Hotline #822 - April 22, 1994

The House Transportation Appropriations Subcommittee will hold public witness hearings next week. NARP Executive Director Ross Capon will testify on April 25. David Price (D.-N.C.) will chair the hearing. To repeat our earlier requests, if you have long-distance trains in your Congressional district, please ask your Representative to tell Subcommittee Chairman Bob Carr (D.-Mich.) or Ranking Republican Frank Wolf (Va.) how important these trains are.

Amtrak has commissioned an internal Gallup poll to ask Amtrak employees their views on the current work environment and how it could be changed to improve service. Also this week, there have been many rumors about Amtrak President Tom Downs having plans to reorganize the Northeast Corridor. We have been assured that the reorganization is meant to improve customer service and that there are no plans to terminate long-distance trains at Washington.

Striking Teamsters now have agreed to allow trucking companies to move more freight intermodally by rail, according to the Journal of Commerce.

The April 18 issue of Maglev News says that, in a Tokyo speech, the executive director of the High Speed Rail/Maglev Association, Joe Vranich, called for removing maglev work from the Federal Railroad Administration. Vranich said an agency such as NASA would be better equipped to deal with maglev. However, the FRA responded that it does not want such a change. Vranich later said he had failed to make clear his comments were his personal views. A follow-up High Speed Rail release says, "There is no fully developed Association position on this issue."

Maglev News also reported that the State of Florida has made $70 million a year available for all forms of high-speed improvements, beginning in 1996.

GEC-Alsthom, the maker of the French TGV, has been awarded a contract from the government of South Korea to supply high-speed trains for a line being built between Seoul and Pusan. GEC-Alsthom had won preliminary approval from the government last August. In the meantime, the government negotiated for better terms on price and technology transfer. The 46 train sets will cost $2.1 billion, with about half the equipment coming from France and about half from within Korea. The 256-mile line will cost another $11.1 billion to build and should be complete by 2002.

The only visible opponent of the Central Artery rail link in the Massachusetts legislature has announced he will not run for re-election. He is Stephen Karol, the House chairman of the Joint Committee on Transportation.

NARP Region 3 met at Wilmington last week and elected Bob Abraham, Greg Bender, Doug Bowen, Jim Ciacciarelli, Paul Hart, Larry Joyce, Sharon Shneyer, and Steve von Bonin to the NARP board.

The NARP board meets in Rockville, Md., April 28-30. On April 28 it will award the George Falcon Golden Spike Award to Gov. William Weld and State Rep. John Businger, both of Massachusetts, for their leadership in moving the Boston Central Artery rail link forward. The first Dr. Gary Burch Memorial Safety Award will go to Wayne Solomon, who is a locomotive engineer with the Chicago and North Western. The April 29 luncheon speaker will be Amtrak President Tom Downs and on April 30 there will be Deputy Transportation Secretary Mort Downey.

Every attempt will be made to change the hotline as usual on April 29. The NARP board meeting may cause the change to be made somewhat earlier or later than normal.