Candidate Positions on Amtrak/HSR

David Benton wrote:How can they have a "monopoly mentality" on commuter rail , when most commuter operations are not run by amtrak ??? .

Conjecture on my part, but I have noted in recent years increasing instances of reporters in the US printed and oral press referring to Amtrak patrons as "commuters." In a few instances the same articles also included language with respect to airline patrons and the term "passengers" was used to refer to them.

Also, from time to time I have heard passengers refer to the car they were in as "train," i.e., [on cellphone to another person meeting the individual] "I am in the third train." It is also becoming more commonplace for the public to refer to the rear car on a passenger train as the "caboose."

A billion dollars for Amtrak is "horrible government bloat"

Forty billion to oil companies is "good government".

I need a barf bag...

HexOmega2319 wrote:Good thing nobody takes these morons seriously.

I'm not sure I'd call the folks supporting Romney morons, but regardless of the name, apparently about 47% or so of the country appears to take him and the GOP seriously.

djlong wrote:A billion dollars for Amtrak is "horrible government bloat"

Forty billion to oil companies is "good government".

I need a barf bag...

There's a big difference between growing jobs with tax breaks and subsidizing a stagnant number of jobs with taxpayer money. Right now, America is headed towards energy independence because of natural gas drilling, and to a lesser extent, domestic oil production. Amtrak subsidies aren't generating self-sustaining private sector job growth, just sustaining the current pool of taxpayer subsidized jobs. And every year, those jobs become more and more expensive to subsidize because of pay and benefits increases above and beyond the rate of inflation - costs grow without growing employment. Energy exploration tax credits do result in more energy production, and there has been a huge number of new jobs associated with natural gas and even oil in surprising places like North Dakota.

here is a great Tampa Bay article I came across and points out the difference between the 2 parties - the RNC was at Tampa Bay FL which has NO rail transit and the DNC was in Charlotte NC which DOES have rail transit (when I was in Charlotte 30 yrs. ago they did not have any rail transit)

http://www.tampabay.com/news/politics/n ... es/1249759

under Republican rule America would become a bus transit country - the fed transportation money would all go to hwy. widening projects and Greyhound - ohhhh... the horror the horror ...


PS:
HexOmega2319 that mile marker looks like the one at Beacon NY on the Hudson line - send me a pvt. msg (so that we don't go off topic) as to its location - the first number was obscured so I don't know how far north of Poughkeepsie (MP 74) it is

Jeff Smith wrote:Some food for thought: GOP calls for switching Amtrak to private sector

The platform Republicans adopted at their recent national convention included a call for full privatization and an end to subsidies for the nation’s passenger rail operator, which gobbled up almost $1.5 billion in federal funds last year.

“It is long past time for the federal government to get out of the way and allow private ventures to provide passenger service,” the platform said, arguing that taxpayers dole out almost $50 for every Amtrak ticket.

...

Even with a record 30 million passengers boarding its trains last year, Amtrak operated at a net loss of more than $450 million. The government pitched in $562 million to keep Amtrak in the black. And that’s just on the operations side, where Amtrak says it covers about 85 percent of its costs through ticket fares and fees.

and from everyone's "favorite" Amtrak nemesis:

Leading the Republican charge that the U.S. can’t bear the continued hemorrhaging is Rep. John Mica (R-Fla.), who chairs the House Transportation Committee. He plans to hold a hearing a month on Amtrak, with a session today focusing on the “monopoly mentality” on commuter rail.

I know we've talked privitization in the past, but would a Veolia, another operator, or even the Class I's bid on passenger ops? Would BNSF and it's "my secretary pays a higher rate than me" Mr. Buffett do it? Could a Class I operate the Empire Builder or Sunset Limited for a profit, or at least cheaper (with public support) than Amtrak?

I was skeptical of previous Mica utterances on privatizing the NE Corridor. Unless a private operator can change labor practices, and in particular, reduced fixed benefit costs, privatization will eventually just become a higher cost form of subsidization.

Mica's previous hearing on Amtrak's food service losses was an encouraging first step, although the real issue isn't identifying such problems, which are very obvious, but identifying the solutions, which are always tied to the contentious issue of labor relations.

“If there wasn’t an Amtrak, we’d have to create an Amtrak,” [Congressional Transportation Committee Chairman] John Mica [R-FL] said twice today [Nov. 8, 2011]. “It just needs reform.”

http://dc.streetsblog.org/2011/11/08/mi ... ridor-hsr/

Does the corporate world even have any interest in acquiring Amtrak? Or parts of it? I don't see how that would work.

During the Bush Administration the Blackstone Group was said to be looking at the Northeast Corridor but they backed out.

Spro wrote:From Today's Poughkeepsie Journal.. Not a very positive article. year 41 for Amtrak, and the endurance test continues.

WASHINGTON — Warning to Amtrak from Mitt Romney and Republicans: You're on your own.

The platform Republicans adopted at their convention included a call for full privatization and an end to subsidies for the nation's passenger rail operator, which gobbled up almost $1.5 billion in federal funds last year. Amtrak trains traveling between Albany and New York City stop in Dutchess County

Full Article Here..
http://www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/view ... rnal.com|p

Merged into main topic.

I'm not worried, we've heard this "warning" be given out many times before and Amtrak ended up unscathed each time.

http://www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/view ... rnal.com|p

We should note that this reportage, first introduced on the immediate page, is syndicated material from the Associated Press. While I have noted in the past that AP reportage is by and large "Amtrak friendly" (and that in question is not really unfriendly), it is being circulated to publications within the Red States where Amtrak "service" is of the "one-a-day @ 0-dark-30" varietal - if even that.

Mr Google can give you some idea where this report has been circulated - and I think you will find Red State locations that will only add fuel to the opposition's "kill Amtrak" fire.

What I'm asking is, is the plan to privatize Amtrak a real plan or just a tactic to start getting rid of it? Does anyone know of any verifiable corporate interest in acquiring parts of Amtrak?

The other thing is this baloney about "we can no longer afford" Amtrak. The cost in 2011 worked out to two cents per day per American citizen.

At a time of rising gas prices, deteriorating highways, growing population which is increasingly urban ( http://www.huntingtonnews.net/27317 , plus the fact July was the 329th consecutive month of above average global temperatures ( http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/2012/7 ), is this really a good time to be talking about getting rid of our national passenger rail network?

To save two cents a day?

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Party platforms are traditionally window-dressing containing as many different things as the politicoes can think of to attract swing voters and hold onto the base, without any actual thought going into them, and the entire platform is forgotten about after the election is over. The time to worry is when (or if) the relevant House and Senate committees start getting serious about a bill on which they can both agree.

There’s a lot of truth to the fact campaign platforms get forgotten pretty quickly after Election Day but I don’t think that will be the case as far as Amtrak is concerned. The difference between the two candidates is so stark.

I have serious doubts as to whether the HSR program will survive a Republican Administration. I would expect Romney to move pretty quickly to kill it. It won’t make him too many enemies or even save very much money in terms of the total federal budget. What it will do is get a lot of attention and be a dramatic way for Romney to demonstrate he’s a fiscal conservative.

Under a Republican Administration I think we’ll then see Amtrak revert to annual zero budget proposals. Revert to stumbling along from budget to budget, never knowing how much money they’ll get and, as a result, never able to do any long-term planning.

Otoh, I expect the current administration will try and continue both the HSR program and the planned expansion of Amtrak as per the Vision for the Future.

Despite the election baloney from both parties I really think it’s pretty clear we can expect a very different Amtrak depending on who is elected.

Yet somehow I think I'm probably completely wrong and I expect the folks to my right to point it out!

Tommy Meehan wrote:There’s a lot of truth to the fact campaign platforms get forgotten pretty quickly after Election Day but I don’t think that will be the case as far as Amtrak is concerned. The difference between the two candidates is so stark.

The difference is stark on paper. The Republicans actually use the term and advocate for high speed rail in their platform, and the Democrats don't mention it directly.

Tommy Meehan wrote:I have serious doubts as to whether the HSR program will survive a Republican Administration. I would expect Romney to move pretty quickly to kill it. It won’t make him too many enemies or even save very much money in terms of the total federal budget. What it will do is get a lot of attention and be a dramatic way for Romney to demonstrate he’s a fiscal conservative.

Overall, I'm not sure that a Romney Administration would be anything but favorable to private sector HSR, and we all know there's a huge regulatory hurdle for any HSR operation. I could really see Romney cutting the red tape associated with HSR, but is he brave enough to reform labor to make HSR viable? There are so many steam era institutions, laws and practices on the books.

In contrast, the Dems have dropped any reference to HSR from their platfrom. Out of sight but is it completely out of mind for the current administration? Who knows? Who cares? Apparently nobody who's willing to talk about HSR?

Tommy Meehan wrote:Under a Republican Administration I think we’ll then see Amtrak revert to annual zero budget proposals. Revert to stumbling along from budget to budget, never knowing how much money they’ll get and, as a result, never able to do any long-term planning.

The problem is that Amtrak still was incapable of doing any realistic long-term planning during the years of full funding. The current $151 Billion plan to duplicate the NE Corridor and $7 Billion plan to build a pretty glass trainshed in Washington Union Station illustrate that point. Unrealistic proposal alienate support and accomplish nothing productive. Amtrak needed to order coach, just coaches, and instead Amtrak funded baggage cars, sleepers and diners, everything but coaches. And in light of huge and growing food service losses, the dining cars were the worst move that could have been made.

The reality is that a few years of abundant financing have improved the NE Corridor, renewed the electric locomotive fleet for decades to come and resulted in a few bad ordered coaches being restored to service. So, Amtrak could withstand Bush or Clinton levels of funding for another decade, of course, still unreformed, still with too few coaches, which is really the worst failure of planning at Amtrak in recent years.

Tommy Meehan wrote:I expect the current administration will try and continue both the HSR program and the planned expansion of Amtrak as per the Vision for the Future.

What vision was that? Stretching the definition of high speed to encompass 79 MPH, appropriating $7 Billion when states requested $100 Billion, and then seeing grant money actually refused in multiple instances?

That particular framework is dead and if there's room for taxpayer funded HSR, it has to be a bipartisan effort, it has stress productivity increases and has to be driven by reforms, not just bigger and bigger subsidies. And I don't see that happening.

Tommy Meehan wrote:Despite the election baloney from both parties I really think it’s pretty clear we can expect a very different Amtrak depending on who is elected.

Yet somehow I think I'm probably completely wrong and I expect the folks to my right to point it out!

In an election year, differences tend to be magnified, but in the end, nothing really changes very much.

goodnightjohnwayne wrote:Overall, I'm not sure that a Romney Administration would be anything but favorable to private sector HSR, and we all know there's a huge regulatory hurdle for any HSR operation.

The trouble is there isn't any private sector HSR. And it's not clear the private sector (minus huge subsidies) wants any part of Amtrak.

goodnightjohnwayne wrote:In contrast, the Dems have dropped any reference to HSR from their platfrom. Out of sight but is it completely out of mind for the current administration? Who knows? Who cares? Apparently nobody who's willing to talk about HSR?.

The "Dems" haven't dropped High-Speed and Intercity Passenger Rail projects, they're doing them. This is from a press release from Transportation Secretary LaHood yesterday (announcing the latest grant to Indiana):

With more than $2.5 billion already invested in the Midwest since 2009, funding 39 projects in eight states, the Federal Railroad Administration and its state partners are making great progress on High-Speed and Intercity Passenger Rail projects across the Midwest.

http://www.fra.dot.gov/roa/press_releas ... 5-12.shtml

You know people can spin this anyway they want. But this is a historic opportunity for Amtrak and Amtrak supporters. No administration has ever been willing to commit to Amtrak or HSR the way the current one is. And that's a fact, Jack.

Look I've been a registered Democrat most of my adult life. But I also support Amtrak. If the Bush Administration had proposed these things I would've supported them (as I supported Bush on many other issues). It's a shame someone like the person who posted the above message can't put partisan politics aside long enough to support what many people feel is a very exciting opportunity for Amtrak. An opportunity that I think we all know will DISAPPEAR if Mr. Romney gets elected.

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