Seven of the trains will be available to carry passengers in Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor over the holiday weekend, compared to 15 on a normal day, Amtrak spokesman Cliff Black said Thursday. The passenger railroad will continue to press additional conventional trains into duty, wrote the AP’s Laurence Arnold in Washington.

On Saturday, the Washington Post reported Amtrak will restore six more high-speed train runs September 3 between Boston and Washington to handle an expected 20 percent increase in business travel after the Labor Day holiday. With the additions, Amtrak will have 29 departures, or 58 percent of the regular schedule of 50 daily trips, as more cracked locomotive shock absorbers are fixed, Black said.

Amtrak began last week with five of the high-speed trains in service and added two on Wednesday. The seven trains made a total of 23 departures from Boston, New York and Washington on Thursday, compared to 50 on a typical weekday.

The rest are stored out of service for repairs. The railroad apparently is hard-pressed to find room to store them while they are being fixed. For example, D:F has learned two are being stored on the “dry loop” track at Southampton Street yard in Boston. That track is normally used to turn trains as is the adjacent “wet loop” track, where the Boston carwash is located.

Temporary repairs continue on cracks discovered on car bodies where yaw dampers are attached, as well as the yaw damper mounting plates.

The dampers prevent trucks from hunting, especially at the trains’ higher speeds – 150 mph.

The cause of the cracking, and a permanent fix for the trains, remain the subject of talks among Amtrak, federal railroad officials, and the companies that built the trains, Montreal-based Bombardier Transportation of North America and Alstom Ltd. of France.

For now, the trains that have returned to service are undergoing an intensified inspection and repair program.

“We are seeing new cracking on some pieces of equipment, and what we do then is simply repair them,” Black said.

Ultimately, Amtrak will need to rotate the trains back out of service for permanent repairs. If certain assemblies broke loose, they could damage or derail a moving train.

Acela Express is Amtrak’s premier service, and an important moneymaker for Amtrak.

If there was a silver lining for Amtrak, it was that the Acela Express problem was discovered in August, a slow time for business travel, but now the repair work is stretching through a busy travel weekend and into September. Its busiest travel periods are Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Last year, Amtrak carried about 170,000 passengers on the Saturday, Sunday and Monday of Labor Day weekend, including more than 77,000 riders in the Northeast Corridor.

Another potentially important upcoming day for Amtrak service is September 11, the anniversary of the terrorist attacks. Several major airlines say they are cutting back their flights based on weak bookings that day.

Amtrak owns 18 Acela Express trains, which consist of six passenger cars and two locomotives. Amtrak typically holds three trains in reserve, but there have been no typical days since August 12, when a periodic inspection in Boston revealed cracks in an assembly on one train. Amtrak immediately slowed all Acela Express trains to 80 mph while ordering inspections of all the locomotives.

More cracks were found, and Amtrak canceled the high-speed service August 13. It put two of the 18 trains back in duty the following day, but then pulled them again after additional cracks were found.

Last week, the discovery of still more cracks these on the steel frames of the trains where the assemblies are attached complicated Amtrak’s efforts to get the trains back in service. Those cracks, described as tiny, were discovered when inspectors painted the metal assemblies with a chemical that makes flaws more obvious.

Elsewhere, D:F has learned Gil Mallery, former president of the Amtrak West Strategic Business Unit, has been named the permanent vice-president for planning and business development. The Amtrak board recently took the action. The board made the move on Amtrak president David Gunn’s recommendation. Gunn said the job is one of the most important in spearheading his efforts to reorganize Amtrak.

In other news, Gunn was interviewed on PBS’s Nightly Business Report on Thursday.

He said, “My immediate goal is to cut costs in the overhead area and the nonproductive area and shift it into heavy maintenance. So the bottom line may well stay pretty much the same, but you’ll get a lot more work done that should be done for the same money.”

He added, “Running it as a business relates to how you budget and how you manage and how you organize and what you’ve set as internal goals and objectives. You can run it as a business, in a business like fashion even though you lose money.”

Amtrak reported last Friday ticket sales were off by $7,722,987 from where they were one year earlier. That is down 7.12 percent. Ticket sales totaled $100,796,787.

Bloomberg, a Republican, on Tuesday also named former U.S. Rep. Susan Molinari, another Republican, to the board of the Pennsylvania Station Redevelopment Corp.

The original Pennsylvania Station was “mindlessly” destroyed in 1963, Moynihan said at a City Hall news conference, though the building, erected from 1905 to 1910, was seen by architects as a jewel from the gilded age, Reuters news agency reported on August 27.

The station that replaced the old Pennsylvania Station – “NYP,” to railroaders – whose main marble-sheathed waiting room was 150 feet high, has long been derided as a cramped and ugly terminal that the city outgrew many years ago.

Noting 600,000 people each day travel through the current Pennsylvania Station, located in Manhattan’s west midtown, the mayor told reporters, “Judging by the constant crowds that go through there, it’s clear Pennsylvania Station just can’t handle the volume any more, not to mention the fact that it’s a dreary, subterranean failure.” The recreated Pennsylvania Station will be able to handle 30 percent more people, according to the mayor.

New York City will not be the only beneficiary, he said, explaining the Northeast relies heavily on Amtrak’s rail service between Boston and Washington, as was borne out when its traffic rose dramatically when planes were grounded after September 11.

The city’s plan calls for moving the current Pennsylvania Station across 8^th Avenue between 31^st and 33^rd Streets to the James A. Farley Post Office Building, a sprawling structure built in 1911 and extended in the 1930s.

Both Moynihan and Bloomberg said the city had the federal funds to go ahead with the ambitious plan. The cost of the overhaul has been estimated at $500 million to nearly $800 million. Some 7,600 people will have to be hired to carry out the renovation, and 1,600 permanent jobs will be created, Bloomberg said.

One stumbling block has been negotiations with the U.S. Post Office, which faced budget constraints and had to find new locations for some of its staff and operations.

Charles Gargano, who chairs the Empire State Development Corp., said he was confident his agency’s talks with the Post Office would be resolved in the early future, saying progress had been made.

Diane Todd, a spokeswoman for the Postal Service, said that the service planned to put most of the workers in the Morgan processing and distribution center on Ninth Avenue, and at its 90 Church Street office, which was damaged on September 11 and is being renovated, wrote The New York Times.

Bloomberg said several times that bolstering railroad service is a matter of national security because the nation will need transportation alternatives should air traffic be halted again as it was on September 11. He said he was not concerned that Amtrak’s troubles would hinder the plans.

The Pennsylvania Station Redevelopment Corp., whose board Moynihan and Molinari will serve on, is part of the Empire State Development Corp.

Diane Todd, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Post Office, said “We’re moving in the negotiations and things are going well.” The Post Office’s so-called lobby or services for the public will stay in the Farley building, but a number of administrative and other functions will be relocated to other areas in Manhattan.

Moynihan, who also helped Washington, D.C. renovate its Union Station, also a marble architectural masterwork, said, “Pennsylvania Station was one of the great buildings of the United States, of the World.”

Several stations were named “Pennsylvania” after the railroad that built them.

“That it was torn down in 1963, mindlessly, has been with the city for a long while, how could we do that? We now have an opportunity to recreate the building.”

Clifford Black, an Amtrak spokesman, said that the railroad was not participating in financing the construction of the new station, so its recent difficulties should not affect the plan.

“We are focused right now on our financial challenges and our operational challenges, but at the same time we’re still carrying tens of thousands of passengers between cities in the Northeast and plan to continue to do so,” he said.

Capital District Transportation Authority chairman David Stackrow said on August 23 the agreement had been sent to Amtrak officials for their expected approval, the Albany Times-Union reported. The operating agreement includes lease terms.

Stackrow indicated Amtrak officials said they would sign the document and “overnighted” back the following week.

The eight members of the CDTA board, which is one person short with the resignation of Robert Roche of Albany County, was required to meet to approve it also.

“Our plan is when we have the board meeting, we will announce the opening date,” he said. “I would expect it (the opening) would be within two weeks. In all likelihood, it would be the week after Labor Day.”

Both Amtrak and CDTA have declined to disclose any terms of a broad agreement reached on August 16, except to say it included $50,000 a year in rental payments for Amtrak’s use of 17,000 square feet of space.

Construction of the $53.1 million station was not finished for its most recent target opening date in June, and the station stands empty awaiting the agreement with Amtrak. The station is about two years late and more than $19 million over its original budget.

Meanwhile, the state’s first rebuilt Turboliner, operated by Amtrak crews, is finally running. It is the first of a new line of state-owned high-speed trains being built in Schenectady, and made its maiden test run to New York City and passed muster on all systems being tested, according to the New York DOT.

“It went very successfully,” DOT spokeswoman Melissa Carlson said August 28. She said the test run took place the evening before from the Albany-Rensselaer station to Penn Station, New York. Everything was working, she said.

The test, which focused primarily on computer and electro-magnetic systems, was an important first operational hurdle because if all goes well with additional testing, the first train could be providing Amtrak passenger service between New York City and Rensselaer within the next few weeks, Carlson noted.

That train operated again last Thursday for electronics tests, including the cab radio.

The $74.2 million project, which originally called for having a line of new trains up and running by early 2001, has been plagued by delays stemming from unexpected costs and engineering snags.

Seven trains are being reconditioned by Super Steel Schenectady under the contract with the state.

The top speed reached during Tuesday’s test run was not immediately available, but officials said they were not trying to obtain the 125 mph maximum the Turboliners are being designed to achieve because full high-speed operation awaits track improvements by CSX, which owns the tracks. The current track speed between Rensselaer and New York City is 110 mph.

The high-speed trains are being put in service with the goal of trimming 30 minutes from the trip between Albany and New York City, which is now two hours on most of Amtrak’s scheduled runs.

According to Carlson, Tuesday’s test-run focused on a number of functions including the gas-fueled train’s ability to make the transition to third-rail electrical power for the last leg of the trip into New York City south of Poughkeepsie, computerized control systems, clearance of bridges and other objects near the tracks, and making sure there is no interference between electro-magnetic systems within the train and wayside signals.

Early next month, there will be “dynamic” acceleration testing, transmission shifting, brake operations and stopping distances, wheel stability, traction and anti-lock brakes, the heat, ventilation and air conditioning system and passenger accommodations such as restroom doors.

Before many design and equipment changes were made in the last 18 months, the first train set had one secret test run, which was conducted in the middle of the night in February 2001.

The General Services Administration awarded Washington Bell, an Akridge affiliate, air rights on July 12 after it submitted the highest offer of $10 million. Akridge beat out Louis Dreyfus Property Group, which also submitted a bid in May.

The site stretches from the north side of Union Station to K Street NE, not including the H Street bridge. It is the last infill development site abutting Union Station.

John Akridge Cos. would not confirm that GSA selected it.

“We are in discussions but nothing has been finalized,” says Shannon Small, a spokeswoman for Akridge. The GSA expects to close on the sale in early to mid-September, meeting a September 30 deadline set by Congress.

The federal government obtained the site from Amtrak after one of its bailouts of the railroad. In 1997, Congress asked that GSA sell the property at fair market value, depositing the proceeds in the general fund by the end of fiscal 2002.

Washington-based Akridge has handled other large developments in the national capital, including the National Park Service, with projects such as Gallery Place in Chinatown and the 270,000-square-foot speculative office building at 1201 Eye St. NW.

Nearby, two federal agency headquarters are under construction on either side of H Street: the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms to the north, and the Securities and Exchange Commission to the south.

It is estimated that a 1.1 million- to 3 million-square-foot building could fit on the site. Although it’s a prime location, development is quite complex and the expense will be great.

Development must start at least 40 feet above the tracks, and there must not be any interruption in Amtrak’s train movements – its business. Price estimates for site preparation alone have been steep, ranging from $70 million to $100 million.

In the mid-1990s, the Amtrak air-rights site was considered for the new Washington Convention Center, now under construction seven blocks to the west.

No date has been set to launch the Transportation Worker Identification Credential project, according to the Boston Globe of August 24, but it is the result of a Congressional mandate given to the agency created after September 11 to protect vulnerable ports, tunnels, pipelines, and roadways.

If the idea is implemented, it would be the first broad national identity-card system, and could involve hundreds of thousands of people. The identification card would be required of transportation workers, in the private and public sectors, with access “to secure areas of the transportation system,” according to the agency. This could encompass a cross section of employees, everyone from port stevedores to subway-tunnel maintenance workers to the operators of airport catering trucks.

“This is our top issue, and we are going to be making serious progress on it soon,” said Elaine Charney, branch chief of transportation infrastructure for the agency’s maritime and land security division. “We just have to iron out some details,” but “we are certain it’s coming.”

Contentious proposals floated after the September 11 terrorist attacks had called for creating a national identification card for all Americans or a national driver’s license, but just the number of truckers potentially required to get the transportation worker ID card would easily rise to the “hundreds of thousands,” said Dave Osiecki, vice president for safety and operations for the American Trucking Association. There are about 3.1 million truckers in the country, according to federal statistics.

Charney said that while few “definites” have emerged as the ID system is developed, it would appear at this point that only “higher-risk transportation workers” would be required to get the cards at first. Those workers, she said, would probably be those in security zones at airports, as well as any transportation employee who handles dangerous cargo.

Federal officials also appear committed to a form of biometric identification on the cards, such as that gleaned from the eyes, voice, palms, or fingerprints, Charney said. No technology has been chosen, she added.

The project faces a number of problems, such as how such a massive identification system would be funded, how privacy concerns of cardholders would best be addressed, and how transportation workers would verify their identities prior to receiving the identification.

Steve Keppler, director of policies and programs for the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance, an international group of law enforcement, regulatory, and industry organizations involved with trucking, said a primary concern is the documentation used to obtain the identification.

”A lot of what we learned on September 11 was that terrorists can have legitimate identification, but that they get it under false pretenses,” Keppler said, “so you’ve got to look at where the authoritative source is. Frankly, we don’t have an opinion, but biometrics could help deal with that problem.”

Barry Steinhardt, director of the Technology and Liberty program at the American Civil Liberties Union, said the ACLU opposed the national ID and the national driver’s license proposals because of the large populations they would involve. They would “create a black market in cards and not solve the terrorism problem,” Steinhardt said.

The idea of requiring an identification card for transportation workers, he said, would probably make sense, depending on the reliability of the biometric-verification device used. If the agency settles on a proven technology, the card would create “a positive good with few, if any, civil liberties downsides,” Steinhardt said.

Both private and public employers of transportation workers have expressed some concerns that the agency, once it has developed the ID system, would make them pay for criminal background tests, drug tests, and creating the card. No such decisions have been made, agency officials said yesterday.

The Atlanta Regional Commission has put plans for Atlanta’s “Northern Arc” highway project on hold, and approved a three-year spending program for metro transportation improvements on Wednesday.

Charles “Chick” Krautler, the commission’s executive director, said omission of funding for the Northern Arc, a proposed $2.2 billion, 59-mile toll road across north metro Atlanta, “certainly made the approval process much easier.” The $5.3 billion plan included new high-occupancy vehicle lanes, transit lines and better roads in some of the metro area’s most gridlocked corridors, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Opposition to the road and revelations about board members with potential conflicts of interest have buffeted the commission for more than six months.

Removing Northern Arc funding, as Gov. Roy Barnes requested in July, made the commission’s decision to approve the more popular projects in the spending plan far easier, Krautler said. Despite last week’s court ruling requiring a higher air quality standard, the plan passed muster.

Half the projects come from Barnes’ five-year, $8.6 billion transportation plan, announced last year. They include commuter rail lines to Athens and Macon, a new transit line from Midtown to the Cumberland Mall area and new lanes for many feeder roads throughout the region.

“I hope nothing will interrupt the [Georgia DOT’s] ability to get these projects going,” Krautler said.

Just such an obstacle looms in a court challenge to the $822 million in bonds Barnes was counting on to pay for many of the improvements. Northern Arc Task Force members have asked a state court to prevent the bonds’ issuance because they contend the method for repaying them violates the state constitution.

The case will be argued Wednesday in Fulton County Superior Court.

Three boys were arrested soon after the 13-car train left the tracks and smashed through a feed store adjacent to the rails. The boy was the only one charged in the derailment, reported the Truro, Nova Scotia Daily News.

The boy, who could not be identified because he is a young offender, discussed the derailment with some of the passengers of the VIA Rail Canada passenger train Ocean that left the tracks on April 12, 2001.

He pleaded guilty last April to mischief endangering life in connection with the derailment in which 24 of the 123 people on board were injured.

The Crown dropped a charge of criminal negligence causing bodily harm.

The forum, was not open to the public, but brought forward recommendations for the court’s consideration when the boy is sentenced on October 2 in Shubenacadie. The boy could face up to three years incarceration and another two under supervision.

Passenger Paul Poirier was joined by Susan Henderson of the Truro Restorative Justice Resource Centre, provincial restorative justice coordinator Pat Gorham and forum facilitator David Dyck discussing the process and some of the views expressed in the forum.

The exact recommendation from the restorative justice forum cannot be revealed until the sentencing date.

Ashland ‘T’ station opens; state EPA writes letters over Stoughton line

The first train to stop there was scheduled at 10:02 a.m. Ashland is in MBTA Zone 6, so one-way fares to Boston will cost $4.25. A monthly pass for unlimited usage costs $145. There will be 10 trains in each direction on weekdays. The first Boston-bound train will leave Ashland at 6:38 a.m., arriving at South Station at 7:21 a.m.

“We’re always excited when we have the opportunity to expand our service,” said MBTA spokesman Joe Pesaturo, who said Ashland’s 670-space parking lot is the biggest among the three newest stations.

Across from the Pleasant Street station, a VFW post is renting reserved parking for about 65 riders at $4 per day, four times the rate charged by the MBTA. Commuters who park at the VFW will get their own numbered space, said manager Bob Wallace.

The last passenger train stopped more than 50 years ago at what is now the office of internist Rohit Jangi on Homer Avenue (formerly Railroad Street).

The weekend opening enabled T officials to iron out last-minute kinks on a day when ridership is typically light, said Pesaturo. A formal opening ceremony with state and local officials took place three days later, on August 27.

The MBTA used a similar weekend opening in June to launch service at new stations in Southborough and Westborough.

The two open stations have already eased a parking crunch in downtown Framingham by diverting commuter-rail passengers to the other MetroWest stations. Pesaturo thinks some of those commuters will come to Ashland.

The town is expected to draw hundreds of passengers into downtown to use the station. Passengers will be able to buy tickets on the train or at South Station. They can also order monthly passes on-line.

Elsewhere in the Bay State, separate strongly worded letters from two agencies that will eventually have to grant the MBTA permits elated foes of the proposed commuter rail expansion through Stoughton, Easton and Raynham, Mass. to Fall River and New Bedford.

The MBTA proposes extending commuter rail service to Fall River and New Bedford by using an abandoned railroad right-of-way that runs from the existing station in Stoughton, through Easton and Raynham to Taunton, but the route is controversial because it runs through the Hockomock Swamp in Easton and Raynham, according to The Brockton Enterprise of August 28.

The swamp is a state-designated “Area of Critical Environmental Concern” because it is the habitat for several rare animal and plant species.

The 19-page federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) letter questioned the MBTA’s selection of the Stoughton route over an alternative that goes through Attleboro and many aspects of its analysis of the environmental impact.

The EPA letter said the “MBTA’s analysis of alternatives is deficient.” It also stated the MBTA inflexibly applied its standards of service to reject less damaging alternatives and raised doubts over whether the project could satisfy federal permit rules.

“It’s a very, very good letter,” said Kyla Bennett, an opponent of the rail project and director of New England Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, of the EPA’s August 22 letter from its Region 1 office. Bennett had organized a delegation of officials from Easton, Raynham and Stoughton to the Boston EPA office to lobby against the MBTA plan.

The EPA is one of the agencies that will eventually have to issue a permit for the project.

Another permitting agency weighing in with critical comments about the proposed route was the Natural Heritage and Endangered Species Program, which is part of the Division of Fisheries, Wildlife and Environmental Law Enforcement.

The MBTA will have to apply to the Natural Heritage program for a permit for the project under the state’s Endangered Species Act.

Natural Heritage also questioned the MBTA plan’s analysis of the environmental impact

The federal environmental impact report (FEIR) “does not adequately substantiate the claim that there are no impacts to rare species from the preferred at-grade alternatives or trestle option,” the letter said.

Natural Heritage said the evidence presented would not show “negligible impacts” to rare species, so the MBTA would have to meet the higher standard of showing there was no viable alternative route.

Bennett said the state agencies that have permitting authority over the project, including the Natural Heritage program and the Department of Environmental Protection, are under “tremendous political pressure to let this project go.”

Foes of the project had been relying on federal agencies such as the EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers to be less susceptible to the political pressure.

“It was good to see Natural Heritage be willing to do the right thing,” Bennett said.

Doug Pizzi, press secretary for Durand, said Durand will issue a decision on the FEIR after the holiday.