Hotline #936

The House of Representatives' highway and transit bill was approved November 5 by a vote of 363 to 64, setting up a momentous round of negotiations between the House and the Senate on what the final transportation bill will look like. On November 4, NARP alerted passengers about some big opportunities—and threats—they should be aware of, including an easy cheat sheet created by Vice President Sean Jeans-Gail for transit- and train-related amendments that NARP has taken a position on. Because you responded, we were able to claim some big victories on the House floor, posted here on our blog. Stay tuned next week for more updates -- including a list of the Senate conferees that will help craft a final bill -- as NARP works to bring you all the latest developments affecting the trains that keep America connected!

One of the items included in the recently passed short-term transportation extension was a three-year extension for rail companies to install Positive Train Control (PTC) technology. This week, the New York Times wrote about a previous attempt to utilize technology used by airlines to track the location of planes and help prevent accidents in the rail industry.

The idea was the brainchild of Richard M. Bressler, then the chairman of the Burlington Northern Railroad and a former airline executive. A small group of his employees created the Advanced Railroad Electronics System (ARES), placed on several trains on a section of track in Minnesota. But after five years in operation, the project was abruptly shut down in 1993. The company cited the system’s expense and resistance from many managers who did not see how the benefits outweighed the cost of the technology.

---

NARP is now offering members access to VSP Individual Vision Care. The company currently provides affordable access to high-quality eyecare and eyewear to 70 million members. For every member subscribing to a vision plan, VSP will make a contribution to NARP's Special Projects Fund, which bankrolls specific passenger rail advocacy projects. So click here for more details and to sign up today!

---

As the wrangling to fund and build the Gateway Project continues, Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) warns that the century-old rail tunnels between Manhattan and New Jersey are increasingly at risk of becoming unusable before the $20 billion Gateway project that would construct new ones is funded, reports Bloomberg. “The longer that we wait to get started, the more likely that is to happen,” Booker said Friday in a telephone interview.

And even the car-focused AAA jumped into the tunnel debate, warning drivers that their fate was directly tied to building the Gateway Project, reports Politico New York. “I have members, and I have other folks, that come up to me and go, ‘This isn’t a car tunnel, why do we care?'” said Cathleen Lewis, the public affairs and government relations director at the AAA New Jersey Automobile Club. “And the reason is simple — for every person who chooses mass transit over their car, that’s one less car on the road, that’s one less person adding to congestion. That is one more person who can get to and from their workplace safely. That has to be our goal.”

Minneapolis city officials are questioning what numbers were being used to justify proposed cuts to the Southwest Light Rail Transit project this summer, reports MinnPost. The Metropolitan Council, which oversees public transportation among other things, is looking to slash the budget for a $1.77 billion extension of the Green Line.

“The list of potential cuts, like the process to develop it, is driven not by objective criteria—since none were ever identified—but by politics,” alleged Mayor Betsy Hodges and City Council Member Kevin Reich in a letter written to Metropolitan Council over the summer.

First New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio agreed to a plan by MTA to slash $1 billion from its capital budget by nixing a project for a Second Avenue subway, reports WNYC radio. But then de Blasio joined a dozen state and city lawmakers to pressure the MTA to restore the funding. The project would have paid for digging the tunnel north from the Upper East Side to 125th Street in East Harlem. The agency said the decision was a practical one because it would not have been able to award that contract within the capital program period, which ends in 2019.

---

Back by popular demand: NARP's successful “This is Not a Dining Car - Cooler Bag Campaign." Through this campaign, NARP is asking members to help us send Congress a message: America’s passengers deserve better! Do this by purchasing our insulated “Dining Car” bags. Your donation will not only support NARP’s work to build a passenger-focused rail network, but serves as a way to tell Congress that micromanaging the nation’s passenger railway, through things like eliminating Dining Cars on long-haul rail service, is not the way to go. Your donations will help NARP remain successful with its efforts on Capitol Hill and around the country. We appreciate your continued support!

---

Last week was the annual Virginia Governor's Transportation Conference, which featured nearly two dozen presentations by government and industry experts, reports the Virginian Pilot-Union. The event was attended by Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D), Secretary of Transportation Anthony Foxx and the state secretary of transportation, and they all spoke. The newspaper pulled out eight things it learned from the three-day event, including: a focus on rail and multimodal transportation options; $7 billion in projects need to be funded in the state; and the importance of public-private partnerships.

Leaders in North Carolina’s Wake County are shifting their approach to trains, focusing on a quadrupling of current bus service – and bus rapid transit -- in a countywide strategy being developed around a proposed half-cent sales tax to help pay for big new transit investments, writes the Road Worrier blog in the News & Observer. While county officials say they say they have not backed away from a commitment to rail transit service, they have dropped talk of “rapid rail transit” with diesel-fueled rail cars that would run every 15 to 30 minutes.

Back in August, NARP President and CEO Jim Mathews wrote a blog post praising Jill Meyer, the then-new CEO of the Cincinnati USA Regional Chamber, on her stance supporting the city’s new streetcars. "The worst thing that can happen, however, is for the streetcar to fail. I know people outside of the city core think it’s an extravagant amount of money for one part of the city. But it can be looked at as a first piece of a larger aspiration of making multimodal transportation an integral part of this area," she said in an interview with the Enquirer.

And now the streetcars are arriving in Cincinnati, reports the Enquirer. A 77-foot, 76,850-pound streetcar vehicle took a two-day, nearly 600-mile journey from the manufacturing plant in Elmira Heights, New York. The city expects to take delivery of four other streetcars by the end of February and the system will officially open to the public on Sept. 15.

But the prospects for a proposed streetcar in Anaheim are not as good. An ad-hoc committee of the Orange County Transportation Authority are expressing concerns that the city’s 3.2-mile, $318 million system probably won’t meet its ridership projections and could prove a financial burden on the taxpayer, reports the O.C. Register. OCTA board Chairman and Irvine Councilman Jeff Lalloway, told the Register last week that Federal Transit Administration officials had told him the project wasn’t a good candidate for federal grants because it would cater to tourists rather than the impoverished.

And a story in Railway Age notes that the United States has opened more new light rail and streetcar systems than any other country on earth. Since 2000, the U.S. has built more LRT and streetcar systems—23—than even France, which has built only 20. Per capita, of course, is another matter...

---

Neon, NARP’s new membership management system is up and running. After logging in here, members can manage all their details, including updating a profile, make address changes, make and check on donations and changing passwords. It’s a win-win for everyone: members can make their own changes to ensure accuracy, while NARP staff can focus on ongoing advocacy efforts.

---

The new Canadian government, led by Liberal Justin Trudeau, is being besieged with funding requests for projects across the county. One of the first to stake a claim is Via Rail Canada, which said that it plans to ask the incoming government to back its C$4 billion plan to build a new dedicated track in the Montreal-Ottawa-Toronto corridor, reports the Globe and Mail. Via Rail says the project would pay for itself by attracting up to five million new passengers a year and improving the speed of trains, which must now share tracks with freight traffic. It argues a dedicated track could cut travel time between Montreal and Toronto to three and a half hours from more than five now, and improve its poor on-time performance.

France-based Alstom is now focused exclusively on rail transport after selling its energy divisions to General Electric for $13.4 billion, reports International Railway Journal. The company will spend $760 million to acquire GE's signalling activities, which it says will make it a leader in North American freight signalling, strengthen its position in the new Positive Train Control market, provide it with a wider range of products and give it better geographic coverage.

California’s Santa Clara Valley Transit Authority revealed winners of its Hack My Ride 2.0 app challenge, reports Techwire. The annual endeavor called on civic tech devotees to invent apps that rethought transit. The four winning apps included Departures SF Bay, a mobile app to visualize vehicle departure times in augmented reality; Transitime, an open-source app for real-time transit information; Mobility Map, a real-time transit map and social media platform; and OnTransit, an app that crowdsources real-time transit insights.

---

Finally, NARP wants to hear from you. We’re encouraging you to send us industry-related news stories, op-eds, editorials or letters to the editor from your communities to NARP’s communications director ([email protected]) so we can share it with the membership via social media, the Hotline and our monthly newsletter. And please follow NARP on Facebook and Twitter and join the conversation.

---