Image Courtesy: NY Times - John Badman/The Telegraph, via Associated Pres

Hmmm.. Individual agendas and petty partisan politics are often the biggest road blocks for progressive nation building in most democracies around the world and the U.S. not so immune to this trend. An article from today’s New York Times documents such a situation and dissects the issues facing the High-Speed Rail program in light of the upcoming elections.

Republican candidates for governor in some of the states that won the biggest stimulus rail awards are reaching for the emergency brake.

In Wisconsin, which got more than $810 million in federal stimulus money to build a train linebetween Milwaukee and Madison, Scott Walker, the Milwaukee County executive and Republican candidate for governor, has made his opposition to the project central to his campaign.

Mr. Walker, who worries that the state could be required to spend $7 million to $10 million a year to operate the trains once the line is built, started a Web site, www.NoTrain.com, and has run a television advertisement in which he calls the rail project a boondoggle.

….Similar concerns are threatening to stall many of the nation’s biggest train projects. In Ohio, the Republican candidate for governor, John Kasich, is vowing to kill a $400 million federal stimulus project to link Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati by rail. In Florida, Rick Scott, the Republican candidate for governor, has questioned whether the state should invest in the planned rail line from Orlando to Tampa. The state got $1.25 billion in federal stimulus money for the project, but it will cost at least twice that much to complete.

And the nation’s most ambitious high-speed rail project, California’s $45 billion plan to link Los Angeles and San Francisco with trains that would go up to 220 miles per hour, could be delayed if Meg Whitman, a Republican, is elected governor. “In the face of the state’s current fiscal crisis, Meg doesn’t believe we can afford the costs associated with new high-speed rail at this time,” said Tucker Bounds, a campaign spokesman.

(Source: New York Times)

The Senate voted on Wednesday to allow Amtrak passengers to carry unloaded and locked handguns in checked baggage, even though Amtrak officials had raised concerns that the proposal could present “numerous challenges.”

Amtrak used to allow passengers to check licensed guns, but ended the practice after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in 2001.

The provision, which was introduced by Senator Roger Wicker, Republican, as an amendment to a housing and transportation spending bill, is the latest in a string of Senate votes aimed at expanding gun rights. It passed 68-30, with a group of 27 Democrats and one independent, mostly from states where gun rights are widely supported, joining all 40 Republicans in voting for the measure.

The Senate has already approved separate provisions this year that would allow properly permitted gun owners to carry in national parks and would loosen gun laws in Washington. Additionally, a July proposal that would have allowed permitted gun owners in one state to carry concealed weapons in another fell just two votes short in the Senate.

Under the Wicker amendment, Amtrak would lose the funds earmarked for it in the must-pass spending bill if it did not comply with the new regulations. In a statement released after the amendment passed, Mr. Wicker stressed that the guidelines laid out in the provision — which would also insist that a passenger notify Amtrak that he or she is transporting a handgun and that only that passenger could unlock the secure container holding the gun — are roughly the same ones used by airline passengers.

“Americans should not have their Second Amendment rights restricted for any reason, particularly if they choose to travel on America’s federally subsidized rail line,” Mr. Wicker, a Mississippi Republican, said in the statement.

Click here to read the entire article.

(Source: Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS) of the U.S. Department of Transportation)

This report is intended to provide timely, easily accessible information for the transportation community. It was developed by the Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS) of the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT), and is updated on a regular basis on the BTS website.

The indicators fall under two broad categories: those that provide context about the economy and society in which transportation functions, and those that convey information about an aspect of transportation. To the extent possible, these latter indicators are transportation-wide in scope; however, some apply to only part of the transportation system. Reference tables at the beginning of the document provide key statistics about U.S. social and economic characteristics, and about the extent of the transportation system.

For indicators that are highly seasonal, the current value of that indicator is compared to the same time period in the previous year (e.g., April 2001 compared to April 2000). Otherwise, the tables show a comparison of the current value to a comparable preceeding period of time (e.g., the data for the month of April 2001 compared to that of March 2001).

 Click here to read the report in HTML.

(Source:  Infrastructurist)

Image: Nostri-imago@ flickr

So, the absent minded editor of a certain infrastructure news site recently had an adventure in losing things on Amtrak trains. The experience was revealing and – spoiler alert – the much-slagged government owned and operated rail line acquitted themselves beautifully on matters of beyond-the-call-of-duty customer service.

 For simplicity’s sake, let’s just call this editor “I.” Anyway, I was headed from Washington DC to New York on the 11 a.m. Acela. When the train reached Penn Station (on time), I gathered the various bags and coats I’d brought and exited the train. Not among the gathered possession was an iPhone, which was left unattended on the seat. I realized this as I was about to catch the subway home to Brooklyn, by which time the Acela had already scooted off for Boston.At this point the situation looked glum. It remained so through the course of the first conversation I had with an Amtrak employee. The gentleman, white haired and in his 50s, gave the classic bureaucrat’s shrug. “You gotta call lost and found in Boston,” he said. Shrug.

“Are they open today? Will they be open when the train arrives?” I asked. It was Sunday.

“They’re closed today,” he said. Shrug.

I gave him a pleading look. He shrugged again and turned away.

So even if some heroic individual wanted to return the device, it would take a return visit to the train station in Boston to actually be able to turn it in – assuming, say, she didn’t get off the train in Stamford or Providence or…

I went to the Customer Service office. There, a genial woman named Karen became my new best friend. She immediately began coordinating a multi-city search and rescue operation. Before I even finished explaining the situation, she was on the phone with an agent in New Haven to make arrangements for someone to dash onto the train and look for the device during the brief stopover there. She called the lost phone about a dozen times in hopes that someone would answer. At some point, a man did answer. His name was Mark and he was a conductor on the train. He promised that he would get the phone back to New York safely that evening. Karen’s liaison in New Haven organized a complicated hot handoff across the platform between Mark and a conductor southbound train. About four hours after I’d got off the train without, an Amtrak conductor walked up to me in Penn Station with a sealed envelope containing the lost phone. It was carefully bubble-wrapped. 

 (Source: The Transport Politic & GAO; Photo: Swanksalot@flickr)

General Accountability Office sees federal involvement in planning and financing as necessary for high-speed rail construction

(Source: NPR;  Photo Courtesy: Hans Splinter@ Flickr)

NPR.org, March 19, 2009 –  When I went to Europe, I loved to ride the trains, especially the French TGV and other high-speed trains. So President Obama’s goal of building high-speed rail in the United States sounded good at first.

Randal O'Toole is a Cato Institute Senior Fellow working on urban growth, public land and transportation issues. Courtesy of the Cato Institute

But when I looked at the details, I discovered that — while high-speed rail may be good for tourists — it isn’t working very well in Europe or Japan.

Japan and France have each spent as much per capita on high-speed rail as we spent on our Interstate Highway System. The average American travels 4,000 miles and ships 2,000 ton-miles per year on the interstates. Yet the average resident of Japan travels only 400 miles per year on bullet trains, while the average resident of France goes less than 300 miles per year on the TGV — and these rail lines carry virtually no freight.

Click here to read the entire “Opinion” of Mr. O’ Toole.  

Throughout the world and throughout history, passenger trains have been used mainly by a wealthy elite and have never given the average people of any nation as much mobility as our interstate highways.

(Source: USA Today; Photo: Dmitry Lovetsky, AP)

 

“For so long, Americans have viewed the automobile and the airplane as our transportation vehicles,” says Anne Canby, a former transportation secretary for Delaware and train advocate. “Until now, rail hasn’t been a major player in the discussion.”

Driving the new-found interest in trains is $8 billion that was tucked into the president’s economic stimulus legislation signed last month.

“People in this country don’t appreciate what modern rail travel is,” says Doyle, referring to the 180 mph Talgo system. “It is as smooth as riding in an airplane without any turbulence.”

Click here to read the entire article.