Hotline #90 - June 11, 1999

The House Appropriations Committee approved a fiscal 2000 transportation funding bill on June 8, with Amtrak's request for $571 million and permission to spend these funds on maintenance-of-way and maintenance-of-equipment.

However, House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R.-Ill.) is trying to placate fiscal hawks in his party, and decided this week to use floor amendments to trim spending from appropriations bills already approved in committee. The House already has cut the agriculture and legislative branch spending bills. The agriculture bill was cut $102 million, but we hear the cut target for transportation is between $400 million and $800 million.

With highway and transit spending protected by the TEA-21 firewalls, and aviation and Coast Guard levels below President Clinton's requests, any such amendment could be fatal to Amtrak. Please ask your Representative to work for enactment of the $571 million approved in committee and to oppose any effort to cut it. Even though the House bill actually cuts Amtrak by $38 million compared to current levels, the bill increases aviation by $985 million and the Coast Guard by $153 million. The House bill could reach the floor as early as the week of June 14.

Please ask your Senators to co-sponsor S.1144, which would let states spend their flexible federal funding from TEA-21 on passenger rail.

The name of the new Oklahoma train was announced by Sen. Don Nickles (R.-Okla.) this week. It will be the Heartland Flyer. Nickles had a competition for school children to name the train, and received over 500 entries. The winning entry was submitted by Katie Moore, 11, of Del City.

The inaugural special from Fort Worth to Oklahoma City will run June 14; times for each station are posted on the NARP web site under meetings and events. Revenue service begins June 15 with the morning southbound train. At NARP's request, Amtrak has agreed to study running a Thruway bus linking this train with Dallas. The Texas Eagle requires unattractive layovers in Fort Worth and only runs four days a week.

Another issue has been the food service, which, according to plans released a few weeks ago, was to be a vending machine area in the lower level of one of the Hi-Level coaches. The lack of better food service was loudly criticized by State Sen. Dave Herbert, who has been one of the main promoters of restoring train service to Oklahoma. But today, according to a wire story, an agreement for some sort of food service in addition to vending machines has been reached.

Finally, Amtrak and the state need to move forward very quickly on plans for extending the train further north than Oklahoma City. With the current connections at Fort Worth, there will be a very limited appeal for travel from Oklahoma points to others further away on the Amtrak system. An extension to Tulsa and Kansas City would be helpful, and some people even talk about a link to Wichita and Denver.

Tomorrow is the opening of the Los Angeles Metro Red Line branch to Hollywood and Vine. The only other subway construction now happening is an extension of the same branch under the Santa Monica Mountains to North Hollywood in the San Fernando Valley. That is supposed to open in May 2000. No other subway projects can go forward since voters in Los Angeles County voted to ban use of the county's transit sales tax on new construction.

The Empire Builder has been running 70 years as of today. The Empire Builder product line has planned some publicity around this anniversary.