Hotline #919

The Railroad Reform, Enhancement, and Efficiency Act—as approved by the Senate Commerce Committee—was included as a title in sections of the highway bill introduced on Thursday. A Commerce Committee staffer told NARP they were pleased that rail was included in the bill, calling that inclusion "a significant and symbolic step." NARP is asking members to send letters of support to Committee Chairman Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) and Ranking Member Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) for including the rail bill, co-sponsored by Sens. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), into the highway bill.

NARP will hold a town hall-style conference call on Wednesday July 22, to discuss efforts to get a better version of S 1626, the passenger rail reauthorization bill. To that end, NARP is asking members to contact mayors, city councils, Chambers of Commerce and civic organizations and get their support for the measure. We send further information about the S 1626, along with call details, next week.

It was good news this week for the Southwest Chief after Amtrak and the Kansas City Terminal Railway announced reaching a tentative agreement on who will pay for more than $30 million in safety upgrades, reports the Santa Fe New Mexican. No terms were revealed, but the deal was reached through arbitration.

NARP has worked closely with ColoRail, led by President James Souby, to save the Southwest Chief’s present route through Kansas, Colorado and New Mexico. Amtrak and track owner BNSF Railway have been negotiating to commit the funds necessary to maintain the section between Albuquerque and central Kansas through southeastern Colorado—which has little to no freight service—to passenger standards, thus maintaining the reliability of the fastest train between Chicago and the West Coast. The Chief serves many rural communities that have no other intercity passenger transportation options, and loss of the present route would greatly harm these communities.

The New York Times makes the case for the Gateway project, which would build a pair of new passenger tunnels under the Hudson River. This project ranks one, two and three in terms of urgent rail projects, it noted. “Passenger traffic under the Hudson River — and by association a hefty chunk of the nation’s economy — relies on a couple of broken-down, century-old tunnels strained to capacity. They serve Amtrak and New Jersey Transit trains that at rush hour have come to resemble the Marx Brothers’ stateroom scene.”

The Northeast Corridor, which carries more than 2,000 trains each weekday, has dozens of critical-yet-obsolete infrastructure elements, most notably the 104-year old Hudson River Tunnels connecting New York City and New Jersey, which carry 400,000 passengers each weekday. The tunnels will have to be closed to allow repairs to damage by Superstorm Sandy, but unless Amtrak secures funding for a new pair of tunnels to provide alternate routing under the Gateway project, this repair process could turn commuting into a twice-daily nightmare for hundreds of thousands of bankers, brokers and bricklayers alike.

The NEC needs $52 billion in capital investment over the next 20 years just to maintain existing levels of service. This doesn’t include another $117 billion needed to build a Next-Gen High Speed Rail between Washington, D.C., New York City, and Boston.

As the December 31, 2015, deadline for operators to install Positive Train Control (PTC) technology looms, members of Chicago’s congressional delegation raised the possibility that the nation's rail system could shut down, including local Metra commuter service, if lawmakers don’t extend it, reports the Chicago Tribune.

"If railroads do not have Positive Train Control implemented by the end of this year, they could be fined $25,000 a day, and they could potentially be shut down," said Rep. Dan Lipinski (D-Ill.) during a Metra station visit. "We have to avoid this."

Metro-North Railroad needs to improve safety and overall operational efforts on the country's busiest commuter rail line, said Acting FRA Administrator Sarah Feinberg during a visit in Connecticut, reports NBC Connecticut. The visit, arranged by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), focused on improvements made more than two years after the death of a Metro-North maintenance worker in May 2013.

Feinberg said adding PTC is also crucial to improving safety and minimizing accidents. "Most accidents are caused by human factors," Feinberg said. "That means human error. Positive Train Control helps take human error off the table. It’s just a game changer in terms of safety. It’s just a huge priority for us."

Transportation providers across the U.S. continue to struggle to find enough funds to implement PTC and sufficiently protect grade crossings. This safety investment could have prevented two deadly train accidents in the Northeast within the past year. Congress passed the Rail Safety Improvement Act of 2008, which, among other things, directed FRA to have implement PTC, but failed to properly fund the mandate. NARP supports proposing granting the Secretary of Transportation authority to grant 18-month extensions on a case-by-case basis.

But FRA has gone on the record saying it will not extend the Dec. 31 deadline. “Starting on Jan. 1, 2016, FRA will impose penalties on railroads that have not fully implemented PTC,” Feinberg told a subcommittee of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure in late June.

The NTSB urged Amtrak to install "crash- and fire-protected inward- and outward-facing audio and image recorders" on all locomotives In the wake of the Amtrak derailment in Philadelphia on May 12, reports the Philadelphia Inquirer. Amtrak CEO Joseph Boardman said that Amtrak would install inward-facing video cameras in all of its 300 locomotives in a press call in May. With the help from the FRA and the NTSB, Connecticut’s Metro-North announced a series of reforms designed increase the safety of the railroad’s employees and passengers, including installing in-cab cameras for accident review.

Rail supporter Gov. Dannel Malloy (D) has expressed concern to U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx about Amtrak delays and cost increases for rail line upgrades to support the New Haven-Hartford-Springfield commuter rail line scheduled to begin operation in late 2016, reports WNPR.

In a May 11 letter to Foxx, Malloy wrote: “The current cost of this Project has ballooned to $615 million, an increase of $250 million (68 percent) over an original budget of $365 million. Connecticut already has committed $244 million of state funds, $70 million above the initial $174 million we pledged to the Project in the grant applications. We have reached our state funding limit, and a potential crisis for the delivery of the project.”

Mere weeks after construction started on California’s $68 billion high-speed rail project, Republican state Sen. Andy Vidak has partnered with Democratic Assembly member Rudy Salas on a bill that would allow voters to have a say on the future of the project, reports KION-TV. They say voters deserve to be able to vote the project down, because now more of the cost -- which projections see going up to $200 billion -- by will be shouldered by taxpayers.

NARP supports efforts to build high-speed rail as part of the ongoing development of the national passenger rail network under a multimodal transportation system. A 21st century modern rail system will help ensure that trains realize their full potential to improve America’s mobility, prosperity and quality of life.

In a victory for multimodal transportation options, the Washington state legislature approved a gas tax hike to fund highway projects that includes giving Sound Transit the authority to raise $15 billion to extend light rail up and down the Puget Sound region, reports Q31FOX-TV. Voters next year will be able to decide to fund the project, which will cover King, Pierce and Snohomish counties.

NARP believes that expanding light rail as part of an intermodal transportation system can have a positive economic and environmental impact on cities like Seattle. They also boost the walkability and livability of communities and create alternatives to automobile travel."