Carper Confirmed to Amtrak Board

WASHINGTON, D.C., MARCH 14 -- Last Friday, Tom Carper, former mayor of Macomb, Illinois, was confirmed as the newest member of the Amtrak Board of Directors. Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois had nominated Carper last year and was pleased to announce his confirmation by the Senate, which happened early Friday morning. Carper served as Mayor of Macomb, Illinois, from 1991 to 2003. In 1991 he was appointed by the Amtrak Board of Directors to the Amtrak Mayors’ Advisory Council and served as its chair from 2000 to 2001. Among his accomplishments as Mayor, Carper led the fight to preserve passenger rail service to the region and the state. He also implemented a rental housing inspection and registration program to ensure safe and affordable housing in Macomb, created a more stable and abundant water supply for the city by securing funding and financing for a reverse osmosis treatment system presently under construction, and enacted an extensive bidding of city contracts and services saving the taxpayers of Macomb over $1 million. After Carper’s tenure as mayor, Governor of Illinois Rod Blagojevich named him the regional director for the West Central region for Opportunity Returns* – a regional economic development plan. He has been responsible for overseeing the implementation of the Governor’s new economic initiative designed to spur economic growth in the nine-county beltway along the Mississippi River between the Quad Cities and St. Louis. Carper graduated from Western Illinois University and served in the U.S. Army from 1967 to 1970 in Thailand and Vietnam. He was a small business owner-operator from 1971 to 1991 when he was first elected Mayor of Macomb. [ *Opportunity Returns is Governor Blagojevich’s program to create jobs in all types of areas that: attract businesses, protect the environment and improve quality of life for Illinois residents. A key part of his program is strengthening crucial public infrastructure that supports and attracts economic development.. ] Senator Durbin had high praise for Carper’s work to preserve passenger rail in the state and the region. “I am thrilled with the opportunities that Tom Carper and his years of experience will bring to Amtrak,” Durbin said in a statement. “As mayor and regional director for West Central Illinois’ economic development plan, he has brought together business leaders, community leaders and elected officials around a common goal. As a member of the board, I have no doubt he will do the same to improve passenger rail in the United States.” Gary Smith, Mayor of Galesburg, Illinois, said, “That’s good, that’s wonderful. I congratulate him. He’ll serve as a wonderful representative for Amtrak.” Quincy Mayor John Spring is on the Amtrak Coalition for the Illinois Zephyr and Carl Sandburg corridor between Quincy and Chicago. Spring said it is good to have someone who understands the importance of Amtrak to Western Illinois appointed to the national board.

Hon. Thomas C. Carper

“It brings representation from the Midwest to the Amtrak Board, which has been absent during much of Amtrak’s history,” Harnish said.

Matthew Melzer, a spokesman for the National Association of Railroad Passengers (NARP), said Carper understands how Amtrak is a link not only between big cities, but between rural America and big cities.

“He has the perspective of someone from a city that benefits from Amtrak in a state that has invested in passenger rail service,” Melzer said.

“I’m definitely excited about the opportunity to serve on the Amtrak board,” Carper said Friday. “When you live down in this corridor ... and having been working on this issue for many years, it just becomes a high priority. To take that and serve nationally is a great honor. I’m really looking forward to it.”

Amtrak’s board is made up of seven voting members each serving a term of five years. The board of directors sets corporate policy and oversees the management of the company.

Carper said there are a host of issues for the board to focus on, the obvious being adequate funding. But he said other issues need attention as well, including handling the pressure and desire to expand services, addressing maintenance that has been deferred and obtaining new equipment.

“They’re all manageable, but there’s not any one decision that will make them all go away,” he said “That being said, there can’t be a better time to get involved with this. Ridership is up – people want to take the trains. I believe in a strong national passenger rail system.”

Nationally, Amtrak set a new record for ridership last year with 25.8 million passengers – an increase of 1.5 million over the 2006 fiscal year. In Illinois, 48 Amtrak trains run each day on more than 1,000 miles of track. The Railroad employs more than 2,000 state residents, spending $56 million annually on goods and services in the state.

Carper credited both citizens and leaders for their commitment to making rail service succeed in the Illinois Zephyr and Carl Sandburg Corridor. “They have led the charge in saving and improving Amtrak service,” he said. “That model, that energy, is something that I’m looking forward to taking to the board.”

AUGUSTA --- Lawmakers in Maine are looking at a possible takeover of Pan Am Railroad operations in the state of Maine, according to the Blethen Newspapers of Maine.

“State lawmakers’ latest plan for improving freight rail service in Maine essentially comes down to this: engineering a hostile takeover of the rail lines owned by the state’s largest railroad,” wrote reporter Tom Bell. “A legislative committee believes the state could use an obscure federal statute to force Pan Am Railways to sell the company’s lines in Maine to the state. The action would put the state in the position of choosing another railroad company to operate trains on the lines.”

Shippers who have criticized the railroad, formerly known as Guilford Rail Systems and controlled by Timothy Mellon of the famed banking family, for poor service have been pressing for state intervention because of the rising costs of transportation, increased highway congestion, and the need to compete more effectively with other parts of the nation that have more extensive rail service.

“Legislators allege that the railroad fails to provide timely and consistent service to many of its manufacturing customers, particularly smaller companies,” wrote the Blethen paper. “There is no evidence that the railroad has improved service since the Legislature first began prodding it to do so three years ago,” the newspaper quoted Rep. Stacey Fitts (R-Pittsfield) as saying. His district includes Pan Am customers. “He said the railroad’s poor service is hurting the manufacturers’ ability to compete because they can’t meet their customers deadlines. In some cases manufactures are shipping heavy products by truck, which is not only more expensive but causes additional wear and tear on the state’s road system.

“We are putting them on notice,” the paper quoted him regarding Pan Am Railways. “If you don’t respond and treat us seriously, we will have to take serious action.” Maine manufactures are already operating at a competitive disadvantage because of high energy costs and distance from markets, said Sen. Philip Bartlett, D-Gorham, Co-chair of the Utilities and Energy Committee,” the paper reported. “Unless rail service is improved, some companies could leave the state,” he said.

SHANGHAI --- The government of Shanghai has halted work on the proposed extension of its existing Mag-Lev rail facility, now operating between Shanghai Airport and the edge of the city, because of local environmental protests.

Financial Times Reporter Geoff Dyer writes: “Shanghai’s local government has backed off construction work on an electromagnetic (“Mag-Lev”) train line until at least next year after the plan triggered mass protests. Han Zheng, Shanghai’s mayor, said on that the new line, which has prompted protests from residents whose flats are near the planned track, was not on the list of major projects that would be started this year.

The Mag-Lev project has become “…an important test of the potential for political activism among the new middleclass, especially residents of the wealthier cities who have acquired their own property,” reported Dyer. “Last year saw big demonstrations in the southern city of Xiamen over plans to build a chemicals factory in a suburban area. These protests suggest there could be limits on government ability to pursue big projects in urban areas.”

The Shanghai Mag-Lev project was built by Transrapid International, a joint venture between Germany’s Siemens and ThyssenKrupp. “Talks have been held with Transrapid over the extension, but authorities have yet to announce the technology to be used or who will pay for it,” reported the Financial Times.

Shanghai opened the Mag-Lev line in 2002, from the new international airport to a suburb. The authorities have since developed plans to extend the line to the city’s domestic airport, reported The Financial Times.

Mag-Lev technology, which was invented in the United States in 1964, uses magnetic force to elevate a train above its guideway, eliminating all friction except for air resistance, and thereby permitting speeds in excess of 300 miles per hour.

However, the technology has so far not gotten beyond the test or “demonstration” stage because of its perceived higher costs, technical issues involving guideway construction and maintenance, the development of French “TGV” technology which uses high speed trains on conventional, but dedicated and grade-separated, track.

That technology or variations of it have now spread throughout the world, even to the United States, which because of government transportation policy that has long favored highway construction over other ground-based transportation modes, generally lags behind the rest of the world in transportation technology. Amtrak’s high speed Acela train is derived from TGV technology, and although far slower than the fastest trains found in Europe and Asia, has begun to dominate the ticketed market in the Boston-New York-Washington transportation corridor.

Providence Amtrak Crash Kills One, Injures 2

PROVIDENCE, R.I., MARCH 13 -- An Amtrak express train struck and killed a worker and seriously injured two others who had been inspecting tracks just outside a station in downtown Providence early Thursday afternoon.

The Acela train was traveling from Washington, D.C. to Boston. It was reported to be going below the speed limit of 55 mph.

The man who was killed has been identified by a union official as contractor Gary Graves, who retired in June from the railroad's Philadelphia office after decades of service.

North and south bound Amtrak trains were halted for about two hours, and the commuter service, run by Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA), provided buses to transport their passengers.

The Boston Globe reported that one of the injured workers, a Boston man, “is glad to be alive” after surviving the accident. The relative of Julius M. Chisholm said today that Chisholm did not suffer any broken bones, but remains in a Rhode Island hospital for continued observation.

“I almost died,” the relative quoted Chisholm as saying. “I don't know what happened. I saw this train coming and just jumped out of the way.”

The crash is under investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board, the Federal Railroad Administration, Amtrak, and the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees union.

Robert Kulat, a spokesman for the Federal Railroad Administration, said his agency had six investigators at the scene.

In a separate incident early Friday morning, in Mystic, Connecticut, a woman walking her dog along the tracks was hit by a southbound Acela train. The dog was killed and the woman injured, Amtrak spokesman Cliff Black said. The woman’s injuries were not life threatening.

The Sierra Club Might Sabotage Light-Rail Expansion- Again

SEATTLE, MARCH 12 - Sierra Club is caught in a kind of double bind in its advocacy work for rail and transit investments over more highways. Last fall, it opposed a roads and transit measure proposed by Sound Transit because of the heavy emphasis on new road expansion. The Club insisted that the agency come back with a transit-only initiative, but now that Sound Transit has persuaded a majority of its board members to support a $6 billion dollar expansion of light rail in King, Snohomish, and Pierce counties, Sierra Club has yet to endorse the plan.

“It's confounding,” says light-rail proponent Larry Phillips, a member of the King County Council and the Sound Transit board. “The Sierra Club was very clear; they wanted a rail-only plan in '08. Well, they should be demanding that we bring it forward to the voters. Wouldn't that be consistent with their mission?”

Dow Constantine, Sound Transit board member and King County Council member, is equally frustrated: “They said we should come back next year with a transit-only initiative. Well, here we are making good on that.”

Why is Sierra Club still hesitating? Because the plan also contemplates thousands of new parking spaces in several major new park-and-ride centers.

Herein lies the dilemma. How to offer the public adequate transit and rail choices when the feeder system is still dependent on automobiles. Cold starts (the first few seconds of running the car’s engine) produce the worst pollutants, according to automotive engineers, and beyond that, using all those cars to get to the light rail perpetuates the greenhouse gas problem.

“We're torn,” says Sierra Club’s Mike O'Brien. “The assumption is the more light rail you build, the more greenhouse-gas reduction you see. Well, we want to see a greenhouse-gas analysis for this plan. In some communities that have built light rail, where there are massive park-and-ride lots, that enables sprawl. If in the next three weeks we start seeing all these investments in parking spots, we're going to have to be critical.”

This caters to single-occupancy vehicles and could actually turn the transit system into an incubator for sprawl, he said. “Let's not lock ourselves into building thousands of new parking stalls. Cars are not the future.”

Sound Transit has until March 29 to approve a 2008 plan that will go before voters in King, Snohomish, and Pierce counties. Board members know that if they lose in '08, that'll be two losses in a row. Sound Transit cannot afford another defeat. And without the Sierra Club on board, there's a chance light rail might falter at the polls.

Demanding a transit-only initiative, the Sierra Club came out against last year's $17 billion measure because, in addition to the 50 new miles of light rail, the plan came with 182 new miles of roads, which, the Club argued, negated the benefits of rapid-mass-transit expansion. There were also disagreements about the route, with the Club advocating a change that they believe will have more ridership.

Sound Transit's spokesperson Ric Ilgenfritz has rejoinders to Sierra Club’s concerns. First, he says the money for the park-and-rides isn't only for parking spots; it's for shuttles, pedestrian routes, bike facilities, and bus access—all things that encourage riders to abandon their cars. Second, the route preferred by Sierra Club could cost $2 to $3..5 billion more and is contingent on replacement of a bridge, which would put the light rail plan on hold.

WASHINGTON, MARCH 15 — The Environmental Protection Agency announced last Friday it will tighten rules governing the soot emissions from train and boat diesel engines, reported the New York Times in a story by David Stout.

The praise from environmentalists for the new diesel rules which address soot from exhaust pipes was in striking juxtaposition with criticism directed at the administration during the same week for the new national air quality standards for smog, which set permissible levels of the chemical ozone.

The diesel rules call for engine makers to produce cleaner models several years from now and to make sure existing engines are cleaned up when they are refurbished, which takes place every four or five years, the story continued. The rules also tighten restrictions on when boats can idle their engines.

EPA administrator Stephen Johnson predicted that the restrictions, when fully in place by the year 2030, would help prevent 1,400 premature deaths a year and save billions of dollars in health costs by cutting diesel soot from the affected engines by up to 90 percent.

“E.P.A. has delivered a strong program that will go a long way toward solving the problem of diesel train and ship pollution,” said Richard Kassel, of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). “Thousands of asthma attacks and other health emergencies will be avoided, as the nation’s 40,000 ships and 21,000 diesel locomotives are cleaned up in years to come.”

But environmentalists were not pleased with the permissible levels of ozone which the agency set last week. Chemical ozone, which induces smog, damages lung tissues and is particularly dangerous for very young children and the elderly.

There are two parts of the smog rule: the health-based part which sets limits on the amount of smog people breathe at any one time, while the other part, known as the secondary standard, sets limits over longer spans.

The new level for both standards was set Wednesday at 75 parts per billion, tougher than the current 84 parts per billion but less stringent than the 60-to-70 parts target that E.P.A. scientists had urged.

EPA had originally intended to set an even stricter rule on the secondary standard, a detail that emerged in the fine print of the documentation for the rule, and was first reported by The Washington Post on Friday.

According to NRDC, at the last minute the White House Office of Management and Budget pressured the agency to relax the standards just as the E.P.A. was up against a deadline under the 1970 Clean Air Act to adjust its standards. The White House denied the accusation.

“I predict there will be lawsuits,” said John Walke, clean-air director at NRDC, suggesting that the issue will not be resolved until long after the Bush administration is over. NRDC claims that the Office of Management and Budget in effect usurped the rule-setting powers of the E.P.A. administrator, as spelled out in the Clean Air Act, and that the bureaucratic paper trail proves it.

The far less controversial rules on train and maritime diesel engines were lauded on Friday by another environmental group, Earthjustice.

“This is certainly a move in the right direction,” said Sarah Burt, a lawyer for the organization.

Unfortunately, Ms. Burt said, the new regulations cover only those engines used on recreational boats, tugs, lake freighters and other relatively small ships. To be truly effective, she said, the agency must set standards for huge ocean cargo and cruise ships, including those sailing under foreign flags when they enter American waters.

Ms. Burt noted that Earthjustice had initiated a suit in federal court to compel the agency to regulate engines in those giant ships.

Amtrak Repairs Will Shuffle NJ Transit Schedules

Photo: Trenton Times   A scene from the past - Amtrak and NJ transit service was disrupted on May 25, 2006. A Transit police officer checks the tracks in front of a stalled Acela train at the Trenton station.

MARCH 12 - Amtrak will begin replace deteriorated railroad ties along 26 miles of the Northeast Corridor in New Jersey, a move that will cause delays for NJ Transit riders and will force the agency to juggle schedules on its busiest commuter line. On May 11, Amtrak will begin replacing cracked ties between the Jersey Avenue Station, just south of New Brunswick, and the Trenton Station, reducing four tracks to three while the work is being done. That will mean longer trip times into and out of Manhattan, new boarding procedures at busy stations like Princeton Junction and Hamilton and the likelihood of frequent delays. “The Northeast Corridor operates at capacity already,” NJ Transit Executive Director Richard Sarles said last week. “One hiccup today and it affects a lot of trains. If you take out a track, it only gets worse.” In the mid-1990’s, Amtrak installed 3.4 million concrete ties between Washington, D.C., and Boston, said spokesman Cliff Black. The ties were expected to last 50 years, but they have begun to crack already. “There is no danger to passengers right now,” Cole said. “We're fixing it before it becomes a bigger problem.” NJ Transit pays the agency $65 million a year to operate its own trains on the tracks between Trenton and Manhattan. It's the busiest of NJ Transit's seven commuter rail lines, providing 285,000 passenger trips on an average weekday. The work is expected to take at least a year and will replace ties along 26 miles of track. A new timetable reflecting longer trip times will go into effect May 11, the day the work starts, officials said. The timetable will be revised every eight to 10 weeks as the work progresses. One blogger commented: “Why even bother with time-tables every eight weeks? Just print little cards that say. “We have no clue what time your train will arrive here or at your destination, please don't ask us.” That would be more honest on NJT's part and it will save money. Return to index

Amtrak Workers Ratify Contract

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Amtrak workers who came close to striking earlier this year have ratified a new contract.

About 10,000 workers represented by nine unions had been working under outdated contracts for eight years. The parties finally announced a tentative contract Jan. 18, following years of fruitless mediation.

The White House intervened late last year, just before a deadline ran out that would have permitted the workers to strike. The new contract is based on recommendations by a presidential emergency board. It makes wage increases retroactive from 2000, a provision Amtrak had resisted.

The last of the nine unions ratified the agreement last week.

Amtrak spokesman Cliff Black said several unions that were not part of the mediation process have followed with their own agreements, and others are in negotiations.

The railroad has about 16,000 union-covered employees

Thirty Months after Katrina:

It has now been two and one-half years since Hurricane Katrina ravaged New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast. The signs of devastation are still there. The brick and stone buildings of downtown Biloxi seem more alone than they once were. In the Crescent City, the road back is long and hard. In some neighborhoods, the recovery seems to have just begun. In others, like the French Quarter and the Garden District, it appears that little has changed, compared to life before Katrina.

Transit in the Crescent City is coming back, too. Since December, streetcars again run their entire length on St. Charles Avenue. Historic cars again appear to stroll past historic buildings, as Uptown New Orleans shows off her finery for tourists and locals alike. The outermost segment of the line, on Carrolton Avenue, is scheduled to come back in service in April. Today, cars run every ten minutes most of the time. It’s not the six-minute pre-Katrina headway and the line no longer runs all night, but there is still hope that such a level of service may soon return.

Canal Street service has improved as well. Cars on most of the line run about every fifteen minutes, and the “new” streetcars built for the line in 2004 are expected back in service this summer. In the meantime, there is still time to ride the historic “St. Charles” cars on Canal Street.

Katrina also wiped out Amtrak service to New Orleans. Eventually, the trains to New York, Chicago and Los Angeles returned. The eastern portion of the Sunset Limited, along the Gulf Coast and across Florida, has not. Rail advocates, especially people who had used the train, remain deeply concerned that there is still no train that runs between Florida and New Orleans or any other points west of the Atlantic Coast.

At the present time, the only ground transportation from Florida to New Orleans is a Greyhound bus, a ride that takes up to 24 hours. This writer took the trip last week, along with several others who were going to New Orleans to connect with the Sunset to Los Angeles. It goes without saying that all of us wished we were on a train instead.

There are plenty or rumors about the future of Gulf Coast rail service and those rumors remain unconfirmed. The future may be tied up in plans for CSX and Mississippi politics. Some Amtrak sources have expressed hope that the train to Florida will be back later this year. Others doubt that it will ever come back. Two years ago, Amtrak’s official position, stated in the timetable, was that service was suspended. Now, the official position is that future service has yet to be determined.

Advocates continue to push for the return of the Sunset east to Orlando and, perhaps, even Miami. The National Association of Railroad Passengers (NARP) strongly supports the return of service to the Gulf Coast and Florida. John Robert Smith, the mayor of Meridian, Mississippi and former Amtrak Chair, has been advocating for corridor-level service along the Gulf, at least between New Orleans and Mobile. Smith called for participation by the Gulf Coast states in establishing a rail corridor with frequent service and reliable on-time performance.

The general opinion in the rail community is that new corridors are the way of the future. NARP, RUN (the Rail Users’ Network) and other advocacy organizations all agree. So do Amtrak, USDOT and the FRA. Whether or not the Gulf Coast will be part of a proposed scheme of new corridor development, however, remains to be seen. Whether riders will ever be able to proceed east from New Orleans even three times weekly also remains to be seen.

In the meantime, if you want to go between New Orleans, other Gulf Coast points and Florida, you’ll have to listen for the bark of the Hound. It’s a long bus ride, but at least for the foreseeable future, it will be the only way to go.

APTA Legislative Conference:

WASHINGTON --- One of the best-attended and highest profile transportation conferences in recent memory took place this past week in Washington, when transportation professionals gathered in DC for the annual Legislative Conference of the American Public Transportation Association.

The message which emerged was: “If we fail to massively renew our transportation infrastructure starting NOW, America can expect to continue its economic decline”. In the blunt words of Tom Donohue, President of the United States Chamber of Commerce, and for decades one of Washington’s most effective lobbyists, if we don’t act quickly, “We are cooked.”

Also frequently noted at the conference were the words of former American Airlines Chairman and CEO Robert Crandall, who has become a strong advocate for high speed rail corridors and who called for an end of short-hop (less than 500 miles) plane flights. Although not present at this event, his words of warning were frequently noted in conference sessions and in committee meetings of the major March 9-11 event.

The soaring price of gasoline and the equally soaring increase in transit ridership --- at 10.3 billion in 2007, a new modern era high --- make it even more important than ever to invest in the transportation future of this country in a way that helps more efficiently move more people, and more goods, yet reduces damage to the environment.

What was most striking about this year’s conference was not just the all-star line up, but the exchange among attendees, who have noted that for the first time in modern memory, a strong bi-partisan consensus is emerging to launch this major re-invention of America’s infrastructure, and also find the money to pay for it. Stagnant Federal gasoline taxes, which have remained flat at 18.4 cents since 1993 while construction and other costs have soared, are one of the reasons that bridges have been falling into rivers; that too must end, election year or no.

Recently, in response to directly placed requests drafted at NCI’s St. Louis Conference in January and transmitted to the campaigns, both Clinton and Obama have begun speaking out for infrastructure investment, while McCain has made the traditional Republican presidential pledge of “no new taxes,” which will put him at a disadvantage in the coming campaign if, as we suspect, the people are ahead of that viewpoint.

When it comes to energy independence, domestic strength, and the end of foreign oil’s influence on American foreign policy, a gasoline tax that rebuilds the nation shouldn’t be a hard decision, not for those who want their children to have a decent life, in a free country, where everyone, not just the wealthy, has a right to a well-ordered, balanced, and cost-effective transportation system.