Hotline #24 - March 6, 1998

Senate leaders agreed on March 2 to increase ISTEA spending by $25.9 billion over the next five years -- but in a great setback to balanced transportation, decided to devote all of the increase to highways. Banking Committee Chairman Al D'Amato (R.-N.Y.) tried and initially failed to maintain the usual pattern of giving 20% of transportation funding increases to transit. However, by late yesterday, he succeeded, and $5 billion in new transit spending was added to the package.

However, there are no budget offsets for any of this new funding, which exceeds the spending caps in the 1997 balanced budget resolution. It is up to the Budget Committee to find offsets. Budget Chairman Domenici (R.-N.Mex.) has implied it may not be possible to find offsets for more than one year's worth of increased spending.

Another big threat next week is the Johnson-Thomas amendment, named for Senators Johnson (D.-S.Dak.) and Thomas (R.-Wyo.). The amendment would mandate a minimum of transit funds that states would get, allowing rural states to spend it on highways if their transit funds exceed their transit needs. This will greatly cut into transit funds for places that have big transit needs, and reduce maybe a quarter of the money available for rail transit construction.

Senator Brownback (R.-Kans.) is pushing a separate amendment to make it harder to preserve the integrity of abandoned railroad rights-of-way. Finally, Senator Levin (D.-Mich.) has a good amendment requiring states to develop a way to let local officials in rural areas influence state transportation planning, a privilege now reserved to local officials in urban areas.

Call your Senator right away to oppose the Johnson-Thomas, oppose the Brownback, and support the Levin amendments to the ISTEA bill, S.1173.

The House Transportation Appropriations Subcommittee will hold its annual hearing on Amtrak on March 11.

House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R.-Ga.) named his three members to the Amtrak Reform Council this week. They are Gov. Christine Todd Whitman (R.-N.J.); Chris Gleason of Altoona, Pa., a member of last year's Shuster blue ribbon panel; and Bruce Chapman, the executive director of the Discovery Institute, a conservative think tank in Seattle. The Reform Council is now complete except for the two Clinton appointees, one each representing rail labor and management.

The Federal Railroad Administration has approved the use of tilting mechanisms on Talgo trains in the Pacific Northwest. This will allow Amtrak West to add a round trip when timetables change May 17. Seattle-Portland travel times will decrease by as much as 25 minutes.

A light rail proposal for Orlando took a step forward last week as the board of Lynx, the local transit authority, agreed to begin final design on a southern route, running from downtown to Sea World. Planning on a northern leg to Winter Park and Longwood has been postponed for three months, due to local community opposition to building along the CSX right-of-way. The southern leg theoretically could be running in 2001.

The Coast Starlight now may not resume running south of Oakland before March 13. Currently, there is alternate transportation for Starlight passengers, but not for San Diegan passengers north of Los Angeles.

NARP Region 6 meets at Detroit tomorrow. On March 14, Region 4 meets at Baltimore, Region 7 at Bloomington, Ill., and Region 9 at Dallas, where NARP President Jack Martin will speak. On March 21, Region 5 meets at DeLand, Fla., again with NARP President Jack Martin, and Region 8 meets in Seattle. On March 28, Region 1 meets at Boston, with NARP Executive Director Ross Capon among the speakers, and Region 10 meets in Council Bluffs, Ia., again with NARP President Jack Martin. More details are in the February newsletter and on the NARP web site.