Hotline #39 - June 19, 1998

Once again, the meeting to approve a 1999 transportation funding bill has been postponed by the Senate Transportation Appropriations Subcommittee. It was last scheduled for June 16. At this point, there is no new scheduled date, but it could come at any time.

According to Congress Daily, Subcommittee Chairman Shelby (R.-Ala.) has been holding out the possibility of cutting Amtrak funding in order to get more money given to his subcommittee by the full Appropriations Committee. With highway and transit protected by budgetary firewalls created by the passage of TEA-21, the biggest programs left that can be cut are Amtrak, the Coast Guard, and the Federal Aviation Administration. Reports say that out of those programs, Shelby would gut Amtrak first if he didn't get enough funding allocated to him.

A Chicago-bound South Shore commuter train hit a truck loaded with a steel coil that was blocking the track at a grade crossing, early yesterday morning, killing two passengers and one train crew member, all in the first car. The driver, who was unhurt, had been driving a truck with two trailers, apparently without proper permitting, which was overweight. He was waiting at Portage, Ind., for a train at a Conrail crossing, which is also the route of Amtrak's Capitol Limited, Lake Shore Limited, and Michigan trains. His rear trailer, with a 20-ton coil of improperly secured steel, was hanging back over the adjacent South Shore tracks when that train approached at 45 mph.

Also, yesterday, Amtrak's New York-bound Carolinian struck a tractor-trailer in downtown Durham, N.C., causing the locomotive to derail upright. The truck driver was killed, and ten people on the train were injured.

The German Railways have begun replacing the wheels on all 59 remaining ICE-1 train sets. They will get either new wheels, or all-steel wheels like the ones on the newer ICE-2 trains. A broken wheel has been implicated in the wreck of an ICE-1 on June 3, but an official government investigation continues.

Union Pacific isn't making much headway in resolving its serious service problems, according to the Journal of Commerce. In fact, we are hearing from the Texas Eagle route that train is experiencing growing delays in June.

The Amtrak Reform Council is requesting that its total budget be increased from $50,000 to $1.9 million, according to the Associated Press. Council Chairwoman Christine Todd Whitman, who is governor of New Jersey, wrote to appropriators on June 8 that, "We are charged with considerable tasks and responsibilities, including the development of a comprehensive intercity passenger rail restructuring plan." The proposed budget she submitted includes hiring staff for the Council -- some at $125 an hour and a director at $400 an hour. Charlie Moneypenny of the Transport Workers Union responded that, "we thought [the Reform Council] was just some sort of resting place for Republican ideologues. We didn't realize there was going to be a trough at which folks could feed."

A report from Ottawa suggests that a diesel light-rail service on a north-south route could carry up to 7,700 riders a day and could open in December 1999. It would be the first modern-day application of rail transit in the Canadian capital, which has relied heavily on busways.