Hotline #276 - January 3, 2003

In the coming week, the House will start its new session and is expected to pass a continuing resolution to extend funding beyond January 11. The Senate Appropriations Committee has scheduled a mark-up meeting for fiscal 2003 spending for January 10. The funding amount is still unknown and changes often. For total domestic spending, the Bush Administration supports tight budget ceilings far below spending levels approved by Senate committees.

In theory, Amtrak could wind up anywhere between $1.2 billion and $762 million for 2003. But Amtrak President David Gunn has called $762 million a shutdown budget, and the Bush Administration is known to want to avoid a rerun of last summer's shutdown threat. Phone calls in support of Amtrak would be helpful, particularly starting January 8. There will be a strong push to resolve 2003 spending issues before President Bush's State of the Union message, scheduled for January 28. The Capitol switchboard is 202/224-3121, or click here for other ways to make contact.

California Zephyr service was disrupted due to a December 31 Union Pacific freight derailment at Blue Canyon, Cal., in the Sierra Nevada range. Adding to the disruption caused by the derailment was a blizzard that closed both main highways between Sacramento and Reno. Amtrak annulled the Zephyr west of Sparks, Nev. (near Reno), and put passengers up in area hotels until either the tracks or roads could be cleared.

The Capitol Corridor in California will get additional service starting January 6. One more weekday round-trip between Sacramento, Oakland, and San Jose begins running. That brings the total Sacramento-Oakland weekday round-trips to 11. The new southbound train provides a better commuting arrival in San Jose, 7:45 am. At the same time, weekday train 525, which arrives in San Jose at 9:35 currently, will be cut back to Oakland, but will have an Oakland-San Jose connecting bus.

A big tie project is disrupting some Pacific Surfliner service south of Los Angeles. Evening trains 588, 592, 796, 593, and 597 will be substituted by buses in a gap between Orange and Santa Ana. Also, train 590 is not running today. From January 10 through February 9, evening trains 591, 593, 597, 588, 590, 592, and 796 will be substituted by buses from Irvine all the way south to San Diego.

Union Pacific is blocking a state request to study an overnight Bakersfield-Los Angeles passenger train, according to today's Bakersfield Californian. A UP spokesman said, "It just doesn't make sense when you compare how quickly you can make the drive." Of course, since the state inquiry involves a night train for passengers who choose not to or cannot drive, a comparison to a daytime drive under ideal conditions is gratuitous.

A more serious question is what improvements would be needed to allow a night train, even at a slow schedule, to use UP's Tehachapi line without interfering with the many freight trains there. UP's refusal to cooperate with Caltrans, the state transportation department, means the question may go unanswered.

An Amtrak assistant conductor has pleaded guilty to federal theft charges, according to another Associated Press story, from December 24. The man was based at the Amtrak station in Shelby, Mont., and worked on the Empire Builder. He was charged with stealing nearly $19,000 from Amtrak by pocketing fares that were paid in cash on board the train -- an average of $540 a month for the 35 months beginning April 1999. The theft was detected when Amtrak officials did a spot check in March 2002 and could not account for money from 250 tickets sold by the man. He could face up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

Gov.-elect Rod Blagojevich (Ill.) will greet the public on a chartered "whistle stop" train from Chicago to Springfield on January 11. The train will make stops at Joliet, Dwight, and Bloomington.

The BART extension to the San Francisco airport has been postponed again, until March. Though the project is 99% complete, the contractor missed a November 7 deadline to turn the line over to BART -- indeed, the line was still in the contractor's possession earlier this week. When the extension opens, a shuttle bus to the Millbrae Caltrain station will be eliminated. It now offers a cheaper ride into the city than BART will. Travelers from the south will have to pay a $1.15 BART fare from Millbrae to the airport, rather than use the free shuttle bus.

A list of such projected opening dates is included in the January NARP newsletter (though our entry for BART is now outdated).

A new high-speed rail segment opened in Belgium on December 15, between Leuven and Liege. This link allows Thalys trains to go more quickly from Paris to Brussels and Cologne, and is also used by ICE trains from Frankfurt to Cologne and Brussels. This is the first time two European high-speed operators have competed head-to-head between two of the same city pairs. The same day, a full level of service was begun on the ICE line that opened between Cologne and Frankfurt earlier in 2002.

The premiers of China and Germany rode a maglev vehicle between the fringe of Shanghai and that city's airport on December 31. Some press reports claimed this is the world's first commercial application of maglev, but in reality, lines in Berlin, Germany, and Birmingham, England, have already been built, entered service, and ultimately dismantled.

The new maglev line is expected to provide an eight-minute ride at speeds of 250 mph over a distance of 18 miles (average of 135 mph). The line cost $1.2 billion to build, with the Germans supplying the technology and vehicles, and the Chinese paying for the guideway. It may be a year before revenue service begins. The "city" terminus of the line is Longyang Road Station, where it connects with Shanghai's subway system, some miles from downtown. The maglev line itself is a simple link between two points, with no intermediate stops.

There is some talk of building a maglev line over a much greater distance, from Shanghai to Beijing. This, according to the Financial Times, is being proposed by China's science and technology ministry, but is opposed by the railway ministry on grounds of cost. However, later in the week, the Chinese granted the Germans a contract to expand the Shanghai line to an 180-mile network serving nearby cities.

In some respects, the situation in China as it regards maglev is similar to that in Germany in the 1990's, when the German science ministry gained the upper hand over the transport ministry in promoting a Berlin-Hamburg maglev line. However, China has a much stronger central government than Germany, and environmental consequences get less consideration. Those factors ultimately killed the German maglev proposal, which led German industrial and technological interests -- both public- and private-sector -- to look for a country to sell its maglev technology to.