Hotline #974 - March 21, 1997

House Transportation and Infrastructure Chairman Bud Shuster (R.-Pa.) announced yesterday he would form a bi-partisan, blue-ribbon commission to address Amtrak's financial problems. He said the members of the commission would be announced soon. "Without decisive action very soon," Shuster said, "the country will have no intercity rail service within a few months."

The hearing on 1998 Amtrak funding in the House Transportation Appropriations Subcommittee was yesterday. Chairman Frank Wolf (R.-Va.) said he would introduce a bill to create an Amtrak route-closing commission. Wolf has always been a big fan of the military base-closing commission, which acted a few years ago. He sharply criticized Amtrak and the Administration for not supporting his idea in the last Congress. "I want you to succeed," Wolf told Amtrak President Tom Downs, "but you have to look at the numbers you are likely to get." Downs responded that closing train routes is not the same thing as closing military bases, but rather it is more like a business decision. "We have made a decision on routes in the last year," Downs said.

More generally, Downs offered a simple explanation for Amtrak's financial problems, as he has at several other hearings this month. The Clinton Office of Management and Budget and the Congress, through its budget resolutions, have mandated that Amtrak lose its operating grant by 2002. Amtrak has said it was possible if three things happened -- Amtrak internal reorganization, a dedicated capital source, and legislative reforms. Only the first, the one under Amtrak's control, has happened. Unless Congress comes up with the other two this year, all of Amtrak would have to shut down next year under the Administration's budget proposal.

Senators Chafee (R.-R.I.) and Moynihan (D.-N.Y.) have introduced the Administration's NEXTEA bill as S.468. However, both are expected to work on other versions of ISTEA renewal as well.

Amtrak has issued news releases saying that the two-month deadline has passed for states to step in and fund the threatened train services beyond May 10. Amtrak said no state is acting to save the Pioneer or Desert Wind. The Texas legislature is working on a loan to run the Texas Eagle through September. Gov. George Bush (R.) has said he would sign that bill. Massachusetts is working on a plan to expand a mail facility at Springfield to benefit the Lake Shore Limited. The Southern Rapid Rail Transit Commission was to meet today to discuss keeping the New Orleans-Mobile Gulf Coast Limited going beyond March 31.

At a ceremony in the state capitol at Olympia, Wash., on March 19, the Talgo company announced a partnership to build new trains for the Pacific Northwest Corridor. Talgos business partner is a new company called Pacifica, which is a company created by the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers. Pacifica is based in Seattle and will employ 40 people to build five Talgo trains. Three of those will be used in Amtrak service in the Northwest, with Amtrak owning one set, and the State of Washington owning the other two. The remaining two sets to be built by Pacifica may be sold by Talgo for use on other corridors.

The new trains will enter into service in summer 1998 as part of a renamed "Cascade" service. Each set will have 12 cars and seat 251 passengers. The cars include six coaches per set, one lounge-type bistro car, one dining car, two custom class cars, and a service car. One coach and one custom class coach will be wheelchair-accessible. Each car is 44 feet long, shorter than standard Amtrak cars. The trains will be pulled by new F-59 locomotives. The train's tilt feature is expected to be used starting in 1998.

The State of Oregon still has to act to extend the Portland-Eugene Amtrak service beyond June 30, when current funding runs out.

NARP Region 1 meets tomorrow in Portland, Me.; Region 7 meets in Lake Geneva, Wis.; and Region 8 meets in Tacoma, Wash. On April 5, Region 10 meets in Denver, Colo.

 

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