Hotline #149 - July 28, 2000

A hearing on the "Tax Treatment of Transportation Infrastructure" was held July 25 by the House Ways and Means Oversight Subcommittee, chaired by Amo Houghton (R.-N.Y.), who is the lead sponsor of H.R.3700, the House version of the High Speed Rail Investment Act. Most of the testimony -- where witnesses included Transportation and Infrastructure Ranking Democrat James Oberstar (D.-Minn.) and Amtrak Chairman and Wisconsin Governor Tommy Thompson (R.) -- discussed the importance of H.R.3700. Indeed, no witness or subcommittee member expressed direct opposition to the bill.

Houghton said in his opening statement, "The tax law historically has sought to address the special needs of the transportation sector, but it has not always provided uniform assistance. Regrettably there is an imbalance in how federal law addresses the unique needs of the various modes of transportation...There is no comparable [to highways and aviation] source of stable, long-term federal support for the infrastructure related to passenger rail service...If the current tax law does not treat all transportation modes fairly, then we should point out where an imbalance may exist and explore how to correct it."

S.1900, the Senate version of the bill now has 50 sponsors and H.R.3700, the House version, has 147 -- see our web site for the full list.

Earlier on July 25, the full Ways and Means Committee approved a bill to overhaul railroad retirement, H.R.4844, which now includes an amendment to repeal the 4.3-cent-per-gallon diesel fuel tax that railroads including Amtrak still pay for deficit reduction. TEA-21 diverted the equivalent highway fuel tax to the Highway Trust Fund, benefiting the railroads' trucker competition. Some want to see the revenue from the railroad tax diverted to a trust fund benefiting regional railroads, but a representative of the Association of American Railroads (AAR) opposed that at the July 25 hearing. The AAR says railroads are entirely in the private sector and maintain their own infrastructure--they don't want to send their maintenance money through a bureaucracy and have it come back to them in reduced amounts.

The American Passenger Rail Coalition, a trade organization of Amtrak suppliers, on July 26 honoring Chairman Houghton, giving him the group's annual Rail Leadership Award, at a reception at Washington Union Station.

Congress has recessed until after Labor Day, having passed only one 2001 appropriations bill, and with the House not having named conferees for the transportation appropriations bill, H.R.4475. It's becoming more likely that the transportation bill will be part of a single, government-wide funding bill.

Amtrak Chairman and Wisconsin Governor Tommy Thompson is the chairman of the 107-member Platform Committee at the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia. He told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that he will advocate a plank favorable to passenger rail. "I'm going to have us come out in favor of mass transit and high-speed trains across America," he said.

Testing of the Acela high-speed train was halted for a few days, Amtrak and Bombardier said July 21. Loose and broken bolts under a coach were discovered while testing the train at above 150 mph. However, unlike the bolt problem with power cars in June, this problem seems to be an issue of improper installation, rather than one of design. The bolts were to be inspected and reinstalled correctly, and then testing could resume. Service will begin in September at the earliest, according to the Washington Post.

A reminder that the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) seeks comments through August 4 on its notice about new high-speed corridor designations. The notice is available at the FRA web site. Comments can be submitted electronically at a DOT web site, referencing Docket 4759.

Apple shipments from Washington State will begin on Amtrak's Empire Builder starting September 1, according to the July 27 Wall Street Journal. A refrigerated car will run from Wenatchee to Chicago and points east.  Suddenly, after an absence of many years in that market, two freight railroads, the Union Pacific and Burlington Northern Santa Fe, have come to Wenatchee and Yakima looking for similar business. The state DOT has a $500,000 state grant to buy cars to lease to Amtrak for the trial program.

Professional rail-transit critic and Amtrak Reform Council member Wendell Cox has taken his anti-light-rail show to Dallas, home of the successful DART system. The July 20 Dallas Observer outlined Cox's recent campaigns, including his success in San Antonio in helping to defeat a light-rail ballot initiative this spring, and his recent foray into Atlanta where he tried to promoted building a grid of freeways a mile apart. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on July 6 called this plan a "regressive hallucination" by an "untrained transportation expert who makes his living writing propaganda for pro-road causes."

Now Cox and the Texas Public Policy Foundation are trying to convince Dallas voters to reject an August 13 ballot question that would let bond sales speed light-rail construction. The Observer said the Foundation and Cox were "a San Antonio-based conservative group and a hired gun from Illinois who have traveled here to tell unenlightened Dallasites why light rail is bad." Cox often criticizes light rail for failing to "solve" highway congestion, without noting, as local light-rail supporters do, that the Dallas area's annual gain in residents is over twice the daily ridership on DART's current system.