floor time. It now looks like it will be after Easter recess before another chance comes for the bill to go to the floor.

The final in a series of rail safety hearings sponsored by the House Railroads Subcommittee was held March 27. The topic was high-tech train control systems, and was held jointly with the Technology Subcommittee. Much of the discussion revolved around whether it was better to wait a few years for satellite train control technology to be ready for use, or whether it was better to go ahead and expand existing, more expensive train control systems. Amtrak, who testified, is refining its existing systems on the Northeast Corridor in preparation for high-speed service in 1999.

Bud Shuster, chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, testified yesterday before the House Budget Committee on his proposal to move transportation trust funds off-budget. While Shuster has supporters in the House, he also has powerful opponents. Also, there is little interest in the issue in the Senate, and the Administration opposes it.

Indeed, a bill that ultimately would totally undermine highway authorizers like Shuster is being drafted in the Senate. Connie Mack (R.-Fla.) is proposing eliminating the federal fuel tax and the highway trust fund. Because the amount of federal tax collected roughly equals the amount the federal government gives to the states for highways, that would gut the very federal highway program Shuster is trying to move off-budget.

Another hearing this week in Chairman Shuster's committee dealt with preliminary issues involving the next ISTEA bill. The hearing mostly dealt with demographic issues, and was not controversial.

Several changes are coming up for the April 14 Amtrak schedule changes. Some of them involve breaking or threatening connections between Amtrak trains and NARP has already objected to Amtrak about that. For example, the Coast Starlight will leave Seattle over an hour later than now and arrive at Los Angeles over two hours later than now. That will help the problem with Metrolink interference, but will break a connection to the Southwest Chief, and degrade connections to the San Joaquins and San Diegans.

Another change is that the Southwest Chief will lose its right to operate at 90 mph over part of its route. That will add time to the overall schedule and make the eastbound connection to the Ann Rutledge at Kansas City less than an hour.

The City of New Orleans will run six days a week, instead of just five. The Crescent will get dining car service restored to all trips and one pair of train numbers -- 19 and 20 -- will be used for all trips. The Mount Rainier International will have its schedule reduced to under four hours.

Officials of the State of Maryland were told last week by CSX that it would not operate any baseball specials for MARC this year. The reason given was that the late-night Camden-line trains interfered with freight traffic. After the service started in 1992, it drew over 1,100 people at its peak. But last year it was down to 400. Ending the service defeats part of the purpose of building the new baseball stadium next to Camden Station. The situation will be exacerbated when 5,000 parking spaces at the stadium disappear this year to build a new football stadium.

Today marks 20 years of revenue service on Washington Metro. The first segment, on the Red Line, opened on March 29, 1976.