Last 8 Years of Bare Bone Budgets for Amtrak

And you are wondering why they had trouble keeping on schedule during inclement weather?

Here is a comment in the NYT on this:

Trains generally perform well in inclement weather but currently Amtrak is being forced to cancel some trains to and from Chicago thanks to barely having enough equipment to cover those operations.

Amtrak would be in much better shape at this time if some spare equipment was available to it; but given the last 8 years of bare bone budgets and attacks from the current administration, many folks travel plans are being impacted that otherwise would not be.

Thanks W for doing completely nothing to assist passenger rail transportation in 8 years and let us not forget John Mica, (R) Florida who ardently assisted the President to starve Amtrak who now all of a sudden when it appears politically correct fashions himself a rail supporter. Sure you are John-

Transportation plan anyone?

Commuter rail rolls on . . . to failure?

Here is what Pam Hasterok says about John Mica's Pet Project,......good to see some realism about the flaws of the project rather than the incessant cheerleading for the "behind closed doors" arrangements with a very profitable private company, profiteering some more at the expense of the Florida tax payers:

The life or death of the rail line hinges on who's responsible for accidents. The state is buying the tracks for the passenger line from the freight giant CSX.
CSX plans to keep running freight trains on the tracks, too. If an accident occurs, CSX is demanding that neither it nor its contractors be held liable.
State transportation officials agreed. Lawmakers didn't.

They weren't pleased, either, that officials negotiated the deal in secret without the knowledge of most legislators. Unless a compromise emerges over who pays for accidents and their legal fallout, commuter rail will die next year, too.

Forget the happy talk you'll hear from local lawmakers and council members who say everything will work out.
Powerful representatives can probably pass the project through the House on sheer force of will. That won't work in the Senate.
Enough senators have enough doubts to say no, as they did before, to saddling the state with bills for an accident that is the fault of a private company.

"I don't want the state to be in a situation where it has to take care of every accident and every lawsuit when we're talking about a company that makes a lot of money," said Sen. Jim King, who represents part of Volusia County.

Accountability and Efficiency with PUBLIC Owned Rail Tracks

Transport Politic offers a little background and some advice on John Mica's ill-conceived favoratism of private enterprise in public infrastructure:

The Bush administration, as we chronicled a few months ago, has repeatedly pushed to sell or lease public assets to private companies.
But having high-speed railways run on privately-owned tracks is a bad idea. The most compelling argument for this is that infrastructure cannot act as a competitive entity in the free market. If you build a high-speed rail line between San Francisco and Los Angeles, and then sell or lease the tracks to a private company, no competing company will build its own tracks over the same route. There is simply not the market or the financial means for that to happen, and it’s the reason why it makes sense to continue the public ownership of, for example, the interstate highway system or the New York City Subway.
Keeping the track in public hands also ensures political accountability. For instance, if a section of track passes through a neighborhood and residents there complain of unreasonable noise, the elected government is more likely to respond with the construction of noise walls than is a private company, because there’s no motive for increased profit in building such a wall. Even if the neighborhood were to boycott the rail system, the collective loss in ticket revenue would be less than the cost of building the wall, so the company would be unlikely to do so, at least unless pushed to do so by the government.
Similarly, if poor management bankrupts the owner of the track, a vital public utility that cannot be shut down, government would be forced to subsidize the track’s operation, even as the private owner escapes accountability. The government does not go bankrupt, and as long as there’s public interest in supporting a railway system, the tracks will continue to be funded, no matter the economic situation. This is necessary insurance for infrastructure.
Indeed, mainland Europe’s highly developed rail system is publicly owned. The European Union’s competition laws are opening services up to private companies (we will discuss this further later in this post), but the infrastructure itself remains under the control and ownership of the national government.

The benefit of having governmental control is efficiency; nations decide to invest in new high-speed rail lines and simply hand the money and right-of-way over to the public infrastructure owner. The government is also responsible to the citizens for the maintenance of the lines; when several French TGVs were delayed because of problems with overhead catenary earlier this year, an infuriated public pushed for the government to invest more in the electrical systems, and it did. Would that have happened if there were a private owner? The public’s ability to ensure the continued quality of the tracks is improved with the government in power.

Sixth-straight year of Record Ridership for Amtrak

As a fan of Amtrak, government run passenger rail transportation, I was pleased to see these excellent Amtrak numbers ( no doubt much to John Mica's chagrin):

Published by Progressive Railroading MagazineNovember 2008--For the sixth-straight year, Amtrak posted record annual ridership, carrying 28.7 million passengers in fiscal-year 2008, an 11.1 percent jump compared with FY2007’s total. For the fiscal year ended Sept. 30, Amtrak also recorded $1.7 billion in ticket revenue, up 14.2 percent.

If You Pee on CSX’s Parade in Central Florida....

"If you pee on CSX’s parade in Central Florida, do you think they’re going to cooperate with other entities?" says Mica in another thinly veiled threat, coercing support from other FL areas for Mica's Pet Project.

Just a week or so ago there was an earlier threat made by Mica, reported by local media but without question as to the ethics of quid pro quo, blackmail type wrangling on getting this Private Public Partnership off the ground for Mica's Pet Project:

"You're on hold and everybody else is on hold until that gets resolved," Mica said.

John Mica wants Hillsborough rail supporters to work with the legislature to come to an agreement on the liability issue for the Central Florida Commuter Rail, Mica's Pet Project, and claims everything is on hold throughout the state of Florida, until he gets his way on that.

Factoid on lightrail which offers more stops than commuter rail and is thus more functional in highdensity areas:
Light rail delivers 4 times the congestion-reduction potential per dollar as incremental freeway lanes.

Differences between light rail and commuter rail can be found here. Because commuter rail has fewer stops sharing track or right-of-way with intercity or freight trains, commuter rail is more suitable to lower-density areas.

John Mica is Virulently Anti-Government

So says the blogger at thetransportpolitic. And John Mica is supposed be a champion for PUBLIC transportation? I don't think so and neither does Representative Jerry Nadler. From thetransportpolic blog Jerry Nadler is quoted:

I oppose privatizing the Northeast Corridor. While I appreciate and support efforts to expand high-speed rail service in this country, it remains to be seen whether or not this RFP will achieve that goal. The only thing that Congress authorized is the submission of proposals. There will be a rigorous review process, and Congress will have to take subsequent action to move ahead should any of the proposals be worthy.

In the meantime, Congress should continue to increase investment in Amtrak, which has been chronically under funded and faces a multi-billion dollar backlog on the Northeast Corridor alone. I fully expect the incoming Democratic Congress and Administration to increase funding for Amtrak as part of a rational transportation policy and an economic stimulus package for infrastructure.”

http://thetransportpolitic.wordpress.com/2008/12/12/nycdc-private-bullet-train-monday-announcement/

The blogger then makes this very valid comment:

The 1993 privatization of British Rail was a well-known disaster, leading to huge
problems in transportation in the United Kingdom. Far more successful European
high-speed rail programs - in France, Germany, and Spain - have been implemented
by fully government-owned and managed systems (though the European Union’s new rules have changed that a bit in recent years). There’s no reason to think that
a government run high-speed rail system of similar magnitude and speed as Mr. Mica has suggested would not be possible.

No reason to think Mr Mica should be trusted on ay of this as he wasn't able to get a light rail system in place in 1999 his own back yard, and is now struggling to get a Central Florida commuter rail off the ground that is THE most expensive rail system ever in the history of our nation, which is not surprising since it involves private industry:

The (Central Florida Commuter Rail) system would cost $10.5 million per mile — a record for U.S. rail systems.

"It's the most expensive rail project in the history of the United States,"

and more on the folly of private industry involvement:

The Florida Department of Transportation and transportation company CSX
have a history of setting records for cost in taxpayer-funded rail systems in
the past. Of the top six most expensive rail deals per mile in U.S. history,
three of them were brokered between the Florida agency and CSX.

http://wpmobserver.com/WPMObserver/article.asp?ID=1165

Here is a little on the 1999 failed Mica Light Rail Plan:

The (CSX commuter rail) plan was developed by U.S. Rep. John Mica, R-Winter Park, after the Orange County Commission rejected his plan to build a light-rail system connecting Downtown Orlando and the Orlando International Airport in 1999.

Also note that in terms of the article writer and probably John Mica's mind, the grassroots are the Chamber of Commerce folks. This is just too laughable!

Sad indeed.

Amtrak Station for St Augustine Still a No Show

The U.S. Conference of Mayors released its member cities’ “wish list” for
project funding from an infrastructure stimulus package. Its web site
outlines every project by category. $1.06031
billion is requested for Amtrak-related projects, mainly station and station
track work. Of that, $750 million was requested by the City of Sacramento
alone for track relocation and tunnels as part of the 244-acre Railyards
redevelopment project. Charleston, SC requested $78.03 million for its
proposed commuter rail service between Summerville and Charleston. Cities
requested nearly $7.07 billion for transit-related projects.

http://www.narprail.org/cms/index.php/main/hotline_583/

Still no word on the Amtrak station in St Augustine, that John Mica promised in 2001.

What's up with that?