Hotline #722

Governor Clinton, campaigning at a shipyard in San Diego on May 18, mentioned our favorite issue in public, apparently for the first time. He said defense program cuts should be dedicated to public works investments, including high-speed rail. His campaign staff told the Wall Street Journal that Clinton favors spending up to $1.5 billion in the next five years on five high-speed corridors.

The House and Senate yesterday approved the final 1993 budget resolution, the House by a narrow 209-207. Now funding will be allocated among the various appropriations subcommittees.

There are two more co-sponsors this week for H.R.4414, the Ampenny bill -- Carper (D.-Del.) and Holloway (R.-La.). That brings the total to 30.

There will be another rail bond initiative on the November ballot in California, this one called Proposition 155. This is actually an extension of Proposition 108, which passed in June 1990, and called for additional ballot initiatives for $1 billion in rail bonds in 1992 and 1994.

The Oakland Port Commission gave final approval on April 21 to plans for a new Amtrak station at Jack London Square. It is expected that the California Transportation Commission will release $3 million for the station when it meets in June; the rest will come from state rail bonds. Amtrak may move out of the old, earthquake-damaged Southern Pacific station in mid-1993 and use a temporary facility at Jack London Square until the permanent station is ready in early 1994.

The California Assembly unanimously approved on May 13 a study to reintroduce light rail to the congested San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge. Proponents say that dedicating one of the five automobile lanes on each deck of the bridge to light-rail tracks and connecting them with the Transbay Terminal in San Francisco and with a 40-mile light-rail network east of the bridge will nearly double the people-carrying capacity of the bridge itself. The study must still be approved by the state Senate.

The new Baltimore light-rail line went into regular, seven-day service on May 17.

Amtrak now says the Chicago-St. Paul short-haul coach removed from the Empire Builder a few weeks ago will be restored by mid-June.

Tempers are running high in New England. A May 17 article in the New Hampshire and Maine editions of the Boston Globequoted New Hampshire Transportation Commissioner Charles O'Leary dismissing the Boston-Portland passenger train as a "political statement" by Sen. George Mitchell (D.-Me.). The article said Massachusetts Transportation Secretary Richard Taylor also questioned the economic worth of the project.

Taylor, O'Leary, and pro-train Maine Transportation Commissioner Dana Connors -- all Republicans -- are scheduled to appear on the same panel on May 26 at a conference about the service in Durham, N.H. The article said that David Carol of Amtrak "questioned how O'Leary can spurn a project to which New Hampshire has refused to contribute money." Other conference participants include Ross Capon and Harriet Parcells of NARP, Tim Gillespie of Amtrak, and Supertrains author Joseph Vranich.

The cover story of the June issue of Popular Science is about high-speed rail and maglev. Included is a sidebar on the Japanese maglev tests, about which there is seldom reliable information published in this country. Buried at the end of the story is an account of Amtrak's efforts with the X2000 on the Boston line.