Hotline #177 - February 9, 2001

The new version of the High Speed Rail Investment Act (HSRIA) was introduced February 6 in the Senate as S.250. This would provide $12 billion in bond revenue for passenger rail capital investment over 10 years. Passage of S.250 is vital to improvement and expansion of passenger rail in the U.S. Please ask your Senators to support this legislation (or thank them if they are already among the 51 co-sponsors). For more information about the bill, the co-sponsors, and how to contact Senators, see our web site.

A route for the proposed Texas section of the Crescent was announced this week by Amtrak. The Crescent will divide at Meridian, Miss., with a section to be called the Crescent Star continuing west on Kansas City Southern tracks to Jackson, Vicksburg, Monroe, and Shreveport. A short section of Illinois Central tracks will be used through the Jackson Amtrak station area. West of Shreveport, the train will continue on the Kansas City Southern through Greenville, Tex., and the northeastern suburbs of Dallas, where it will use smaller trackage segments owned by Dallas Area Rapid Transit and Union Pacific to reach Dallas Union Station. A somewhat shorter Shreveport-Marshall-Dallas route on the Union Pacific (used by the Texas Eagle west of Marshall) will not be used by the new train. The Crescent Star and Texas Eagle routes will cross at Jefferson, Tex., just north of Marshall.

Amtrak did not announce a start-up date, though Amtrak board member and Meridian Mayor John Robert Smith told the Dallas Morning News that an inaugural train could run in May. However, he said he was not sure daily service would start then. Amtrak and the Kansas City Southern are working to get funding for track improvements over parts of the line, and have said service could start when the funding is committed. An Amtrak inspection train will run back and forth on the route February 13-16.

The service was first announced nearly a year ago as part of Amtrak's Network Growth Strategy. Much of the service expansion outlined at that time was related to the express initiative, but the Crescent Star also adds important city-pair combinations to Amtrak's network, most notably Dallas-Atlanta. It will be the first passenger train on the Meridian-Shreveport route since 1968, and the first train on any route serving Shreveport since about 1969.

Investigations continue in a February 5 Amtrak train collision with a CSX freight train and subsequent derailment. According to the Syracuse Herald-Journal, a National Transportation Safety Board investigator said that a preliminary investigation suggested human error. The train was being driven by an engineer with a clean record who has been with Amtrak for 15 years. As eastbound Empire Corridor train 286 left Syracuse station, it appears that the train was routed behind a freight train going 7 mph because a parallel track was undergoing maintenance.

A half-mile from the station, the Amtrak train passed a signal warning of a top speed of 15 mph, though the engineer appears to have misinterpreted that as 30 mph. Finally, it appears the engineer became distracted and forgot momentarily he had both engines running, which allowed the train to reach 58 mph at one point. The engineer saw the freight train ahead and applied the emergency brake, but the Amtrak train was still going 35 mph when it hit the back of the freight train. The Amtrak train partly derailed and 61 people were injured. The engineer is on paid leave pending completion of the investigation.

Amtrak President George Warrington met with Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R.) this week in Tallahassee to discuss ways that Amtrak can help the state meet its constitutional obligation to begin construction on a 120-mph, high-speed rail system by November 2003. According to a Sarasota Herald-Tribune report, Bush said he was "open-minded" about a partnership with Amtrak and that he could support use of state funds for an incremental approach to developing high-speed rail.

Nevertheless, there are still two anti-rail legislative proposals pending. One would send the question back to voters (who approved the constitutional amendment last fall). The other would seek private companies to bid on providing the service, presumably with little or no state support, even though that approach has failed in Florida (and elsewhere) in the past. Additionally, state Transportation Secretary Tom Barry said that at $169-million project to add lanes to I-4 between Lakeland and the Disney area planned to use up median space the DOT once thought could hold Tampa-Orlando high-speed rail tracks is being delayed while the state figure out what it wants to do.

A bill supported by the ColoRail passenger group, HB-1329, has been introduced in the Colorado legislature. The "Revenues for Multimodal Capital Transportation Projects" bill would approve a state referendum this November asking voters whether some of the projected state tax surplus revenues should go to rail, bus, bike, and pedestrian projects. If voters approve, $50 million would be available for those purposes in fiscal 2002 and would increase in subsequent years, totaling $1.325 billion through 2011. Without this funding, the Colorado DOT has no plans to invest in non-highway projects for at least 20 years.

The Oklahoma legislature has before it House Bill 1173, which would earmark an additional 10% of motor vehicle tax revenue for transportation. Of that, 3% ($16 million a year) would be set aside for rail, with allowable uses including grade crossing safety, maintenance and improvement to the state's rail lines, industrial spur assistance, and passenger rail expansion.

Amtrak is observing Black History Month with activities at its stations in Washington, Chicago, and Oakland. A full list is at Amtrak's web site.