Hotline #765

President Clinton's selection of Mort Downey as Deputy Secretary of Transportation has been applauded loudly by the American Public Transit Association. Downey worked for the Carter DOT and as New York MTA's executive director and chief financial officer.

The southbound Silver Star struck a gasoline tanker truck north of Fort Lauderdale on March 17. The truck had stopped in error on the crossing because of traffic ahead. The truck exploded, touching off a fireball that killed the driver and five other motorists nearby. All Amtrak passengers and crew safely evacuated the train, which sustained heavy damage. The dining car, which stopped directly in the crossing, apparently is a total loss.

NARP issued a media advisory urging U.S. consideration of a high-tech grade crossing system used in Sweden. It automatically stops the X2000 if a motor vehicle is trapped between the gates, which extend the full width of the highway. Since installation at about 100 crossings in 1990-1991, the X2000 has crossed these at 125-130 mph without accidents.

The House easily passed President Clinton's 1993 stimulus package and 1994 budget resolution yesterday. The Senate will vote next week. A key vote will be on an amendment by Sen. Herbert Kohl (D.-Wis.) postponing much of the spending package. Yesterday, Clinton's energy tax survived an attempt to kill it in the Senate. The vote was 53-46.

The appropriators will have to work within budget caps set for 1994 by the budget resolution. Overall, domestic discretionary spending will be subject to a "hard freeze," which means no increases for inflation. Traditional Amtrak friends will have to work as hard as ever for sufficient Amtrak funding.

The House Transportation Appropriations Subcommittee held a hearing on high-speed rail on March 15. Chairman Bob Carr (D.-Mich.) said he favors incremental improvements, including improvements to Amtrak and to the five ISTEA-designated Section 1010 passenger corridors. But he also said he thinks commercial aviation gets no public subsidy in any form. His selection of witnesses isolated maglev and TGV-style high-speed rail advocates -- those forms that need new rights-of-way. The first panel, which had Amtrak President Graham Claytor, AAR President Ed Harper, and Southwest Airlines President Herbert Kelliher, seemed to label such projects as impractical. The second panel was split, with Ken Mead of the GAO favoring incrementalism and Joseph Vranich of the High Speed Rail/Maglev Association favoring everything.

Carr was quoted in the March 16 Washington Post saying there are some people who promote rail "without a real appreciation for the economics of it, without a real appreciation for how it fits in a larger context. They just happen to be people who never outgrew being little kids with train sets around the Christmas tree."

The AAR has asked Transportation Secretary Federico Pena to relieve the railroad industry of the 2.5-cent per gallon fuel tax enacted in 1990, if it is all to go to the Highway Trust Fund. The AAR feels that would be a subsidy to truckers. Pena had told a Senate panel on March 3 that the fuel tax would be redirected to highways.

A likely candidate for Federal Railroad Administrator is Jolene Molitoris, according to the Journal of Commerce (March 15). She once ran the rail division of Ohio DOT and is a current officer of the High Speed Rail/Maglev Association.

Amtrak's Eastern trains were hit hard by last weekend's mammoth winter storm, though NARP Region 4 still managed a small meeting at Baltimore. CSX quickly shut down. The Northeast Corridor suffered when an 80-foot pine tree fell on the tracks at Landover, Md., early on March 14, taking with it a mile of catenary wire.

H.R.1090, the Chicago-Florida Amtrak service bill introduced February 24 by Rep. Bob Clement (D.-Tenn.) has an additional co-sponsor -- Sanford Bishop, a freshman from southwest Georgia.

A U.S. Court of Appeals rejected Amtrak's appeal of an employee injury case that led to seizure of two locomotives, which were returned when Amtrak posted a $2 million bond. The damage award for the former Hartford ticket clerk was $1.75 million.