Provide more reliable
rail service. Eventually produce faster travel times. That’s exactly what the
Missouri Department of Transportation seeks to do in making applications for a
portion of $8 billion in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funding set
aside for high-speed rail development.
Los Angeles’ Metro has begun installing turnstile fare gates at four Metro Red Line subway stations and will monitor progress to make sure passenger traffic moves smoothly while still achieving the goals of preventing fare evasion and improving transit station security.
Restoring passenger rail service from New Orleans along the Gulf Coast to Orlando, Fla., will cost tens of millions of dollars and take a minimum of almost two years to accomplish, according to a new Amtrak study that also predicts the revived route would be a money-loser, according to the Mobile, Ala., Press-Register.
Prince Rupert’s ship has finally come in, but it was expected 100 years ago, the Daily Commercial News reports. In 1909 this port in northern British Columbia was being groomed to become a major transportation hub and a large, vibrant city. Although it has the deepest, ice-free harbor in the world, it was a large iceberg that crushed that Prince Rupert dream.
(This article by Frank Busalacchi was published by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. He is chair of the States for Passenger Rail Coalition and secretary of the Wisconsin Department of Transportation.)
Everyone who travels the nation’s roads, bridges and rails has a stake in a major project under way in Congress this year: the reauthorization of the country’s surface transportation law. This mammoth law, rewritten every six years, determines how much money will be available to maintain and expand the country’s transportation system. Moreover, the legislation determines how this huge pot of money — $286.5 billion in the last bill — will be spent.
As chair of the States for Passenger Rail Coalition and secretary of the Wisconsin Department of Transportation, I strongly urge Congress to revisit our transportation priorities, which for too many years have favored highways and airlines. It’s time to reinvest in a highly valuable and underused transportation mode: intercity passenger rail service.
The reasons for spending more on rail are many. Perhaps the most important reason is public demand. Travelers are voting for more intercity passenger rail service by boarding trains in record numbers. In 2008, Amtrak carried a record 28.7 million passengers — the highest number in the passenger railroad’s history. When gasoline prices broke the $4-a-gallon barrier last summer, increasing numbers of travelers changed their travel plans to rail, including nearly 900,000 travelers in Wisconsin.
Price alone is not the only reason many travelers are switching to rail. Growing congestion on our nation’s highways and increasing delays in the air are making rail an attractive option for millions.
Of course, as more people choose to travel by rail, the demand on the system rises. Amtrak is facing an unprecedented equipment shortage: 17 percent of Amtrak’s locomotives and 15 percent of its passenger fleet are out of service. Investment in track and signal infrastructure is needed now to deal with existing rail congestion and to add new passenger rail service for the future.
In the midst of an economic recession, investing in rail is a wise use of federal dollars. It is estimated that for every $1 billion invested in passenger rail projects, 30,000 new, good-paying jobs are created. In Wisconsin, Amtrak pays $4.3 million annually in wages.
Last year, I had the pleasure of serving on the National Surface Transportation Policy and Revenue Study Commission. The commission’s most significant finding illustrated the financial magnitude of the need: $357.2 billion in capital improvements required by the year 2050. Additionally, a commitment of $5 billion per year will be needed for the 80/20 federal rail grant program over the six-year reauthorizing period.
This important program provides 80 percent federal and 20 percent state funding for passenger rail projects, mirroring the funding split in highway projects. This funding split finally recognizes the importance of passenger rail in our national transportation system. The commission also identified a series of inherent advantages in passenger rail that further demonstrate the value in greater funding for this important transportation mode. Chief among them are:
Mobility: Intercity passenger rail offers an alternative to using the private automobile, bus or airplane for transportation. At the current average of 2.2 million monthly riders, this means that several million people every month are removed from the already overcrowded roadways and airports.
System redundancy: Intercity passenger rail creates system redundancy in the intercity corridors it serves. Redundancy helps to ensure that transportation is possible even when an event occurs that disrupts the primary transportation system.
Delay reductions: One of the potential benefits of intercity passenger rail service is reduced highway congestion. In congested corridors, intercity passenger rail would only have to capture a small share of the total traffic in order to generate a substantial public benefit for all corridor travelers.
Environmental: Intercity passenger rail may also generate potential health benefits by reducing vehicle emissions, lowering pollution, and indirectly mitigating health and environmental costs.
Safety: Passenger rail is one of the safest modes of travel — far safer than highway travel.
The reasons to invest more in passenger rail are compelling and in the national interest. The question is whether Congress has the will to take a fresh look at the nation’s surface transportation system and increase funding for rail — the transportation mode that moves people efficiently while reducing the burden on our congested highways and airlines.
Wick Moorman, CEO of Norfolk Southern Corporation, called on the nation’s governors to consider railroads as “a vital part of the solution to our nation’s transportation crisis.”
Addressing the National Governors Association at Biloxi, Miss., Moorman said “railroads offer significant economic and environmental benefits while helping relieve highway congestion – which is fast becoming public enemy number one.”
“Our nation’s transportation network is a complex, interdependent system that demands our combined creative efforts to operate it most efficiently,” Moorman said. “Our experience at Norfolk Southern has shown that by working together in public-private partnerships, we can achieve far more in far less time and with far greater public benefits than any of us can by working alone.”
Moorman cited two rail routes – the Heartland Corridor between the Port of Virginia and Columbus, Ohio, and Chicago, and the Crescent Corridor linking New Jersey to New Orleans and Memphis, Tenn. – as examples of how public-private partnerships “can create additional capacity in our rail transportation network, with public benefits of jobs creation, less highway congestion, lower environmental emissions, and fuel savings.” He said the Crescent Corridor project alone will result in 41,000 “green” jobs over the next decade and move more than a million trucks annually off the highways onto rail, saving more than 150 million gallons of fuel every year and reducing carbon emissions by nearly two million tons per year.
“It’s clear we must do something,” Moorman said. “Freight volumes in this country are projected to grow 88 percent by 2035 alone. To handle that freight, we must improve our national transportation infrastructure.”
Metropolitan Planning Organization members approved spending $25,000 in hopes of eventually gaining millions to relocate about seven miles of Norfolk Southern tracks in Colbert County, Ala., local newspapers report. The board hired engineering firm Barge Wagner Sumner & Cannon to prepare a grant application that, if approved, would fund the estimated $80-million relocation project. Funds would come from the Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery program. The federal program is funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.
City and county officials have discussed the need to relocate the tracks away from high-traffic areas in the county. Some city officials say delays and safety concerns created by the railroads tracks have stifled economic development opportunities and are causing stores to lose business. MPO member and Tuscumbia Mayor Bill Shoemaker, who is a former Alabama Department of Transportation engineer, said the railroad relocation discussion has been going on for about two decades.
The most recent cost estimate for relocating railroad tracks that wind through Tuscumbia, Sheffield and Muscle Shoals is about $80 million. Before the recovery act was approved, local governments had no means of paying for the project.
Jesse Turner, director of Transportation Planning for the Northwest Alabama Council of Local Governments, said the $25,000 includes a $5,000 match from Colbert County, Sheffield, Tuscumbia and Muscle Shoals. He said the relocation project must be approved by the Alabama Department of Transportation.
The federal program, which is known as TIGER, makes $1.5 billion available for large road and bridge projects, passenger and rail freight, public transportation and port infrastructure. Allen Teague, a preconstruction engineer with the Alabama Department of Transportation, said the state plans to submit five projects to be considered for a TIGER grant.
At a ceremony at Toronto’s Union Station, the Government of Canada and VIA announced C$300 million dollars in support for the largest-ever improvement and investment program in the 153-year history of passenger rail service between Montreal and Toronto: VIA’s Canadian National Kingston Subdivision Project.??Totaling more than C$300 million, VIA’s CN Kingston Subdivision Project is a series of infrastructure improvements at eight locations along the 539-kilometer (334-mile), double-track rail line. It will boost capacity by eliminating bottlenecks and greatly reducing delay-causing conflicts between VIA passenger and CN freight trains.
Phase I of the project will allow for the addition of two daily roundtrip frequencies on VIA’s busy Toronto-Montreal and Toronto-Ottawa routes. The latter operates over the Kingston Subdivision between Toronto and Brockville.
VIA’s CN Kingston Subdivision Project is part of an unprecedented C$923 million investment by the Government of Canada in passenger rail renewal and expansion. Of this amount, C$407 million is under the government’s Economic Action Plan.
Other elements of VIA’s program include expanded, fully-accessible station facilities at strategic locations on the Montreal-Toronto route, major infrastructure and station upgrading on other routes, accessibility projects for travelers with special needs and the complete rebuilding of service-proven locomotives and rolling stock. The program will benefit rail travelers across the entire VIA transcontinental system, from Halifax to Vancouver Island.
Highlights of VIA’s CN Kingston Subdivision Project include: construction of additional (third) main line track to enable VIA and CN trains to pass or overtake each other safely and quickly; extensions to sidings and yard tracks to allow CN freight trains to exit and clear the main line when required; and- other track and signal improvements to smooth the flow of VIA passenger and CN freight traffic, assuring consistent on-time performance for both.
Work on VIA’s CN Kingston Subdivision Project will begin this summer and wrap up in 2011. To date, CN has hired 100 track and signal workers for its portion of the work, which will be performed under contract with VIA. Additional jobs will be created throughout the two-year span of the project within both CN and other private sector companies participating in this project.
The celebration will include a display of about 45 North American Rail Car Operators Association motorcars during an open house at the Harsco facility in Fairmont. The 45 restored cars were originally built at the Fairmont plant and shipped to railroads around the United States and Canada.
