Hotline #749 - March 9, 2012

In a positive turn for mass transit advocates, the U.S. House’s transportation bill seems well and truly dead, with House Speaker John Boehner indicating he would look at using the Senate’s two-year transportation proposal as a basis for action after next week’s recess.

The 5 ½ year, $260 billion House bill would have included several negative provisions for Amtrak, high speed rail, and transit.  While a compromise version was likely to exclude the most severe attack on transit—an elimination of a dedicated source of funding for the Mass Transit Trust Fund—it would have still greatly reduced the levels of funding.  NARP, in conjunction with a broad array of transit groups, worked to defeat the House transportation proposal.

Attention has now turned to the Senate, where Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has been attempting to build a bipartisan coalition around a two-year, $109 billion bill.  Much of the controversy is ancillary to the main bill, centering around non-transportation related amendments focusing on controversial issues, such as expedited approval of the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline and delaying implementation of the Environmental Protection Agency’s tighter emissions standards for industrial boilers—both of those amendments failed to muster the necessary 60 votes in Thursday’s floor action.

Having cleared those hurdles, the Senate plans to tackle transportation-specific amendments on Tuesday.  NARP opposes the Blunt (R-MO) amendment that would delete provisions in the Senate bill for licensing rail passenger operators.  If that amendment was adopted, House-Senate conferees could not consider a requirement that operators carry $200 million in liability insurance (which now applies only to Amtrak).


California’s high-speed rail project continued to move closer to construction this week, although it appears that the projects groundbreaking will be later than originally expected.

California High-Speed Rail Authority has finalized the terms and conditions that contractors will be required to meet for a 29-mile Central Valley segment of the corridor, clearing the way for companies to submit bids for work on the line this summer.

The segment in question runs from Madera to just south of Fresno, and will cost around $1.5 billion to construct.

The work will attract internationally renowned firms, but CAHSRA is committed to ensuring that local contractors are well positioned to take part from the project.  Larger contractors must agree to dedicate at least 30 percent of whatever work is subcontracted to local businesses.

“We are doing everything we can to try to put people who are interested in subcontracting, or being involved with these primes, together with these companies,” said Lance Simmens, a CAHSRA spokesman. “We already have a very active and aggressive small-business outreach, and we will accelerate that in the coming months to make sure we can hook people up.”

The good news came simultaneously with the revelation that construction probably won’t begin until 2013, after the self-imposed goal of a 2012 groundbreaking.  The delay comes from revisions to the project’s business plan which CAHSRA has voluntarily engaged in to address criticism from critics and communities affected by the high speed train.  CAHSRA is also looking at a more “blended approach” that will direct funds to improve commuter rail corridors in the Bay Area and Los Angeles County in the near term.

“If this is the first step down a $100 billion path, it better be the right first step,” said state Sen. Joe Simitian, D-Palo Alto, one of the lawmakers who has called for the project to slow down. “I think it’s important for all of us to resist being hurried into a decision we might later regret, given the multibillion-dollar consequences.”

CAHSRA insists that since the only deadline they have to meet is a federally-mandated goal of wrapping up work on the first phase by 2017, pushing back the groundbreaking by a few months is an acceptable course.

“Let’s not get too carried away with the dates here. It’s not like, ‘Oh my god, you guys have missed (the groundbreaking) by a year,’” Simmens responded. “It’s a daunting task, and a daunting challenge, to say the least. But we’re moving forward in the most cost-effective and efficient way we know how.”


California’s two U.S. Senators wrote to the Federal Railroad Administration this week asking for a progress report on the implementation of Positive Train Control (PTC), expressing a concern that delays in PTC deployment could fuel attempts to extend the 2015 deadline.

PTC is a real time train monitoring and control technology that increases the efficiency and safety with which trains can be dispatched.  A requirement that PTC be installed on most rail lines carrying passengers or toxic-by-inhalation material was enacted in 2008—largely as a response to the deadly Chatsworth, California train crash the killed 25 passengers and injured scores more.  A crash in Toronto that killed three and injured 46 passengers has put PTC in the headlines again.  Both crashes would likely have been avoided with PTC technology in place.

Senators Barbara Boxer (D) and Dianne Feinstein (D) wrote a letter to Federal Railroad Administrator Joseph Szabo, asking the FRA to provide a report on the efforts to implement PTC in the U.S., focusing on: assessments of individual implementation plans to determine how many railroad operators are on schedule to meet the deadline; determining whether railroad operators are meeting benchmarks and making investments necessary to address interoperability issues; outline known challenges that could delay implementation by the 2015 deadline; and funding and personnel requirements to properly monitor and oversee implementation.

“We write to request that the FRA Fiscal Year 2013 Budget Request to Congress include a description of how the funding requested for PTC oversight and rail safety technology will be sufficient to ensure that railroad operators meet the 2015 deadline,” wrote the two Californian Senators.  “We would also like to better understand both the challenges to timely PTC implementation and FRA’s plans to address these challenges.”

NARP believes that the 2015 deadline likely is too tight, but we have not supported the five-year set-back of the deadline that was in the House surface transportation bill.  Our focus, as reflected in our February newsletter, has been on efficient implementation of PTC.


The Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT) announced this week that testing on infrastructure upgrades that will allow for 110 mph operations on the Chicago to St. Louis corridor will begin this summer.

Amtrak and IDOT will begin testing the 110 mph trains on a 20-mile segment of track between Dwight and Pontiac.  State officials say that the timeline for expansion depends on the levels of funding available to expand Positive Train Control technology.

“We hope that an individual will be able to buy a ticket in October and run on a roundtrip at 110 mph,” said IDOT bureau chief of high-speed and passenger rail Michael Garcia. “It is our goal to have operations (on the entire line) within the next four to five years.”

The top speed on the corridor currently is 79 mph.


Amtrak announced this week that it partnered with an environmental nonprofit to calculate the railroad’s energy consumption—an important step in increasing efficiency through the reduction of its energy usage, which will simultaneously lower costs and carbon emissions.

Amtrak partnered with The Climate Registry to calculate the total energy usage and emissions resulting from its operations, going beyond its rail operations to include sources such as electricity use, facilities and station operations, and its motor vehicle fleet.

“Measuring our carbon footprint with The Registry allows us to identify inefficiencies and potential for cost savings, and provide meaningful data to customers about environmental performance,” said Roy Deitchman, Vice President of Environmental, Health, and Safety at Amtrak. “With the completion of the 2010 Greenhouse Gas Inventory, we have established a baseline against which we can set future goals and prepare for future regulation.”

Passenger trains, an inherently more efficient mode of transportation than cars and planes, tend to do well in these energy consumption analytics.  Practically, that means consumers flock to rail transport during periods of high fuel prices; with gasoline prices at all-time highs this winter, Amtrak could be well on its way to another record-setting summer.

You can find more information on Amtrak.com.


Two trains were involved in a deadly head-on collision in Poland on March 3, killing 16 passengers and injuring 58.

The crash took place just north of Krakow, the second largest city in Poland.  The trains ended up on the same track as the result of an error stemming from maintenance work; investigators are still trying to determine how the deadly error slipped by safety deterrents.

“This is our most tragic train disaster in many, many years,” said Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk. “It’s a very, very sad day and night in the history of Polish railways and for all of us.”

The U.S. Consulate in Poland is reporting that an American woman was one of the passengers killed in the crash.

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