Streetsblog Capitol Hill

On Monday, we featured a Systemic Failure post about FRA regulations in our morning round-up from the Streetsblog Network. Systemic Failure indicated — and Streetsblog repeated — that the FRA was unwilling to change its rules to allow Amtrak to use “off-the-shelf” trainsets and other equipment.

The Systemic Failure post consists almost entirely of the FRA’s own words, from its final rule on high-speed safety standards. Still, FRA says we got it wrong.

In an email statement yesterday, agency spokesperson Kevin Thompson said:

The FRA and Amtrak are working very closely and cooperatively with each other and worldwide train manufactures through the Rail Safety Advisory Committee (RSAC) to achieve a consensus on safety design standards. There is unanimous consensus on the path forward with all of our stakeholders, including Amtrak, all international railcar manufacturers and other partners. Together through the RSAC process we are writing safety standards will allow proven trainsets used in other countries to operate in the U.S. market. Our process is and has always been a fluid and iterative process. Collectively, our goal is to establish and implement safety standards that are appropriate for U.S. operating environments so that passengers, employees and communities along rail routes are and remain safe.

It’s hard to reconcile this with the agency’s final rule refusing to change the previous rule that resulted in expensive, custom-made Acela trains, but it’s good to hear from FRA that the agency is working toward a solution that might lower costs. Still, “proven trainsets used in other countries” could mean many things. Readers, are you reassured?

Yesterday was a tough day to try to get attention for a Senate hearing on the future of Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor. After all, at least one senator had gotten a poisonous letter and everyone on Capitol Hill was on high alert. What’s more, the Amtrak hearing coincided with the vote on gun control, one of the most dramatic and high-stakes votes in the body so far this session.

The Northeast Corridor is already at capacity during peak periods. Major investment will be needed to handle the increase in ridership that's already happening. Photo: WIkimedia/Peter Van den Bossche

Even Commerce Committee Chair Jay Rockefeller, a passionate supporter of Amtrak, gave his opening statement and scooted out of the room to join the action on the Senate floor.

Before he left, Rockefeller lambasted Congress for creating Amtrak and then failing to establish a viable strategy for it to succeed. “Amtrak, and passenger rail in general, has limped along financially since it was created,” Rockefeller said. “Unpredictable federal financial support has been a detriment to Amtrak’s core responsibility to provide travel for millions of Americans and continues to hamper its long-term planning.”

The consequences, he said, are $22 billion in lost productivity each year due to congestion on the highways and in the airspace above the region. “Everyone in this room knows that simply maintaining what we have in the Northeast Corridor is not enough,” he said. “We need to provide expanded capacity to meet future needs of the region. Throwing $22 billion down the drain annually in this economy – all because we cannot agree that transportation infrastructure is a priority – is shameful.”

He put in a plug for his infrastructure bank bill and encouraged the transportation establishment to break down its modal siloes, which he compared to the intelligence community’s turf battles that were exposed after 9/11.

Frank Lautenberg’s absence at a hearing on his beloved Northeast Corridor was glaring. Health problems have kept Lautenberg away from the Hill for about a month, and though he did make it back yesterday – in a wheelchair – to vote for the gun control measure, he didn’t make an appearance at the hearing.

The Northeast Corridor carries twice as many trains today as in 1976, said Amtrak CEO Joe Boardman, making the corridor “among the most heavily-used rail lines in world.” About 150 Amtrak trains, 2,000 commuter trains (run by eight different agencies), and 70 freight trains run up and down that track daily.

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Image: Amtrak

At today’s hearing on Amtrak’s budget proposal, the nation’s rail leaders met with a different kind of Congressional leadership than in it has in recent years. The vibe of the meeting was significantly less combative — with the primary exception being Rep. John Mica’s reprise of his famous role as Amtrak villain. Here are some highlights:

Budget request. First, the topline numbers [PDF]: Amtrak made its formal budget request to Congress two weeks ago, asking for $373 million in operating support – 17 percent less than it requested in 2013 – and $2.065 billion in capital support. It needs less operating support now because skyrocketing ridership is allowing Amtrak to cover more and more – 88 percent this year — of its operating costs through ticket sales.

Dedicated funding. FRA Administrator Joe Szabo and Amtrak CEO Joe Boardman advocated for rail’s inclusion in a dedicated “transportation trust fund.” They said that would make rail funding more stable and predictable and help bring rail into parity with other modes. Recent history shows that a dedicated fund hasn’t saved highways and transit from severe uncertainty and piecemeal funding. The real solution, as always, is to increase revenues to stabilize the trust fund.

The peace dividend. Republicans can be forgiven for dismissing it as a gimmick, but the administration continues to insist that the “savings” from the drawdowns in Iraq and Afghanistan can help pay for infrastructure. The plan, as Szabo laid it out, is to dedicate $300 billion of the $600 billion “savings” to deficit reduction, then spend $214 billion to fully fund highways and transit through 2020, and then add rail into the equation with a $40 billion infusion.

Rural service. “Aviation is leaving these rural communities, inter-city buses are leaving these rural communities, and rural America has to have some transportation options,” Administrator Szabo told Rail Subcommittee Chair Jeff Denham (R-CA). Denham agreed and said he would look into holding a hearing to focus exclusively on mobility options in rural America. (Szabo also noted that inter-city buses, which often get praised for not requiring public support, benefit from billions of dollars in highway subsidies.)

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A report released this week by the Federal Railroad Administration outlines 15 possible ways forward for the Northeast Corridor, ranging from building fully separate tracks to accommodate 220 mph bullet trains to simply maintaining the existing infrastructure in a state of good repair.

The Northeast Corridor, stretching roughly 457 miles between Boston and Washington, DC, is one of the world's most widely ridden rail corridors. The Federal Railroad Administration has put forward 15 investment proposals for the route looking toward 2040.

The “preliminary alternatives” were laid out in a report called “NEC Future,” which FRA is using to prompt discussions on the future of rail service along the corridor. Each alternative will be evaluated on its environmental and transportation impacts. FRA will then choose a “preferred alternative” to pursue.

The first several proposals laid out by FRA — the “resource-constrained” options — show trains maxing out at about 160 mph, like they do now. A state of good repair would be maintained. Investment would be limited to accommodating projected ridership increases through 2040. No new routes would be constructed.

Meanwhile, in the middle-range investment scenarios, “Alternative 4″ calls for increasing capacity at all choke points, including the construction or acquisition of “express bypass tracks,” to allow overtaking of slower trains. This alternative would also tackle “cost effective” trip-time improvement on projects “that also increase capacity,” according to the report.

Among the less “resource constrained” proposals is where we see a call for transformative new investment. “Alternative 15″ calls for a new right-of-way along the 457 miles from Boston to Washington, which would allow for a “major increase in capacity.” This proposal would include new routes off the main spine of the corridor, serving outlying areas like Long Island. This proposal also calls for a “super express” line running all the way from Portland, Maine to Washington, DC, along with two additional local routes along the length of the corridor, for shorter regional and inter-city trips.

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There’s never any shortage of calls to make Amtrak pay for itself. Republicans deride it as a “Soviet-style monopoly,” rife with inefficiencies. But as Ed Glaeser pointed out in an article for the Boston Globe last week, another mode’s subsidies are approved year after year without a peep: aviation.

Why don't aviation subsidies provoke the same scrutiny Amtrak's do? Image: Backpacking Matt via the Creative Commons

According to Glaeser, fees imposed on airline passengers cover just 70 percent of the Federal Aviation Administration’s budget. Aviation subsidies increase if you consider the costs of the Transportation Security Administration. The TSA’s 2013 budget is $7.6 billion, of which only $2.5 billion will come from user fees.

What does this have to do with trains? Well, subsidies for air travel and roads are funding Amtrak’s competitors. (As Streetsblog has reported, just 51 percent of road funding come from gas taxes, tolls, and other fees on driving.) Cutting subsidies to rail while maintaining the others would hardly create a level playing field.

But cutting FAA and TSA subsidies doesn’t seem to get the kind of attention as the push to cut Amtrak loose. Perhaps aviation subsidies tend to avoid public scorn because air travel is widely perceived to be critical to the economy. But rail is too, and with more investment, it could be a far more widely-used and relied-upon mode of travel. And rail subsidies wouldn’t be as regressive as aviation subsidies: According to Glaeser, those who make more than $100,000 per year fly ten times more than those who make $50,000 per year.

Amtrak has seen ridership grow 55 percent since 1997, faster than any other transportation mode. Image: Brookings

Let it be known: Amtrak is the fastest!

Fastest-growing, that is. Since 1997, Amtrak ridership has grown 55 percent — faster than the general population, faster then GDP, faster than air travel, faster than driving, faster than any other mode of transportation.

Even in a difficult political environment, more people are choosing Amtrak, according to a new analysis by the Brookings Institution. A record 31 million passengers took advantage of the rail service in 2012.

But the picture is very uneven. Almost two-thirds of Amtrak’s total ridership comes from just ten metro areas — mostly big cities in the Northeast Corridor and in California. The New York metro area alone accounted for more than 17 percent of boardings and disembarkments. Greater Washington, D.C. accounted for a 9 percent share and Philadelphia 8.5 percent.

Big cities, in general, make up a disproportionate share of Amtrak ridership. Together, America’s 100 largest metro areas combine to produce almost 90 percent of all the agency’s trips, Brookings found.

But it appears the single biggest determinant of the success of an Amtrak line, however, is the length of the trip. Routes under 400 miles — short-distance corridors — carried 83 percent of all riders. Almost all of the ridership gains over the last 16 years came from the 26 routes that travel distances less than 400 miles. These routes, taken together, operate at a profit.

“Simply put, short-distance routes are the engines of Amtrak ridership,” wrote authors Robert Puentes, Adie Tomer, and Joseph Kane.

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Rep. John Mica (R-FL) no longer chairs the House Transportation Committee, but that doesn’t mean he’s eased up on his crusade against Amtrak. Calling the company a “Soviet style monopoly,” Mica used his afternoon address to the U.S. High Speed Rail Association to announce his plan to revive his despised and defeated measure to privatize parts of Amtrak.

Ray LaHood takes questions from reporters after telling the U.S. High-Speed Rail Association, "Do not be dissuaded by a few detractors." A few hours later, Rep. Mica called Amtrak a Soviet style monopoly that should be disbanded. Photo: Tanya Snyder

Mica plans to introduce legislation to end Amtrak’s “monopoly” by allowing “open competition to provide intercity passenger and high-speed rail service.”

Of course, high-speed rail in California is open for bids from private, mostly foreign, firms, and many have expressed interest. Fully private entities are moving forward with rail projects in Florida and Texas. Amtrak simply doesn’t have the stranglehold on rail in America that Mica tries to convey. And in the sense that Amtrak does have a broad network of lines, it’s in large part because it was created by Congress and is partially funded by taxpayers with a mandate to provide mobility services to the country.

To illustrate the land of milk and honey that awaits rail privatization, Mica cited the European Union’s decision to end state rail monopolies. Perhaps he isn’t up to speed on the latest news: The European Commission planned last month to break up the monopolies and open the rail system to free market competition but took a step back from that two weeks later due to opposition, favoring instead a proposal that will allow Germany and France to keep their state-dominated systems. Meanwhile, rail privatization in the UK has let to a tripling of fare prices and plummeting investor confidence.

Earlier in the day, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood also had an anecdote from Europe and Asia. He’s toured 18 countries’ high-speed rail systems during his tenure as secretary. “The common thread in every country was the idea that unless the national government makes the investment in high-speed rail, it will not happen,” he said.

Mica hopes to include his privatization proposal in the Passenger Rail Investment and Improvement Act reauthorization this year. The last time he tried to include a similar idea in the surface transportation reauthorization, the proposal was so widely panned he had to retract it. Mica now has no leadership post within the committee. He is the senior member of the Rail Subcommittee but not the chair or the vice chair.

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There’s a persistent misconception in American culture that transit is a big drain on public coffers while roads conveniently and totally pay for themselves through the magic of gas taxes. And that used to be true — at least for interstate highways, a fraction of the total road network.

Drivers directly pay for just 50.7 percent of the cost of the American road system. Image: Wikipedia

But that was many, many failed attempts to raise the gas tax ago. A new report from the Tax Foundation shows 50.7 percent of America’s road spending comes from gas taxes, tolls, and other fees levied on drivers. The other 49.3 percent? Well, that comes from general tax dollars, just like education and health care. The way we spend on roads has nothing to do with the free market, or even how much people use roads.

“Nationwide in 2010, state and local governments raised $37 billion in motor fuel taxes and $12 billion in tolls and non-fuel taxes, but spent $155 billion on highways,” writes the Tax Foundation’s Joseph Henchman. Another $28 billion of that $155 billion comes from revenue from the federal gas tax.

Meanwhile, transit fares cover 21 percent of costs nationwide, indicating that the difference in subsidies for roads and transit is not as great as it’s often made out to be. (Though in absolute terms, there is a big difference: The total subsidy for roads dwarfs the total subsidy for transit.)

Even more interesting is to compare roads to Amtrak, a favorite target of self-styled fiscal conservatives in Congress. Amtrak recovers about 85 percent of its operating costs from tickets — a relative bargain compared to other modes. Even accounting for capital costs, Amtrak — which operates mostly on privately owned tracks — covers 69 percent of its total costs through ticket prices and other fees to users.

The Tax Foundation also analyzed transportation spending in every state to determine which states subsidize their road systems the most through general taxes. Drivers in Delaware, Florida, New Jersey, North Carolina, and New York cover the highest share of road spending compared to drivers in other states. Drivers in Wyoming, Alaska, South Dakota, and Vermont cover the lowest share.

Correction: An earlier version of this story, using Tax Foundation calculations that don’t factor in the federal gas tax, understated the share of road spending covered by drivers. Also, updated 1/24/13 to reflect total Amtrak costs.

Perhaps Rep. John Mica’s most remarkable legacy as chair of the House Transportation Committee is the single-minded focus he gave to attacking Amtrak. Under the guise of wanting it to succeed, Mica has repeatedly excoriated it as a “Soviet-style monopoly” and a waste of taxpayer dollars. He’s tried to sell off its only profitable line, the Northeast Corridor, and made a mockery of every aspect of its operations, right down to food service. If there’s anything he got more glee out of criticizing, it was the Transportation Security Administration.

Last year, Mica took a field trip to McDonald's to berate Amtrak for losing money on food service. Photo: WUSA

Mica’s no longer chair of the Transportation Committee. But as of this morning, he’s got a new post from which he can take shots at these agencies.

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, where Mica was already a senior member, is consolidating two subcommittees into a new Subcommittee on Government Operations. That new subcommittee will oversee the TSA and Amtrak. And Mica will be the chair.

In other committee news, 10 new Republicans and 10 new Democrats are joining the T&I committee. Democrats gained one seat on the 60-member committee. New Chair Bill Shuster has a track record of taking new members under his wing to bring them up to speed on the intricacies of transportation policy. No doubt, many lobbyists will take it upon themselves to do the same.

In the Senate, Maryland Democrat Barbara Mikulski will take over the chair of the powerful Appropriations Committee. Media reports about her leadership of that committee center around her gender — she’ll be the first woman to chair it — but more notable to transportation reformers is the fact that she’s a vocal supporter of transit. She’s fought for federal funding of all the transit systems under her jurisdiction as well as Amtrak. After the red line Metro crash in 2009, she sponsored legislation to bring federal safety oversight to local systems, a provision that was included in MAP-21. She also favors parity between commuter tax benefits for drivers and transit riders, which was included in the fiscal cliff deal that was approved late on New Years Day.

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For the past two years, Amtrak has been under constant attack from House Transportation Committee Chair John Mica (R-FL), who has used his gavel to bully the rail company. He likes to call it a “Soviet-style” monopoly and he goads it for losing money on everything from long-distance routes to food service. His vitriolic diatribes against Amtrak have become white noise, and they’re about to fade into the background as Mica surrenders his post to Rep. Bill Shuster next year.

Will Amtrak's reorganization plan be enough to turn the rail line around? And will it be enough for the GOP to call off the dogs? Photo: Amtrak/Gary Pancavage

Still, Mica got a chance to trot them out yesterday at a Transportation Committee hearing on Amtrak’s reorganization plan.

Mica and Shuster teamed up last year to push a plan to privatize Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor service – the only place where Amtrak makes money. Republicans have also ceaselessly advocated for ending – or at least dramatically cutting – Amtrak’s government subsidies.

That demand doesn’t sit well with Democrats like Rep. Laura Richardson, who pointed out in yesterday’s hearing — as some Democrat always does — that “we spent more in one year with the oil and gas and energy companies and their industry than we have spent in the life of the program of Amtrak.”

The Mica-Shuster privatization proposal also met with such a fierce backlash that Mica and Shuster were forced to shelve it.

Amtrak has a different idea for how it’s going to move into the 21st century and, they hope, become “more like a business and less like a government agency,” according to Amtrak CEO Joseph Boardman. The Government Accountability Office criticized Amtrak in 2005 for not having a strategic plan, and the rail agency jumped into action – if acting six years later can be considered “jumping” – and is now in the middle of a reorganization that started last year and is due to be complete by the end of next year.

The strategic plan includes safety improvements, better risk management, energy efficiency, and lots of internal operational changes that the public will probably not perceive.

The plan’s main dish is to segment the company into six “business lines”: Northeast Corridor Infrastructure and Investment Development, Northeast Corridor Operations, State Services, Commuter Services, Long-Distance Services, and Corporate Asset Development.

Again, such internal corporate restructuring may not get most people’s pulses racing with excitement – but Dan Schned of the Regional Plan Association says there’s a nugget of gold buried in there.

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