Hotline #718 - August 5, 2011

The U.S. Congress and President Barack Obama brokered a deal Tuesday to raise the debt ceiling and cut $2.1 trillion in spending, heading off a default and clearing the way for fiscal year 2012 budget work to begin in earnest.

To see how this deal will affect Amtrak and high-speed trains, read NARP Vice President Sean Jeans-Gail’s analysis of the debt deal on the NARP blog.

With the economy still suffering and an additional stimulus bill almost certainly out of the range of possibility, Congressional leaders are already looking to a transportation bill as one of the few opportunities to create jobs.

“We have a highway bill that’s due,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) said. “I’ve spoken to the chairman of the Finance committee today. There are ways we can fund that.”

Gas Tax and the Tea Party

There is speculation that the 18.4 cents a gallon may be the next in the sightlines of the freshman Republican members of the House who were elected to Congress largely through the backing of the Tea Party. If the Congress fails to act to extend the surface transportation authorization law, the government will no longer be able to collect gas taxes. There are concerns that, if this were to come to pass, Republican freshmen might block reinstatement of the stream of revenue, endangering critical railways, roadways, and bridges.

That’s in direct contravention to what the business community is pushing for. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce brok ranks with their traditional Republican allies in calling for a strong federal transportation bill. And General Motors CEO Dan Akerson went on record floating a $1 per gallon increase in the gas tax.

“There ought to be a discussion on the cost versus the benefits,” Akerson told the Detroit News. “As a company we understand that’s a decision that resides with Congress and policymakers.”


A report released by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ACSE) looking at the negative economic impact of underinvestment in U.S. infrastructure has been revised when it was found to dramatically underreport the negative effect of Americans’ personal income due to failing transportation infrastructure.

“Failure to Act: The Economic Impact of Current Investment Trends in Surface Transportation Infrastructure” was released by ACSE in July of this year. And while the original numbers were foreboding, it turns out they failed to show the full cost of America’s deteriorating transportation network:

Our original release projected that Americans’ personal income would drop by $930 billion by 2020 but recover slightly in 2040. The data clearly show that the effects will be dramatically more negative, with $3.1 trillion in personal income losses by 2040. The negative effects on American GDP will also expand dramatically over time, with a near-term loss of $897 billion and a near-tripling of that loss to $2.6 trillion by 2040.

The Missouri Department of Transportation, Union Pacific Railroad, Amtrak and the Federal Railroad Administration finalized an agreement on August 1 that clears the way for construction to begin on a second rail bridge over the Osage River, easing congestion for Amtrak Missouri River Runners and freight trains on the St. Louis to Kansas City corridor.

The $28 million project—Missouri’s first rail infrastructure project funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act—will eliminate the last single-track portion between Jefferson City and St. Louis, removing a significant bottleneck for passenger and freight traffic in the region.

“We are excited to move forward with this project,” said MoDOT Multimodal Operations Director Michelle Teel. “During the construction phase it will spur economic activity and support jobs. Once complete, Missouri will enjoy the long-term benefits of having an even more reliable passenger rail service and a larger capacity for delivering freight.”

After extended negotiations between Governor Jay Nixon’s Administration (D), MoDOT, Union Pacific, and federal agencies, the parties reached an agreement that will allow the public-private partnership to go forward.

“[T]ogether we’re moving another step closer in tackling a bottleneck to rail traffic crossing Missouri we identified in [a two-year old Union Pacific] study” said Ben Jones, Union Pacific’s director of public affairs in Missouri and Kansas. “The completion of the second main line bridge over the Osage River, coupled with Union Pacific’s more than $400 million investment since 1999 in track capacity and maintenance projects, will increase velocity on the corridor and continue to improve Amtrak’s on-time performance.”

Construction is scheduled to begin this fall, although MoDOT officials are cautioning that extensive flooding in the region could push that back.


A local New York City news station got a behind-the-scenes look at construction on the East Side Access Project, a endeavor that will transform the nation’s busiest rail hub.

Crews are bringing the Long Island Rail Road into Grand Central Terminal on Manhattan’s east side through an abandoned 63rd Street tunnel under the East River. The $7.2 billion project—currently the largest public works project in the U.S.—will allow the LIRR to run commuter trains into either Grand Central or Penn Station, on the west side. The concourse will ease congestion in Penn Station, allowing LIRR the capacity to double service to Manhattan

“This is the most exciting moment that I can tell you in my life as a professional to get to build this,” “sandhog” boss Michael Horodniceanu told ABC affiliate WABC.

 

The project is scheduled to be complete in 2016.


Chicago’s Metra commuter rail agency announced in late July that it will roll out a program designed to address the dangerous levels of diesel fumes a recent Chicago Tribune investigation found to exist in its trains and four downtown terminal stations.

Metra will allocate $200,000 out of its yearly budget to equip all of its rail cars with high-efficiency filters capable of removing 75 percent of the diesel soot in rail car interiors.

“We’ve got complaints about the trains at Union Station going back to the early 1970s,” said Paul Piekarski of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen union. “It’s time to fix this problem once and for all.”

The filters will cut the average diesel soot levels from the current 67 micrograms per cubic meter to 16 micrograms per cubic meter (the average soot exposure for urban Chicago is 2 micrograms per cubic meter). Adding advanced air filters to the trains won’t address soot levels on station platforms, however.

Of course, it’s important to put these findings in perspective. A study released this year by the University of Southern California links high-concentrations of automobile exhaust found on freeways with brain damage, memory loss, and Alzheimer’s disease. While it has long been known that highway pollution causes respiratory disease, heart attacks, and cancer this is the first study showing a correlation between auto exhaust and long-term brain health consequences.

“Our data would suggest that freeway pollution could have a profound effect on the development of neurons and brain health in children and young kids, especially those who attend schools built alongside freeways” Todd Morgan, a research professor in gerontology at USC told the Los Angeles Times. “So limiting one’s exposure—especially children’s exposure—to freeway pollution is essential to control asthma, cardiovascular conditions and cognitive development.”


President Obama signed a bill today that would extend the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) contract authority through September 16, providing a short term solution to a political standoff that was costing the government $25-30 million every day in uncollected tax revenue.

The FAA has been operating under a partial shutdown since federal aviation programs expired July 22. While safety-critical employees were still on the job—with no pay—the FAA was forced to furlough almost 4,000 of its employees.

“As a matter of fairness, we will also do everything we can to get Congress to provide our furloughed employees with the back pay they deserve” said Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood.

And with no legal authority to spend money from the Airport and Airway Trust Fund, hundreds of airport construction projects were halted, putting more than 70,000 construction workers out of a job, nationwide.

The partial shutdown also meant that ticket taxes weren’t being collected from airlines, yet no airline reduced its fares accordingly, pocketing the amount that would have gone to the FAA.

The authority expired after House Republicans refused to pass a clean extension without making cuts to the Essential Air Service program which provides air service to rural areas. Senate Democrats defended the program, and although the disagreement centered on only $16.5 million in funding—or a little over half of what was to be lost every day the reauthorization went unpassed—the two sides failed to reach an agreement. After the House adjourned before an agreement was reached, the Senate was faced with a decision—go forward with the House bill or leave the problem unaddressed until Congress comes back into session in September. With at total of $1.3 billion in lost revenue at stake, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) reached out to Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) and a select group of other senior lawmakers to pass the House version through unanimous consent, a legislative maneuver that allowed Reid to pass the bill while most Senators are back home for the August break.


Travelers’ Advisory:

Due to extensive track work being performed by CSX Transportation, the following schedule adjustments are in effect.

• Amtrak will run the morning Grand Rapids-Chicago Pere Marquette 90 minutes earlier than usual from August 15 through September 1. The afternoon reverse trip is unaffected.
• Due to work between Selma, NC, and Florence, SC, the northbound Silver Star (Train 92) will operate on an adjusted schedule on certain dates in August. Schedule [PDF].
• Due to work between Selma, NC, and Florence, SC, Amtrak’s Carolinian (Trains 79 and 80) and Palmetto (Trains 89 and 90) trains will run on altered schedules. The Carolinian will not operate north of Raleigh on certain August dates, and the Palmetto will be bus-substituted between Richmond and Fayetteville (skipping Petersburg) Mondays-Thursdays for most of August, and will be canceled entirely on a few days in September. Schedule [PDF].