Hotline #924

Now that Congress is out for its summer recess, the fate of the Hudson River tunnel continues to be the hot news topic. Rail advocate Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) has joined Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J) to position themselves as the brokers to come up with a permanent solution. Schumer wants to create a new partnership called the Gateway Development Corporation, reports Politico New York. The corporation would use resources and staff from Amtrak, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the states of New York and New Jersey, New York City, New Jersey Transit and the M.T.A.

Schumer puts the price of the project at between $20 billion and $25 billion, and the corporation would be able to access a wide array of revenue sources, leverage private capital and issue debt. DOT Secretary Anthony Foxx applauded Schumer for his proposal, while New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) turned down Booker’s attempt for a meeting with New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) and Foxx.

Gov. Cuomo feels a meeting would be pointless unless federal officials offered grants, not loans, to finance new tunnels under the Hudson River, reports the New York Times. “There’s no reason to meet now, because it’s very simple.” The states could not afford to pay back a loan, Cuomo said; only cash can cover the project’s cost. “I don’t need your advice; I know we need the tunnel,” Cuomo said. “We’ll build the tunnel — I’ll go out there with a shovel myself — but we need the money.”

The Northeast Corridor handles more than 2,000 trains and carries 400,000 passengers each weekday. In NARP’s United States of Underinvestment report, the organization calculated an existing pipeline of rail projects totaling $208.57 billion, including:

• Northeast Corridor State of Good Repair - $52 billion;

• Baltimore & Pennsylvania Tunnel - $1.5 billion;

• Gateway Project - $14.56 billion; and

• NEC High-Speed Replacement Trainsets – $5.2 billion.

Critical to the success of any comprehensive investment strategy -- for both the Northeast Corridor and the National Network -- will be a dedicated source of federal funding. With Members of Congress back home for August in-district work sessions, now is the perfect time to let them know you want to see a predictable, dedicated source of funding for intercity trains. This will allow Amtrak and states to purchase new equipment and make much-needed infrastructure upgrades.

With no solution for the proposed Gateway project in sight, Amtrak has warned that train delays like those recently caused by problems in the century-old Hudson River tunnel will become more common, said a report by NBC News. Even if the project started today, it wouldn’t be finished by 2025 at the earliest, said Stephen Gardner, Amtrak's vice president of Northeast Corridor infrastructure investment. But until then, there is no viable contingency plan in place if one of the two tubes in the tunnel has to be taken out of service for an extended period, cutting train traffic during rush hour from 24 trains to six, he said. Amtrak's goal is to "keep the tunnel in working order to support the traffic we have today," he said, adding that "those delays could become the norm at some point."

As the Dec. 31, 2015, deadline for rail companies to install Positive Train Control, Philadelphia’s SEPTA is among the 11 expected to meet the deadline, reports NJ.com. "A majority of railroads will not meet this statutory deadline," according to the FRA. The Status of Positive Train Control Implementation report, mandated by the House Appropriations Committee, reports that Amtrak's 367 miles of Northeast Corridor track will be completed by the end of 2015. Of the railroad's 193 locomotives assigned to the Northeast Corridor, 189 of them have had PTC equipped.

NARP applauded the U.S. Senate last month for including a provision in the transportation bill that provides an additional $199 million in dedicated funding for PTC, whose implementation is long past due. The NTSB has said Amtrak Train #188 would not have derailed outside Philadelphia on May 12 if PTC had been in place on the curve in question. The accident cast a spotlight on passenger and freight railroads scrambling to meet the Dec. 31 deadline for PTC implementation, struggling with technological hurdles and limited financial resources.

As we reached the 10-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, a study to restart passenger rail service from New Orleans to Orlando has support in Congress, but when it actually begins is anyone's guess, reports AL.com. The pending transportation bill has a provision to create a seven-member working group that would analyze the costs, preferred route and funding sources for a restored Gulf Coast passenger rail line. "The concern is whether there is a bill passed in the near future," said John Robert Smith, chairman of the board for Transportation for America. "Continuing extensions doesn't bring into play the working group. These issues ... are a timely issue and you wouldn't want to wait for two years after a presidential election to getting into answering (questions about restoring passenger rail on the Gulf Coast)."

Between 1993 and 2005, Amtrak operated the nation’s only coast-to-coast passenger train, running between Orlando and Los Angeles and connecting 29 smaller communities. NARP President and CEO Jim Mathews spoke at an event in Biloxi, Mississippi this June to support restoration of passenger rail service across the Gulf Coast corridor. Seven of the 12 communities between New Orleans and Jacksonville, Florida, whose service was suspended post-Katrina, have no air service, and four have no intercity bus service, leaving those four areas without any public transportation option. “Reconnecting these areas to the rest of the economy should produce a net benefit beyond direct investment in rail service by easing the Gulf Coast’s isolation from access to other markets for travel and tourism revenue,” said Mathews.

The June 2015 NARP newsletter included a story about donor Allen Montgomery, who said he joined the organization and became a Silver Rail member to advocate to bring back rail service to Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley. He may be closer to getting his wish after the mayors of Allentown, Bethlehem, Easton and Phillipsburg announced plans to join forces to re-launch efforts to bring passenger rail service to the region, reports LehighValleyLive.com. The Lehigh Valley Planning Commission last year also started looking again into re-establishing passenger rail service. Executive Director Becky Bradley at the time said she believes service could be provided for far less money if there could be a way for existing freight lines to accommodate passenger trains.

Riders taking the train between Harrisburg and Philadelphia have doubled in the last few years, while travel times have gone from two hours and twenty minutes to an hour and forty-five minutes, reports CBS21News.com. And now PennDOT and Amtrak want to cut it by another ten to twelve minutes. The cost to make the changes will be covered by federal and state grants in the tens of millions of dollars, while ridership revenue would cover the rest, said PennDOT's Toby Fauver.

Finally, we are asking our members for help. NARP works hard to advocate for better intermodal transportation options in the U.S. But those efforts cost money, and NARP relies on contributions from its members in its ongoing efforts to keep its finger on the pulse of transportation legislation in Washington D.C., and across the country. Recent efforts include:

• Writing a friend of the court brief when the Supreme Court vacated a lower court decision that reinstated metrics and standards for Amtrak service that will protect the rights of train passengers;

• Working with the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation to craft rail investment provisions in the transportation bill;

• Defeating amendments to the House fiscal year 2016 Transportation, Housing & Urban Development appropriations bill that would have cut Amtrak funding; and

• Continuing to advocate for the restoration of passenger rail service in the Gulf Coast region.

To that end, America by Rail, has generously donated a New England Fall Foliage tour for NARP to raffle off as a fundraiser. The trip, valued at $5690, is an eight-day tour of top spots in New England, including visits to the Trapp Family Lodge and the Billings Farm in Vermont and a ride on three scenic railroads in New Hampshire.

Raffle tickets are $50 each and will benefit NARP’s legislative efforts on Capitol Hill. The purchase of raffle tickets are tax-deductible to the fullest extent of the law. To buy a raffle ticket, please contact our Director of Resource Development, Logan McLeod at (202) 408-8362 ext. 3202 and provide him with your credit card information. The winner will be chosen at random through an electronic software program called RandomPicker. The winner will be posted on the NARP website on Tuesday, September 8, 2015.