HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE DECEMBER 2008 ISSUE

Breaking News
  • Late Breaking Industry News

Traffic & Market Trends
• Industry Indicators

In This Issue
• 2009 Outlook: Railroads remain fundamentally strong
• 2009 Outlook: Staring down an oncoming train?
• 2009 Outlook: A new political paradigm

Commentary
• From the Editor: "Here go the Americans again"
• Short Line and Regional Perspective: Regulation, not legislation, could drive change

	By William C. Vantuono, Editor

“Here go the Americans again”

Come January 2009, John Mica’s political party will have a smaller presence on Capitol Hill than it does now, but the Florida Republican, Ranking Member of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, is determined to see a “true” (in his words) high speed rail system up and running within the next few years.

On the plus side, Mica’s got legislation to back him up. President Bush last month, in one of the final (and some say more significant) acts of his presidency, signed Public Law 110-432 into law. P.L. 110-432, among other provisions, reauthorizes Amtrak, with $13 billion in authorized (albeit unappropriated) funds. The legislation’s Division B, Section 502: Additional High Speed Projects, is a framework for Congress to solicit, evaluate, and fund high speed rail projects in the 11 federally designated corridors that have been the subject of, up until now, little more than hopeful “what if” speeches and preliminary planning and environmental studies.

On the minus side, there’s no seed money available for interested parties to put together viable proposals—unless incoming President Barack Obama and the 111th Congress include railway improvement and expansion as part of an economic stimulus package.

“The clock is ticking. We want the process to move forward,” Mica said at a forum on high speed rail he convened in Washington on Nov. 21. “If we can get one system going, it will serve as a model.” In a departure from previous statements, Mica, not known as one of Amtrak’s supporters, said, “What we’re trying to do does not preclude Amtrak’s participation. We would like proposals to be complementary to Amtrak’s long distance trains.”

Picking up a bottle of water and pointing to it, he said, “Working with the Bush Administration has been like talking to this bottle of water. My side of the aisle has been myopic.”

Acknowledging that “most of these projects will be in freight rail corridors,” Mica said they would actually be “higher speed” projects that “must be correlated with state rail plans.” They “cannot degrade commuter rail or freight service.”

At Mica’s right was T&I Committee member Rep. Jim Costa of California, a Democrat who formerly headed the California HSR Authority. “The Europeans and Japanese are saying, ‘Here go the Americans again.’ But this time we’re serious,” he said.

The process, called “a nationwide competition,” as outlined in the legislation sounds fairly straightforward. There’s a performance standard that trip times between corridor city pairs must be reduced by a minimum of 25%; New York-Washington NEC travel time must be under two hours. The USDOT issues a Request for Proposals on Dec. 15, 2008.

Proposals are due to DOT by Sept. 15, 2009. Within 60 days, DOT establishes commissions to “consider any proposal determined to be in the public interest.” Such proposals are then to be ranked, and within 90 days, the Secretary of Transportation receives a report with recommendations. Within 60 days (by April 2010), the Secretary submits a report to the T&I Committee on the NEC proposal, followed by reports on other “winning” corridor projects.

Presumably, California’s current project and Florida’s Jeb-Bush-axed FOX program, for which plans still exist, have a head start.

At this point, the only authorized funds are $5 million for preliminary engineering for each corridor recommended to Congress in 2010. As consultant Tim Gillespie, who is wise in the ways of Washington, pointed out to me after the forum, “Don’t hold your breath.”