NCI: Leo King The gates are down and the lights are flashing, but there’s not a train within miles – and motorists could thank Hurricane Frances last week for the aggravation. There are a string of several grade crossings along CSX’s “A” Line between Jacksonville and Miami, and this one, in Orange Park where Peoria Street crosses near milepost 663, forced motorists to go around the gates until CSX C&S could fix it some time later on September 6.

Amtrak’s Florida service is back to normal – at least until Ivan the Terrible shows up… if it does.

All the passenger carrier’s southbound trains operated to their end points on Friday, and Saturday’s Auto Train and Palmetto ran over their full routes. The Silver Star, Silver Meteor, Palmetto and Auto Train traveled in both directions on Sunday.

On Friday, forecasters at the National Hurricane Center were not sure where Hurricane Ivan - downgraded to a category 4 storm with 140mph sustained winds - would track, but it was following a course similar to “Charley’s” about a month earlier.

Amtrak spokesman Cliff Black said the carrier, working with CSX Transportation, “is restoring service to and from Florida.” On Friday, all southbound trains operated from New York to Miami, as did the southbound Auto Train from Lorton, Va., to Sanford, Fla.

Black noted, “Some other cancellations remain in effect until Sunday, when full service will be restored between the Eastern Seaboard and Florida.”

The Sunset Limited (train No. 2), which was scheduled to originate September 10 from Los Angeles to Orlando, terminated in New Orleans instead, with alternate transportation provided to Orlando. The return trip, (No. 1), originated yesterday in New Orleans with no alternate transportation provided.

Staffed Amtrak stations in central and south Florida that were closed before Hurricane Frances arrived have now reopened for passenger ticketing and to answer customer questions.

Black added, “These plans are subject to change, as conditions dictate.”

In a September 8 service bulletin, CSX stated “CSX Engineering and Signal teams are advancing in their efforts to clean up debris and restore signals in Florida and southern Georgia. Extensive areas are still hampered by power outages.”

From Waycross, Ga., west, along CSXT’s “Bowline,” limited service resumed. South of Jacksonville and Baldwin, limited service gradually resumed as segments of the network were cleared and passed inspection. Service west out of Baldwin, Fla., along the Florida Panhandle also resumed to a limited extent.

Tri-Rail from North Miami to Deerfield, Fla., which also operates over CSX, resumed operations on the 8^th as well. Amtrak service south of Jacksonville remained suspended until repairs were completed.

Sidebar: Merrill Lynch upped its CSX Corp. rating to “buy” on September 8.

Elsewhere in Florida, Florida East Coast Industries, Inc. said on September 8 its Florida East Coast Ry. resumed rail service along its 351 miles of track “after all sections of track and all rail crossings were cleared and passed inspection.”

FEC Spokesman Husein Cumber said, the railway had suspended service on September 2, “in anticipation of the arrival of Hurricane Frances.”

Cumber said, “Power outages left many grade crossings along the railway inoperable and, as a result, train speeds and the number of train starts has been reduced until power can be fully restored.”

By Friday, lengthy trains were moving, and much of the railway was operating under “stop and protect” operating rules at grade crossings. Local police were also helping out by guarding the crossings as trains approached.

FEC CEO Robert W. Anestis said, “Although the railway recorded very strong volumes in July and August, the Railway’s preliminary assessment of Hurricane Frances’ impact to operations indicates that in September the railway will experience reduced traffic levels, as well as clean-up expenses.”

Anestis added, “Railway revenue and volumes for the first eight months were strong, and once the short-term impact to operations is resolved, we expect this momentum to resume and continue over the balance of the year.”

A Senate panel challenged President Bush on two fronts Thursday. One was transportation funding, and some Republicans on the GOP-run subcommittee backed Democrats in a demonstration of how sensitive some issues can be in the weeks before the November 2 elections, The AP reported. The other was not transportation-related.

Bush has threatened to veto the bill if exceeds his proposed funding limits.

The showdowns came as a subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations Committee used a voice vote to approve a $90.6 billion bill for operating the Treasury and Transportation departments next year. The same bill has $1.2 billion to subsidize Amtrak.

West Virginia’s Sen. Robert C. Byrd found a way to keep Amtrak from falling into imminent bankruptcy - despite objections from the Bush White House.

The Senate Appropriations Committee’s transportation panel approved legislation Thursday, engineered by Byrd, that would direct more than $1.2 billion to Amtrak and reject the White House’s bankrupt Amtrak funding plan. The full Senate is expected to consider the legislation in the next few weeks.

In his budget request, President George W. Bush proposed cutting Amtrak by more than $300 million - 26 percent lower than current federal funding. Earlier this year, Amtrak President David Gunn told Byrd that the President’s budget “is a shutdown number” and would force an end to the railroad’s service from coast-to-coast.

In a press release, Byrd said on Thursday, “Each day, millions of people ride the rails to get to and from work, to visit family and friends living many miles away, or to travel on vacation. We must not simply derail Amtrak because of a President’s political agenda.”

Byrd stated, “For many rural communities, Amtrak is the primary transportation link to the rest of the nation. The funding in this bill will make critical investments in Amtrak and ensure that this transportation link is not severed.”

Each of the Bush Administration’s four budget requests has targeted Amtrak funding at levels that would have rendered the system inoperable. Each year, Byrd and Washington Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), have found ways to ensure that the railroad stays on track. Byrd is the senior Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee; Murray leads the Democrats on the Appropriations transportation subcommittee.

“For too long, Congress and presidential administrations have set unrealistically high standards for Amtrak while providing terribly low funding. Amtrak is showing the wear and tear of its more than three decades of operation and is suffering the effects of a beleaguered national economy. That is why I have worked with such determination to ensure that Amtrak has funding to keep on track,“ Byrd stated.

Elsewhere in Washington last week, on September 7 The American Public Transportation Assn. (APTA) called for “immediate passage” of comprehensive long-term surface transportation funding to provide critical relief for a worsening traffic congestion crisis across the U.S. APTA’s call for more funding came in response to the latest data released by the Texas Transportation Institute (TTI) that shows how transit successfully reduces traffic delays and costs in 85 of America’s urban areas.

This year’s study reports that in 2002, according to APTA, “regular bus and train services in America’s most congested cities saved travelers 1.1 billion hours in travel time. Without public transportation, nationwide travel delays would have increased by 32 percent, costing residents in the major urban areas studied an additional $20 billion in lost time and fuel.”

The pro-transit organization stated, “The cost of congestion in 85 major U.S. urban areas in 2002 totaled more than $63 billion.”

Between 1982 and 2002, the study found that travel time saved because of public transportation increased four fold.

“This report clearly documents the strong and ongoing contribution made by public transportation in lessening the congestion that exists today,” a press release argued.

“The TTI report gives clear evidence that public transportation makes a strong contribution in easing the congestion problem,” said William W. Millar, APTA president, “but its availability is not keeping keep pace with growth in congestion.”

He added, “This is why we urge Congress to increase the federal investment in transit programs as soon as possible.”

TTI’s Urban Mobility Study, the longest running independent analysis of traffic has been conducted annually since 1982. Among its conclusions, the TTI study found that the average annual delay time per peak period traveler climbed from 16 hours in 1982 to 46 hours in 2002.

“The need for more solutions to existing traffic congestion is clearly overdue,” said Millar. “The TTI report demonstrates and details for all who care about the condition of our nation’s growing transportation problems, that decisive action must be taken once and for all to expand and modernize our public transportation systems.”

Schumer amendment fails
to double port spending

Terrorists blow up subways, trucks and ships as well as airplanes, but the Transportation Security Administration doesn’t have a plan yet to defend all forms of transportation from attacks.

In a 20-page addition to the report it issued in July, the independent commission that investigated the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks said most of the TSA’s resources have been devoted to protecting aviation.

“Other transportation modes are at risk and have significant vulnerabilities,” said the report, which was made available on Wednesday, according to The AP.

The commission recommended that the Homeland Security Department and the TSA, one of its agencies, come up with a final plan by February 1 to protect passengers, equipment and facilities.

President Bush last week told Congressional leaders, “We’ve got to do everything we can to protect the homeland.”

The September 11 commission addendum showed how much needs to be done just to protect transportation. Its 94 recommendations – expanded from the handful included in the July report – include developing recovery plans to restart key transportation systems after a terrorist attack, checking travelers’ names against terrorist watch lists before they board passenger trains or cruise ships, and setting priorities based on risk assessments.

Oregon Rep. Peter DeFazio, the ranking Democrat on the House aviation subcommittee who made the report available, said the government has done only about 10 percent of what it should be doing to protect transportation.

“No one could look at this and say we’ve done everything we can do, or are in the process of doing everything we can do, to make the country safe,” he said.

The report said that without a strategic plan, “policy-makers may find themselves continually fighting the last war rather than anticipating and protecting the nation’s transportation system against future threats.”

TSA chief David Stone has said such a plan will be finished by the end of the year.

Brian Jenkins, counter-terrorism analyst for the RAND Corp., said tough decisions have to be made about the most important targets to protect because resources are limited.

“Do you spend lots of money on terminals, shopping malls, train stations, bus depots?” Jenkins said. “None of these decisions are easy.”

Jenkins said the country’s two biggest transportation vulnerabilities are mass transit and ports.

“There’s limited things we can do” to protect them, he said. “We’re going to have to live with some of the risk.”

On September 8, the Republican-controlled Senate turned aside a Democratic effort to double port security spending in the Homeland Security Department spending bill.

An amendment by Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), to double the bill’s $150 million for developing equipment to detect nuclear weapons hidden in containers entering U.S. ports died – although senators voted 50-46 for it. It lost because a procedural move forced Schumer to garner 60 votes to prevail.

The September 11 commission also urged the TSA to check travelers’ names against terrorist watch lists before they board passenger trains or cruise ships. Airlines now check their passengers’ names against such a list, a responsibility that the TSA plans to assume sometime next year.

Privacy advocates say the government is too secretive about how it puts people on the list and that those who are mistakenly identified as terrorists don’t have an effective way of getting off it.

“Steps should be taken as soon as possible to convert the “No-Fly” list into a “No-Transport” list that would be provided to transportation providers in addition to air carriers (starting with cruise ships and

Transportation security should be elevated to a national defense issue, complete with its own version of war games to detect vulnerabilities, the staff concluded. The New York Times wrote “more intensive protective measures should be applied to trains, ships and mass transit, while remaining loopholes in aviation security should be closed.” The staff offered no cost estimates, but such an ambitious program could cost billions of dollars.

“These should be looked at as recommendations made by the staff, not approved by the commission, but generally consistent with ours,” said Lee H. Hamilton, vice chairman of the panel. “Don’t think that the commission looked at them and rejected them.… We just didn’t act on them.”

Congressional staffers said they were reviewing the 19-page report as lawmakers weighed legislation to adopt the commission’s recommendations. That legislation is likely to follow the commission’s broad proposals, which represent a bipartisan consensus. Some of the ideas in the staff report are more controversial, said Congressional aides, but they may serve as a blueprint for the legislative committees that oversee transportation.

“These staff papers are for the experts,” said Hamilton, adding that many lawmakers had requested more specific recommendations on transportation security.

The staff report was originally scheduled for release August 21, when the commission officially closed, but a security review by the White House led to delays. A Congressional aide said the document was released in its entirety.

NJT opens three new stations

An inaugural train ride on September 7 carried Weehawken, N.J. leaders along a new segment on New Jersey Transit’s Hudson-Bergen Light Rail (HBLR) line that extends service from Hoboken Terminal 2.6 miles north to Weehawken.

Three stations - Second Street and Ninth Street stations in Hoboken, and Lincoln Harbor Station in Weehawken - were opened as NJT began revenue service on the line.

At a grand opening ceremony held at Lincoln Harbor Station in Weehawken, Rep. Robert Menendez, Weehawken Mayor Richard Turner and NJT Executive Director George D. Warrington welcomed the inaugural train carrying a host of dignitaries including New Jersey House Speaker Albio Sires and Hoboken Mayor David Roberts.

“This light rail system isn’t just about transporting people to work, school, or shopping and entertainment destinations,” said Menendez, senior New Jersey Member of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.

“It is about linking communities, providing options, and protecting our environment. It helps New Jersey fight air pollution, reduce traffic, and cut down on sprawl. Finally, our light rail project shows that we can plan transportation growth carefully, with more thought given to the needs of people who will live and work in the community today and tomorrow.”

“This extension brings us one step closer to providing full mass transit access to all of the residents of Hudson County,” said state Sen. Bernie Kenny. He said, “Hoboken, with rail, ferry, and light rail access throughout the city, is now connected to the rest of Hudson County.”

“I’m thrilled!” said Weehawken Mayor Richard Turner. “This is an exciting day for all Weehawken residents. This provides us with a mass transit link to all of Hudson County and New Jersey.”

The three new stations are located along a 5.1-mile segment that extends service north from Hoboken Terminal. The project is part of a $1.2 billion segment of HBLR, called MOS-2, which is funded through state and federal sources.

MOS-2 will be complete when Port Imperial, in Weehawken, Bergenline Avenue (Union City) and Tonnelle Avenue (North Bergen) stations open in late 2005. It also includes the one-mile extension from 34^th Street Station to 22^nd Street Station in Bayonne, which opened in November 2003.

HBLR continues to spur economic development in Hudson County. In Jersey City, more than 15 million square feet of office space, 10,000 residential units and 500 hotel rooms are now available. In Weehawken, private sector investment is revitalizing the waterfront with hotels and shopping promenades.

Revenue service on the extension began shortly after the ceremony. Trains will operate at 15-minute headways from 6:00 a.m. until 1:00 a.m. daily. The one-way flat fare to any HBLR station is $1.50. Monthly passes are available for $53.

NJT is the nation’s largest statewide public transportation system, providing more than 752,600 daily trips on 240 bus routes, three light rail lines and 11 commuter lines. It is the third largest transit system in the country with 162 rail stations, 49 light rail stations and more than 17,000 bus stops linking major points in New Jersey, New York and Philadelphia.

The Southeast Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA) said last week “with great reluctance, drastic measures must be taken unless sufficient funding is provided to maintain public transportation services in the five-county region.”

The measures would include “an average 25-percent hike in all transit fares, an ‘across the board’ 20-percent system-wide reduction in transportation service – including eliminating all weekend service, region-wide – and a workforce reduction of approximately 1,400 jobs.”

The service reduction, the commuter agency said in a press release on September 9, “would eliminate approximately 225,000 daily passenger trips. The ripple effect would produce an incalculable effect on the regional economy. If necessary, these measures must go into effect no later than January 1, 2005.”

The combined savings resulting from the fare hikes, service reductions and workforce reduction “must equal $62 million, the current estimated deficit for fiscal year 2005, SEPTA’s operating budget,” the carrier said.

“This is the worst crisis to face SEPTA in its 36-year history," said SEPTA Chairman Pasquale T. Deon, Sr. "The SEPTA board has forestalled this catastrophic action as long as possible. Public hearings were conducted throughout the region last May for the specific purpose of alerting the public to our funding crisis, and we have been gratified with the support we have received.”

He said state Sen. Stewart Greenleaf and state Rep. John Taylor have introduced legislation to provide funding, not only for SEPTA, but also for the 70 other transit agencies in similar straits throughout Pennsylvania. This is our last chance to get it passed," he said.

Details of the proposed contingency plan will be explained during a new series of public hearings in October in each of the five county seats.

Mineta tours Erie GE loco plant

USDOT secretary Norman Mineta took a look at General Electric’s locomotive plant in Erie, Pa., on September 7. He said he visited the plant “to see first-hand how the growing economy has led to new business and jobs” for the local GE Transportation rail complex.

Orders for new locomotives are at a five-year high, according to officials. The rail complex, which is the single largest employer in Erie County with more than 4,000 workers, “manufactures locomotive engines for freight trains.”

A press release from USDOT failed to state that GE also builds locomotives for Amtrak.

“This year, GE Transportation expects to fill orders for as many as 800 new locomotives,” the press release stated, “that is almost twice as many orders than in 2002, when the recession and September 11 terrorist attacks cut into business.”

The company stated it hired 240 new workers in recent months to keep up with demand.

“Businesses like this one are the mighty locomotives of an economy that is back on track and moving forward,” Mineta said.

GE Transportation’s rail division CEO Charlene Begley joined Mineta. The secretary cited GE’s manufacturing business “as one of many examples illustrating how transportation helps keep the American economy moving.”

Adding details, he observed, “More people are flying our airlines and driving our roads, more trucks are hauling our cargo and more trains are filling our rail lines. All of this activity pointed to an economic revival.”

Railroads have hired 10,000 new employees this year. Ports on the West Coast are hiring 3,000 more workers. A truck manufacturer in North Carolina is adding nearly 600 new full-time jobs, and airplane manufacturers are hiring more people to build more aircraft.

Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco signed an agreement September 8 that pledges a $65 million state incentive package of tax breaks, job training and construction dollars toward a railroad car manufacturing plant that will employ 850 people in Alexandria.

The New Orleans Times-Picayune reported from Baton Rouge Union Tank Car Co. President Frank Lester could not attend the official signing ceremony in Alexandria because of a flight delay, but officials for the Chicago company would sign the papers in the next few days, Blanco said.

The state and the company signed a memorandum of understanding June 16, heralding the largest heavy-manufacturing job agreement in the state in more than 20 years. When it’s up and running by December 2006, the half-mile-long facility will turn out about 70 rail tank cars a week to carry chemicals and other fluids, Union Tank officials said.

The company is expected to begin “turning dirt” this week at the England Economic and Industrial Development District site, Blanco said. The state will get back more than its investment through taxes paid by employees and other returns, Blanco said.

Mark Sweeney, a senior principal with the industrial site selection firm McCallum Sweeney Consulting in Greenville, S.C., said large manufacturing investments for new U.S. plants on the scale of the Union Tank project have become increasingly rare in the past three years.

“Nothing gets the business world’s attention more than a project like Union Tank Car,” said Sweeney, who was not involved in the deal but is familiar with it.

Competition among states for manufacturing investments are “very intense” because manufacturers tend to have a significant economic impact beyond the plant itself, he said. Blanco said she is optimistic that the state will get some spin-off investments.

The plant is also significant for Louisiana’s reputation, Sweeney said.

“From a business investment standpoint, Louisiana has a reputation as not having a business-friendly environment,” Sweeney said. “Blanco has a lot of people sitting up and taking notice. She’s got people in my business saying, ‘It looks like Louisiana is pretty serious about attracting investment.’ “

Louisiana began courting Union Tank last year, before Blanco took office. When the company said earlier this year that it was entering exclusive negotiations with Texas for a period of 30 days, Blanco followed up with phone calls a month later and convinced Lester to reconsider.

The state had to provide considerable incentives to close the deal. Among the state’s obligations in the agreement signed last week is an agreement to contribute $30.4 million toward building the plant, paid with bonds serviced through annual state appropriations. Also, the state will provide customized training, including pre-employment and on-the-job training for plant workers, and provide property tax breaks, job-creation tax rebates and rebates on state sales taxes on machinery purchases.

Although the agreement does not specify the value of those incentives, state officials have said the training is valued at $2 million, the property tax breaks at $9.8 million, the job-creation rebates at $19.1 million for 10 years, and the sales tax rebates at $2.3 million.

The city of Alexandria will contribute $800,000 to build an access road and the England District will contribute land valued at $800,000.

Sweeney said the incentives are on par with packages offered to large manufacturers by other states in the South.

Meanwhile, Union Tank will agree to invest $68 million toward the approximately $100 million plant, hire 850 people, including 700 full-time plant workers and 150 “direct professional jobs,” and give preference to state suppliers and contractors.

If the average number of Union Tank employees falls below 850 in a given year, the company will pay the state $3,765 for each job it falls short. If the company employs more than 900 people on average during a year, it can earn credits toward a future year in which it falls below 850.

NS selling bridge for $1 to W&LE

It’s not every day a bridge is sold, but it’s about to happen in Toledo - and the price is just $1.

Under a petition now before the STB, Norfolk Southern Corp. is proposing to sell a century-old, 1,137-foot railroad bridge across the Maumee River to the Wheeling & Lake Erie Ry.

For about four years, the Toledo Blade reported on September 6, Wheeling has been the bridge’s only regular user, but during that time, NS has been responsible for operating and maintaining the structure referred to in the filing as the Toledo Pivot Bridge and historically known as the Toledo Belt Bridge.

“It made perfect sense for the Wheeling & Lake Erie to operate that bridge for its daily train,” said Rudy Husband, an NS spokesman.

Bill Callison, Wheeling’s vice-president for law and government relations, said his company has asked the STB to expedite handling the petition, which includes permanent terms under which W&LE will continue running trains over NS tracks between Toledo and Bellevue, Ohio, and to and from an ore dock in Huron, Ohio.

While Wheeling doesn’t anticipate any objections to the bridge sale, “we don’t know how soon the STB will act,” Callison said.

In favor of the sale is the Toledo-Lucas County Port Authority, which had worried that the bridge might be closed and abandoned.

“It’s a crucial and strategic piece of rail infrastructure,” said Robert Greenlese, the port authority’s director of surface transportation and logistics. If necessary, he noted, the agency had been prepared to buy the bridge itself.

“The best of all worlds is that another railroad comes along and keeps it active,” Greenlese said. “Abandonment would be a death warrant, because it would be declared an impediment to navigation, and it would have to be removed. In today’s environment, there’s no way that bridge could be rebuilt again once that happened.”

The transaction is a consequence of Norfolk Southern’s 1999 takeover of most of the former Conrail rail operations in metropolitan Toledo. Not only did NS gain use of Conrail’s bridge over the Maumee, but the W&LE gained operating rights into Toledo as a condition of federal approval for the split-up of Conrail assets by NS and competitor CSX Transportation.

Since late 1999, Wheeling has run trains over the Toledo Belt Bridge to make connections in North Toledo, primarily with Canadian National and occasionally the Ann Arbor Railroad.

“The most direct route to our interchange with the CN is over the bridge,” Callison said.

After rebuilding a track in East Toledo that connected its Oregon-based lines with the former Conrail bridge, NS shifted all of its trains off the Toledo Belt Bridge during summer 2000. Since then, NS trains have used the Toledo Belt Bridge only on an emergency basis, and not at all last year.

Dear Editor:

I am a maintainer on Amtrak’s Metropolitan Division, and a member of the Brotherhood of Railway Signalmen. I am also a past local chairman of BRS RS 102.

In the current negotiations, we have been without a contract for almost five years. Can you believe Mr. Gunn [CEO David Gunn] wants us to give up everything from five years ago and start fresh for the next three to four years?! That means no raises for the last five years.

Morale is at an all time low - not one person I know cares.

Keith Kovaleski
Monroe, N.J.

Re: D:F September 7 - The engines Amtrak has for sale are 8-40s or Genesis P40s (not P8-32bhw). The 40 stands for 4,000 hp and the 32s are 3,200 hp.

Jaap van Dorp
Brewster, N.Y.