Hotline #920

U.S. Department of Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx speaking at the COMTO conference.

The House of Representatives has passed a five-month transportation funding extension that would authorize federal spending on highway and rail transit projects through Dec. 18 and inject about $8.1 billion in general fund subsidies into the rapidly dwindling Highway Trust Fund, reports Reuters. The five-month measure will be offset across ten years, including extending higher airport security fees levied on airline tickets through 2026 and increased revenue from tax changes aimed at improving compliance and collections.

But Senate Republicans are pressing forward on a long-term solution, with the short-term patch expiring on July 31, reports Huffington Post. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) remained adamant that the upper chamber would bring a lengthier fix to the floor -- one that would supply the fund through next year’s election or beyond.

While the White House had previously threatened to veto any short term extension, the Administration eventually decided it preferred a five-month patch to buy time to craft a six-year bill to the Senate's two-year patch, and has signaled its reluctant support for the House bill.

“The administration will not support continued failure to make the investments the nation needs,” an Office of Management & Budget statement reads. “The administration expects that Congress will use this five-month extension to pass a multiyear bill with significant increases in investment to address the system's maintenance and repair deficit, enhance safety, and lay the foundation for future growth in critical areas like freight movement.”

Meanwhile NARP will hold a town hall-style conference call with Council Members on Wednesday July 22 at 9:00 p.m. EDT, to discuss efforts to attach S.1626, the passenger rail reauthorization bill, to whatever long-term surface transportation bill is passed by Congress. The Senate Commerce committee already voted to attach S.1626 to its portion of the surface transportation bill, although whether this bill moves in July or in the fall depends on which body's extension prevails in the coming weeks. Council Members will be given what they need to contact mayors, city councils, Chambers of Commerce and civic organizations to get support for the measure. Please remember to email your conference call questions to Communications Director Benét Wilson by noon on July 22.

Due to persistent problems at the U.S. Postal Service with NARP's business-reply post office box, we have not received hundreds of individual checks from members. Neither NARP nor the Postal Service can definitively describe the full scope of the problem. The Postal Service has apologized to NARP and its members, and has taken responsibility for the problem. For a further explanation the issue—along with an apology letter from the Postal Service—and to find out how you can quickly renew your membership if your form was returned by the USPS in error, click here. We thank you for your patience in this matter.

NARP Directors Bruce Becker and Logan McLeod attended the annual meeting of the Conference of Minority Transportation Officials (COMTO), in Boston this week. As a result, NARP and COMTO have strengthened a joint partnership aimed at advancing areas of mutual interest for both organizations.

COMTO is a professional and education association -- and a 501(c) 3 like NARP -- that focuses on increasing leadership opportunities for minorities in the transportation industry and to promote educational venues for young adults seeking careers in transportation. COMTO’s members come from all aspects of transportation, with the majority representing the transit segment, with chapters in most major cities across the country.

The keynote event on July 13 was a speech by U.S. Secretary of Transportation Anthony Foxx, who was introduced by former DOT Secretary Rodney Slater.

NARP’s initial contribution to this new partnership will be to help COMTO to further develop its legislative agenda and advocacy outreach efforts. In addition, COMTO is very interested in using NARP’s Millennium Campaign, aimed at engaging young adults on college and university campuses, an effort that ties in well with its educational opportunity initiatives. COMTO members will be invited to participate in all of our future events, starting with our fall meeting in Indianapolis this October.

The Philadelphia Inquirer published a thought piece on July 13 looking at Amtrak’s frequent management turnover and structural change, along with chronic financial and political challenges. Former Amtrak executives say the turmoil at the top in recent years has disrupted railroad management and distracted employees from their daily duties.

"It looks like a company, but it is really a government agency," said Jim Mathews, president of the National Association of Railroad Passengers. "People complain that a 'real' company could be more responsive to markets and its customers.

"That's like getting angry when frogs can't fly."

Amtrak Chairman Anthony Coscia said the rail corporation has already spent about $300 million on preparatory work and land acquisition for the Gateway project, a train tunnel linking New York and New Jersey, seen by experts as crucial to relieving the bottleneck under the Hudson River, reports Crain's New York Business. This spending is being done despite not having funds lined up for the estimated $15 billion project.

"We're taking precious resources and spending it on a project we don't have all the money to build," he said. "It's either a very silly decision or a very critical one."

By Coscia’s reckoning, a tunnel has to be built sooner or later, and sooner is better. The loss of one tunnel would be "cataclysmic" to the regional economy, the under secretary of transportation for the Obama administration, Peter Rogoff, said at a May conference. He called the Gateway project "the most important rail project in the United States."

The Northeast Corridor needs to find $52 billion in capital investment in the next 20 years just to maintain existing levels of service. This doesn’t include the $117 billion price tag for Next-Gen High Speed Rail between Washington, D.C., New York City, and Boston. A study by the Northeast Corridor Infrastructure and Operations Advisory Commission fills in an important piece of the puzzle by showing that the NEC is worth $100 million per day to the U.S. economy.

Officials at New Jersey Transit say it won’t meet the Dec. 31 deadline to install Positive Train Control systems on its 322-mile train routes, reports NJ.com. The state has allocated $225 million in state funds for the project and spokeswoman Nancy Snyder said the agency is making progress. Plans call for PTC to be introduced next year on a seven-mile stretch of track between Morristown and Denville, and phased in systemwide by 2018. NARP continues to support a proposal giving the Secretary of Transportation authority to grant 18-month extensions to install PTC on a case-by-case basis. And the Senate rail reform bill includes provisions prioritizing grants to implement PTC technology and identifying common sense steps to speedily improve safety, including creating speed limit action plans and addressing crew communication.

Metro-North Railroad President Joe Giulietti says the top goal is safety, followed by on-time performance in an interview with the Hartford Courant. By comparison, achieving faster station-to-station travel times between New York and points in Connecticut is further down the priority list — and not likely to happen in the next couple of years, he said. Trains are reaching the on-time standard — arriving within six minutes of the published schedule — more than 90 percent of the time now, Giulietti said in an interview. But new, slower train speeds mean longer commutes, and Giulietti predicted that's not going to change soon.

The Washington Post reported on an hour-long meeting this week held by Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx with D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser (D), Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) and Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) to discuss the future of the region’s Metrorail system. The system has been plagued with significant safety and financial problems, along with a lack of permanent leadership. “We all came together to say we’ve got some problems, we have to address them,” Hogan said. “We know that we’ve got to move forward. We’re all frustrated they haven’t had an executive director for 10 months. We’re all concerned about the safety issues and the financial issues.”

NARP President and CEO Jim Mathews was among those who sat on a panel -- Y’All Aboard -- in Biloxi, Mississippi, on the progress and support for restoring passenger rail service across the Gulf Coast corridor June 17. And now The Northwest Louisiana Council of Governments is working on a feasibility study to see if it makes sense to bring passenger rail to that state, reports KTBS-TV. They are looking at train service to connect Shreveport-Bossier with Vicksburg, Mississippi, with stops in Ruston and Monroe. Meanwhile, Mississippi officials are looking to connect Vicksburg with Meridian, and Texas officials are doing the same between Marshall and Shreveport. The hope is that Northern Louisiana would eventually have rail service to Dallas and potentially up the East Coast.

NARP has been vocal about spotlighting the demand for Gulf Coast rail service as an integral part of the nation’s public transit network. Connecting smaller communities with larger cities via train offers Americans an alternative to car travel that they might not otherwise have. Reconnecting the Gulf Coast region to the rest of the economy should produce a net benefit beyond direct investment in rail service by easing its isolation from access to other markets for travel and tourism revenue.

Indiana’s South Shore leaders are calling the Sunrise Express train to Chicago a "success," only four months after it started operations, reports WSBT-TV. The train runs between South Bend and Chicago in less than two hours. According to the Northern Indiana Commuter Transit District (NICTD), the train averages about 35 passengers out of South Bend daily. The eastbound counterpart is averaging roughly 81 daily passengers to South Bend. This is up roughly 12-15 passengers since the train’s time was reduced.

NARP has been a strong proponent of intermodal transportation options, including rail service to and from airports. Streetblog Chicago noted that few U.S. cities have a better rapid transit connection than Chicago from its main airport (Chicago O’Hare) to downtown in terms of capacity, speed, and frequency. Much of Americans’ rail access to airports is in the form of light rail with 15-minute or longer headways, and service often shuts down before the last flights of the night. In contrast, the O’Hare Branch’s headways are as short as every two to eight minutes during rush hours, and trains run 24/7, negating the need to build Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s proposed O’Hare express train.

The Orlando Sentinel reports that the city’s leg of the planned All Aboard Florida is being seen as the most lucrative of the 235-mile system, according to a new ridership study commissioned by the privately financed venture owned by Florida East Coast Industries of Coral Gables. It shows that the Orlando leg is supposed to attract some 2.5 million passengers paying an average of $90 apiece by 2020, which is considered the first "mature" year of operations. That means the Orlando stop would generate more than $229 million in annual fares, while the West Palm Beach, Fort Lauderdale and Miami stations combined would bring in about $64 million.

Michigan By Rail is hosting a public meeting on July 23 to gather input for an exploratory study of a proposed passenger rail service that would eventually reestablish trains linking Detroit, Lansing and Grand Rapids, reports the Press and Guide. The study will also look at travel patterns, demographic trends, cost estimates and existing conditions of rail infrastructure to determine what, if any, next steps should be taken to examine the possibility for new passenger rail service.