GAO’s infrastructure team leader says freight railroads must be a bigger priority for Congress than Amtrak
BY EARLE ELDRIDGE
Congress needs to give freight railroads - not Amtrak - a bigger say in any future overhaul of the nation’s rail system, a Government Accountability Office official says.
“Passenger service cannot come at the expense of freight traffic,” JayEtta Hecker, director of GAO’s physical infrastructure team, told the National Surface Transportation Policy and Revenue Study Commission.
The result: the nation’s freight traffic is often snarled in delays caused by a passenger rail line - Amtrak - that gets priority rail access at peak times.
She wants the commission to push Congress to establish another commission that will look at possibly dismantling some Amtrak lines while making sure that freight gets a big say in any overhaul. “Freight is critical to our economy,” she said. “But sometimes freight is not at the table when Congress debates overhauling the passenger rail line.”
The commission she proposed would be similar to the military base realignment commission that recommends which military installations should close or expand.
Hecker told the transportation commission, established by Congress in the last highway bill to study the future of the U.S. transportation network, that legislators often take the “politically expedient” option of incremental improvements without biting the bullet to start a massive overhaul. “They don’t deal with the fundamental problems, and instead changes are made at the margins,” Hecker said.
On Jan. 17, the commission, chaired by Transportation Secretary Mary Peters, held a public hearing to discuss, among other things, intercity passenger rail. In her comments at the hearing, Hecker said Amtrak has a long history of “imprudent” spending and said
With most of the western LD Amtrak trains bumping along with the parade of freight, it’s doubtful that much capacity would be freed up if the once a day trains were eliminated.
Real capacity improvements will cost real dollars and the RRs probably won’t be able spend enough to keep pace with demand.
If the GAO’s point is that we need to consider frt and passenger rail together as a whole, then their onto something. If their point is that we can get some frt capacity on the cheap by ditching some Amtrak, then their just blowing smoke.
More often than not I think the GAO does a fine job and at times, a commendable job. Peter Gunn’s lauded and remarkable operational expertise was not equalled by basic business management skills in terms of record keeping…hence his “being shuffled off the Buffalo…” This arose as a result of a GAO audit.The GAO report on accounting practices under his tenure would make the most avid Amtrak supporter wince. However, they appear to be following a new gameplan that is also reflected in other areas…interjecting opinion and in other cases, a none too subtle bias. They are not a policy or legislative body who sets priorities…killing Amtrak to promote freight movement is like removing your right arm to save your left. How many times has a passenger rail route been killed off only to find that reninstating it at a later date proves to be insurmountable due to the increase in cost? The Lackawana cut-off, the red car system of L.A, the CNS&M…we all know what they are. When transportation options are practically nil, yeah…let’s put all our eggs in the automobile basket…as the diminishing puddles of dinosaur poop are held captive by violent lunatics…Let the railroaders run Amtrak by contract and it will be done right, not an ad hoc, half baked compromise run by a bunch of self serving political hacks…It’s not a either \ or situation. Look at WW2…freight and passenger trains ran just fine with enormous strains and increases in traffic. Give them the railroad industry a tax break to increase infrastructure. Then also consider this upswelling in WW2 traffic was managed at a high level of perfomance without computer aided dispatching, radio use, roller bearings, diesels, etc. If they can bail out private airline companies, and Chrysler…whats the problem with my picture reception here? Where’s that NASCAR sponsorship Trains suggested? Railroads have a habit of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory…get that public profile out
Not that one would expect anything else, here is NARP’s take on the Jay-Etta’s comments.
"In a presentation Wednesday to a public session of the National Surface Transportation Policy & Revenue Study Commission, JayEtta Hecker, the Government Accountability Office’s Director of Physical Infrastructure Issues, trotted out all the predictable anti-Amtrak and anti-overnight-train clichés. She professed not to know what is in S. 294 even though Senators Lott and Lautenberg have made clear that the bill tracks old S.1516 quite closely. Her attack on the national network makes one wonder if she has ever ridden an overnight train. It included this: “Long-distance service is very imperfect, with expensive food cars and making stops in the dead of night.”
She made a big deal out of the fact that Amtrak’s market-share compared with airlines is tiny in markets like New York-Chicago and Washington-Chicago. She argued that “passenger rail expansion cannot come at the expense of freight railroads,” a strange proposition indeed, given the fact that it is well-established that railroads can set tough infrastructure requirements for new service. As for state partnerships, she said 80/20 money “doesn’t work for highways and won’t work for rail.” Yet, like most Amtrak critics, she protested, “GAO is not anti-Amtrak or anti-passenger rail,” a statement that is questionable at best."
That is a quote from the NARP’s web site two weeks ago.
I’m sorry, but to me this sounds like how when they couldn’t catch Al Capone any other way, they used the IRS to nail him.
Since logic and reason have not worked in killing off the sacred cow, they are going to start attacking from the “opportunity cost” angle… The “big inconvenience” it poses to the freight lines.
Here in Illinois some politicians recently forced several railroads to accept more Amtrak trains. This, according to a forum poster who works one of the lines, has caused increased congestion. The cost of which comes out of the railroads’ pockets.
The politicians are back to forcing the railroads to incur out of pocket costs to run money loosing pasenger trains. And the congestion does reduce needed rail freight capacity.