Hotline #728 - October 14, 2011

Due to the NARP’s Fall Council of Representative’s Meeting, held this week in Los Angeles, Hotline #728 will be presented in the form of news digest. There were several passenger rail and transportation stories of note this week:

• Amtrak makes it official with a press release announcing they carried 30.2 million passengers in fiscal year 2011 (earning $1.9 billion in ticket revenues in the process);
• NARP awards Metrolink and the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority were honored with NARP’s Tracks to the Future award today;
• President Obama’s American Jobs Act fails a test in the Senate. Insiders expect the bill to be broken up into pieces, with the tax cuts going forward and the infrastructure provisions—which would have included passenger rail investment—being left by the wayside.
• Secretary Ray LaHood announces he won’t serve beyond 2012 as head of the U.S. Department of Transportation;
• The Federal Transit Administration has given the Maryland Transit Administration the green light to begin engineering on a 16-mile light rail line between Bethesda and New Carrollton.
• University of Arizona students excited for potential Phoenix-Tuscon intercity passenger rail service.

We also encourage you to check out this week’s NARP Blog entries: