Hotline #998 - September 5, 1997

Mark Cane, the president of the Amtrak Intercity Business Unit, will resign October 1. Lee Bullock has been named interim president. Bullock, the current vice president of customer services in Chicago, has been with Amtrak for 24 years.

Congress is back and its top priority is passing the appropriations bills by the end of the month. Both the House and Senate have passed transportation bills, but they now must be reconciled. Our priorities for Amtrak survival remain getting the Senate operating figures for Amtrak in the appropriations conference process, and getting a reauthorization bill passed to Amtrak can get the $2.3 billion provided for it in the budget agreement.

An ISTEA renewal bill was unveiled yesterday by leaders of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. It is called "BESTEA," or the Building Efficient Surface Transportation and Equity Act. It preserves the basic structure of ISTEA, but does not give states flexibility to invest in passenger rail. Its major political difficulty is that it proposes spending far in excess of what's provided by the recent budget agreement. A draft bill in the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee is not as far along, and there is no consensus within that Committee even on a basic structure for ISTEA.

Oregon and Washington DOT's are paying Amtrak $225,000 for providing free commuter service between Portland and Vancouver during a bridge repair project on nearby I-5. The service starts September 16 and runs about three weeks.

The FBI mistakenly faxed a confidential memo with details about a suspect in the 1995 sabotage case that derailed the Sunset Limited in Arizona. The mistake was reported in several newspapers, and is the first coverage of the incident in well over a year.

VIA Rail's eastbound Canadian derailed early September 3 near Biggar, Sask., killing one passenger, according to Reuters.

San Joaquin number 712 was struck by a loaded almond truck August 31 at a crossing near Madera, Cal. The truck punctured the locomotive fuel tank, causing a fire that burned the locomotive. Fourteen people on the train were injured.

The FRA yesterday published a safety advisory aimed at all railroads with Class 4 or higher track or with passenger service on them. Railroads would have to get weather service flash flood warnings to dispatchers within 15 minutes, limit train speeds in affected areas, identify and perform special inspections on bridges prone to flash flood damage, and provide training for the special inspections, all within 60 days. The Burlington Northern Santa Fe had already limited freight trains to 40 mph and passenger trains to 20 mph in the event of a flash flood warning as a result of the Southwest Chief derailment last month.

Bombardier is doubling the size of its manufacturing plant in Plattsburgh, N.Y., and will be done in February. The expansion is meant to handle two big pending orders -- 680 subway cars for New York and the Amtrak American Flyer high-speed trains.

A federal judge will hear arguments September 8 in the case Guilford Transportation Industries has brought against Frank Wilner, an author and former Surface Transportation Board official. Guilford and its owners Timothy Mellon and David Fink claim Wilner defamed them in a column that appeared in the Journal of Commerce on June 2, dealing with Amtrak's difficulties in starting passenger service on Guilford's line to Portland, Me. Guilford and Amtrak are engaged in a dispute before the STB on that topic right now. Guilford says that Wilner's position at the STB at the time would have hurt its case, as well as its proposal to purchase the Northeast Corridor -- a proposal most observers do not take seriously.