Streetsblog Capitol Hill

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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If your holiday plans happen to include taking the train to another city, you’re in good company. As has been widely reported, Amtrak has broken ridership records throughout the year. A total of 31.2 million passengers boarded Amtrak trains in the fiscal year that ended September 30; that’s an increase of 3.5 percent over the previous year.

As car travel becomes more expensive, trains are growing in popularity. Photo: Viewliner Ltd.

What’s also interesting, as reported by our friends at All Aboard Ohio, is that as more people opt for intercity trains, highway driving is dipping and air travel is losing ground.

Over the past 12 years, Amtrak ridership has grown 46 percent [PDF]. Meanwhile, highway travel — excluding freight — is down 7 percent over that time. Total plane boardings grew just 3 percent over the same period, compared to U.S. population growth of 12 percent.

All Aboard Ohio’s Ken Prendergast points to the increased costs of driving as a major factor:

The costs of driving rose 54 percent from 32.5 cents per mile in 2000 to 50 cents in 2010. It climbed higher in 2012, to 55.5 cents per mile.

Amtrak President and CEO Joe Boardman credited increased investments in the nation’s passenger rail system with propelling the trend. With funding from President Obama’s $8 billion high-speed rail initiative, routes like St. Louis-to-Chicago and Detroit-to-Chicago are undergoing significant improvements that are likely to entice additional passengers.

Boardman also cited the popularity of WiFi service, available on more and more trains.

Commenting on the trend earlier this year, the New York Times pegged the hassles that come with flying — increasing delays, more stringent security measures, and rising costs — as another factor.

And while the Times focused on Amtrak’s most highly traveled route — the Northeast Corridor, which saw a 4.8 percent ridership jump — it’s also worth noting that many lower-profile lines enjoyed similar, or in some cases even larger, percent increases.

The number of passengers on St. Louis-to-Chicago routes went up 11 percent last year. North Carolina’s Piedmont corridor, serving Charlotte and Raleigh, enjoyed the highest annual increase in the system, at 16.2 percent. Even long-distance routes saw impressive growth. On the Texas Eagle, between Chicago and San Antonio, boardings were up 12.8 percent to almost 338,000 [PDF].

Amtrak takes a lot of heat — especially from the current House of Representatives — because it’s subsidized. But clearly, Amtrak is providing a service that — for a variety of reasons that don’t seem likely to reverse themselves anytime soon — a growing number of Americans find appealing.

Rep. Bill Shuster (R-PA) could be the next chair of the House Transportation Committee. Photo: Office of Rep. Bill Shuster.

This is the first of two posts examining Rep. Bill Shuster’s candidacy for the chairmanship of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure. We’ll post the second one, focused on his positions on bike/ped programs and funding issues, tomorrow.

Over the next few weeks, we could see a shake-up on the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee in the House. Current Chair John Mica (R-FL) has been the top Republican on the committee for six years, and according to GOP rules, that’s the limit. While Mica is asking leadership for a little wiggle room, his deputy is making the case for his own candidacy. Rep. Bill Shuster (R-PA) announced late last week that he would seek the chairmanship.

If that name rings a bell, it may be because his father was a legend on Capitol Hill. Evoke Bud Shuster’s name in Washington and you’ll hear story after story of the deal-making he pulled off when he chaired the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure from 1995 to 2001. He brought home more bacon to his district in rural Pennsylvania than it could even handle, according to a profile that ran in the National Journal as his Congressional career came to an end.

Bill Shuster took over his father’s seat in Congress in 2001, and soon joined the committee his father presided over. Now he could take over his dad’s gavel, too, when the new Congress is seated in January.

Mica is meeting with Republican leaders this week to discuss the possibility of getting a waiver to the six-year rule. Rep. Paul Ryan is expected to receive such a waiver, so that he can go on serving at the helm of the Budget Committee. But does Ryan’s exception mean Mica will get one too? Unlikely. Last spring, rumors circulated that Republican leaders were fed up with Mica’s inability to pass a transportation bill and were looking to Shuster to step in. Those rumors were somewhat overblown, but may indicate that leaders aren’t looking for two more years of John Mica at the gavel of T&I.

Shuster, meanwhile, has excellent relationships with House GOP honchos. And as chair of the Subcommittee on Railroads, Pipelines, and Hazardous Materials, he put his own stamp on the reauthorization process. He, with Mica, inserted a highly contentious “red meat” provision (later dropped) to privatize Amtrak’s profitable Northeast Corridor service, and he supported the inclusion of automatic approval for the controversial Keystone XL pipeline.

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UPDATED 9/24 with chart.

House Transportation Committee Chair John Mica continued his “holy jihad” against Amtrak yesterday, holding the third full-committee hearing in a series on “Reviewing Amtrak’s Operations.” He’s planning at least three more hearings during the lame duck session after the election.

House Transportation Committee Chair John Mica is on a "holy jihad" to curb Amtrak's subsidies. Image: C-SPAN

Mica went after subsidies in this one, and he clearly thinks this is a winning issue. After all, Amtrak has gotten nearly $1 billion a year in federal funds over its 41-year existence. The per-ticket subsidy over the past five years has averaged nearly $51. Mica compared that to other forms of transportation: Using 2008 data, he showed that the average per-ticket subsidy to aviation was $4.28, for mass transit was 95 cents, and for intercity commercial bus service 10 cents.

What’s missing? Highways, of course. Luckily, Amtrak CEO Joe Boardman was on hand to remind him. “In the past four years, the federal government has appropriated $53.3 billion from the general fund of the Treasury to bail out the Highway Trust Fund,” Boardman told the committee. “That’s almost 30 percent more than the total federal expenditure on Amtrak since 1971.”

Considering that about 20 percent of the Highway Trust Fund goes to transit, that’s still more for highways alone over the past four years than Amtrak has ever gotten.

Meanwhile, Amtrak affirmed this week that the rail line covers 85 percent of its operating costs with ticket sales and other revenues [PDF].

Mica did acknowledge in his opening remarks that “almost all forms of transportation are underwritten by subsidies” but didn’t mention roads, despite the massive subsidies road builders receive.

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At a highly politicized hearing on Tuesday, House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chair John Mica slammed “Amtrak’s failure to compete with the private sector,” arguing that the national rail company should stop bidding to run commuter rail services.

Congressional Democrat Corinne Brown, of Florida, said the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee is no longer bipartisan. Image: House T&I

The hearing centered around a new report from House Republicans [PDF] criticizing Amtrak for competing with private companies for commuter rail contracts. “Amtrak is a highly subsidized, Soviet-style rail system,” Mica said, “but despite every ticket being underwritten nearly $50 by the taxpayers, Amtrak is an absolute failure in competing with the cost-effectiveness and level of service provided by the private sector.”

But it also seems that Republicans would prefer to see Amtrak become even more of a “Soviet-style” operation. One of the report’s major conclusions is that Amtrak should stop trying to compete for commuter rail contracts awarded by local governments. “Amtrak wastes the taxpayers’ money bidding on commuter rail contracts that it cannot win,” Mica said in a press release. The report cited seven instances where Amtrak entered competition for these contracts and lost or withdrew.

Meanwhile, Florida Democrat Corrine Brown pointed out that Amtrak makes a profit of $15 million annually on its commuter rail service. Brown accused Republicans of orchestrating the hearing to punish Amtrak for suing Veolia Transportation, which nabbed a contract for commuter rail service in Florida after hiring away three Amtrak employees. A jury faulted Veolia for the hirings, but said Amtrak would not have kept the contract even if they had retained those employees.

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Amtrak has spent the past year as a sort of punching bag for some members of Congress, not to mention the GOP presidential candidates. So it’s refreshing to hear that they’re coming out swinging, confidently, in 2012.

President and CEO Joseph Boardman announced this morning that Amtrak would pursue an “aggressive” agenda for 2012, including a large-scale equipment upgrade and some much-needed capital improvements to the busy Northeast Corridor [PDF]. Boardman said that fiscal uncertainty would not spell delayed capital investments — as it has in the past — because “customers expect us to get better.” He cited the company’s record ridership – 30.2 million passengers in 2011, the eighth time in the last nine years that Amtrak has set a new ridership record.

Artist's rendering of Siemens' "Amtrak City Sprinter" electric locomotive, the first of which will be built in 2012. Image: Metro Magazine

“I think the culture and organization of this company is changing to where we’re able to make investments,” Boardman said, offering as an example the purchase of 70 new electric locomotives. The purchase illustrates a surprising confidence in the future as the trains were “financed by debt because we were able to show folks we can pay that debt with increases in improved reliability and service.”

The locomotives will replace the entire fleet of electric locomotives currently in use on the Northeast Regional and Keystone Corridor routes, and will be capable of slightly higher speeds with greater reliability.

Long-distance trains will also be getting equipment upgrades in the form of 130 new sleeper, diner, and baggage cars. These will be used on long-distance routes which connect the Northeast Corridor to Montreal, Chicago, and Miami. Boardman pointed out that some of the cars they are replacing, inherited from predecessor railroads, are older than he is.

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Mitt Romney won Iowa by 8 votes a day after making a weak argument against federal funding of Amtrak. Photo: Getty Images

In a landslide (er, eight-vote) victory over former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum in the Iowa caucus last night, Mitt Romney solidified his lead over the rag-tag field of GOP nominees. He also took an opportunity, the day before the caucus, to make a tired old argument against public support of passenger rail service.

I gotta cap federal spending, and then I’ve got to balance the budget. Now how do you go about doing that?

[Brief heckling interlude]

My view is this: What you do to get our budget in line is you say this. You take all the programs the federal government has, and you say, “Which of these programs is so critical that we gotta have it?” And those things we keep.

But those programs that don’t pass the following test we gotta get rid of, and this is my test: Is this program so critical it’s worth borrowing money from China to pay for it? And on that basis we’ll get rid of some programs, even some we like.

[Takes an easy shot at "Obamacare".]

And there’s some other things — look, Amtrak ought to stand on its own feet or its own wheels or whatever you’d say. And I like the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities but I’m not willing to borrow money from China to pay for it.

(Hat tip to Transportation Nation for breaking the story and providing the audio.)

In this brief moment, Romney staked out several positions that distinguish him from the rest of the pack. First, he acknowledged the existence of federal programs worth keeping — not something many Republicans want to do in these slash-and-burn days. And second, he actually mentioned transportation, which most of the field has completely ignored.

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With no movement on a highway bill from House T&I Chairman John Mica until after Congress reconvenes in January, Ranking Member Nick Rahall held a press conference today to introduce the “Invest in American Jobs Act of 2011” [PDF]. The act would strengthen the “Buy America” requirements already in place on transit, rail, highway, bridge, and aviation programs.

This streetcar was made in Oregon, but will transit suffer under a Democratic mandate to buy all components stateside? Photo: Seattle Transit Blog

Among the bill’s stipulations:

• 100 percent of components and subcomponents of transit rolling stock must be made in the US by fiscal year 2016 (currently a 60 percent requirement, to be raised incrementally)
• Amtrak would lose its exemption from Buy America on projects under $1 million
• Any exemptions to Buy America sought will be subject to a period of public comment and must be reported to the Secretary of Transportation

It also seeks to eliminate loopholes for segmented or subcontracted projects like the east span of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge. Rahall specifically cited the bridge, the largest public works project in California’s history, as having been built using 43,000 tons of Chinese steel—“Made in China, but paid for by American taxpayers.”

The bill is the latest in a growing list of job-creation proposals and counter-proposals to come from either the President or Congress. And like those prior proposals, this one is unlikely to go very far.

Think of it as the Democrats’ answer to “drilling-for-infrastructure” (maybe “regulation-for-protectionism”?). While representatives from the AFL-CIO, United Steel Workers, and United Streetcar threw their support behind the bill at the announcement, a Republican House pushing to de-regulate everything will be unlikely to get behind a Democratic proposal to create additional regulatory burdens – and costs – for industry.

Indeed, it’s easy to read the bill as a mere political maneuver. Rather than letting the Republicans claim credit for introducing a transportation bill they’re overtly touting as a jobs-creator — and then letting them blame Democrats for refusing to pass it — the Democrats are trying to get out in front with their own unpassable jobs-and-transportation bill.

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Speaking at a press conference today, Mica backed off plans to privatize Amtrak service in the Northeast. He was joined by New York State Sen. Malcolm Smith and Reps. Carolyn Maloney and Jerry Nadler. Photo: Noah Kazis.

House Transportation Committee Chairman John Mica backed off his controversial plan to privatize passenger rail on the Northeast Corridor today, announcing at a press conference that reforming Amtrak would suffice.

Mica stood with New York Representatives Carolyn Maloney and Jerry Nadler at a conference held by the US High Speed Rail Association to announce further support for true high-speed rail along the Northeast Corridor. Mica has previously singled out the Boston-to-Washington corridor as the only proper location for high-speed rail (in contrast to the Obama Administration’s nationwide approach). Today, he urged that if any more high-speed rail funds are returned to the federal government, they be disbursed to the northeast. “Any further money for high-speed rail needs to go solely to the Northeast Corridor,” he said.

Mica said his goal was to see travel times as fast as in Amtrak’s ambitious proposal, but within a decade, instead of the 30-year timeline Amtrak set out.

Given Mica’s previous support for privatizing the Northeast Corridor, today’s announcement raises questions about how a revitalized push for high-speed rail along the route would be structured. Amtrak will be involved, Mica promised. “If there wasn’t an Amtrak, we’d have to create an Amtrak,” Mica said twice today. “It just needs reform.” He stated that he is no longer asking for the route to be taken away from Amtrak and that he is willing to compromise with other members of Congress and Amtrak leadership.

Even so, Mica still referred to Amtrak as a “Soviet-style train system.” It’s clear that ideological divisions linger.

Nadler, an opponent of privatization, added that there is now widespread agreement that private capital needs to be included in plans for the Northeast — Amtrak itself is seeking private investment — and also agreement that Amtrak will continue to serve the corridor. “If we all agree that Amtrak has to be the main vehicle,” said Nadler, “we have a lot of room to talk and to compromise.” Read more…