Hotline #99 - August 13, 1999

Congress has adjourned until after Labor Day. At this time, we do not expect Amtrak problems when the Senate transportation appropriations bill, S.1143, comes to the floor and goes to conference. Conferees usually are the transportation subcommittee members plus the chairs and ranking members of the full appropriations committees. However, the transportation bill -- and even Amtrak in particular -- still could get caught up in the high stakes budget game now unfolding between Congress and the White House.

S.1144 is the bill that includes a provision to let states spend their federal TEA-21 funds on intercity passenger rail. All Senators -- especially the 22 whose names are on the bill -- need letters of support for it, as they are hearing from highway interests opposed to it. After Labor Day, committee and floor time will be tough to get and will not happen for this bill if the sponsors don't see strong support for it.

The Senate sent a short-term aviation authorization extension to the House, which in the 11th hour last week substituted in its place the House's five-year AIR-21 bill that takes the aviation trust fund off-budget. The House then sent it back to the Senate, which had already adjourned. Thus, the aviation authorization has leapfrogged past the Senate floor stage, leaving the final matter in the hands of conferees. It is critical that passenger rail be dealt with in any process that takes aviation funding off-budget. The Senate budget resolution says that enactment of AIR-21 would mean that mandated highway, aviation, and transit spending together would exceed the resolution's transportation funding total, raising serious doubts about Coast Guard and Amtrak funding.

AIR-21 does not just firewall air trust fund dollars, it also continues the roughly $2.4 billion a year in general funds that aviation enjoys, thanks to the old assumption -- still fostered by aviation interests -- that the air trust fund is just for facilities construction, and the general taxpayer should fund air-traffic control operations. That $2.4 billion must be handled in a way that leaves room in the budget for Amtrak.

The Federal Aviation Administration this week in a letter to the Illinois DOT renewed its doubts about the prospects for a third Chicago airport at Peotone, near Kankakee. The FAA said it found the state's passenger forecasts too optimistic and said more conservative forecasts are needed to attract adequate public financing. That won't dissuade the state, however, which is determined to proceed with this prairie boondoggle. Though the state's new passenger rail funding is important, the danger that the state will try to reroute the Chicago-St. Louis line through Peotone may continue to be a problem until the Peotone scheme is killed for good.

The truck driver whose truck derailed the City of New Orleans in March and killed 11 Amtrak passengers got his Illinois commercial driver's license back on August 1. The Illinois Secretary of State said there was little that could prevent the return of the license as long as criminal charges were not filed against truck driver John Stokes.

The Chicago-Green Bay Thruway bus connection has been extended to Marinette, Wis., and Escanaba, Rapid River, and Marquette, Mich.

The state-sponsored train between Burlington and Rutland, Vt., connecting with the Ethan Allen, starts August 16. It will run Monday through Friday through Labor Day, then be suspended for track work. It will run again Monday through Saturday September 26-October 31.

The lead story in the Wall Street Journal on August 2 was about the new Boeing 737 airplanes that are profitable for the airlines to run, but are cramped. The story said overall complaints from airline passengers in May rose 86% from a year earlier, to over 1,700.