Inadequate Funding=Broken Bridges

Trains Magazine General Discussion
1

Amtrak bridge still stuck; repairs under way
(The following article by Ethan Rouen was posted on the Day website on January 20.)

NEW LONDON, Conn. – The aging Thames River Amtrak railroad bridge has been stuck in the down position for a week, preventing some marine traffic from passage on the Thames River.

Also, on Wednesday, a cable snapped on the Old Lyme railroad bridge, but Gary Kassof, Bridge Program Manager for the first Coast Guard district, said that bridge should be repaired quickly.

A bearing on the Thames River bridge, which was built in 1918, cracked last Thursday, Kassof said. The replacement part needs to be built and will not be ready until the end of the month at the earliest, he said.

An attempt to temporarily repair the bridge Tuesday night was thwarted by an electrical problem, but engineers attempted to weld a temporary fix again Wednesday night.

Boats more than 30 feet tall are unable to pass under the bridge. A coal barge and a ferry are currently waiting to get through, Kassof said.

A spokeswoman for Amtrak said after the temporary repair the bridge will open on a schedule instead of when a request is made. She said she did not have any information about scheduled openings. She also said she was not aware of problems with the Old Lyme bridge.

The bascule Thames River bridge opens like a drawbridge, using a 4-million-pound counterweight to raise one end of the 188-foot span. The bridge opened 2,100 times in 2003, including 15 times a month to let submarines pass.

A two-year, $45 million plan to replace the bridge is currently in jeopardy, as is much of Amtrak’s $570 million plan to improve infrastructure. The rail company asked the U.S. government for $1.8 billion, but President George W. Bush has recommended giving half that amount.

From the BLET site

2

Gunn has noted many times that the Thames River Bridge needs to be fixed. I have considered the impact on NEC passenger operations if the bridge fails, however I have never actually looked at its specific location in context with water traffic.

I wonder what the DOD and The Department of the Navy would do if the waterway was blocked. Precision bombing?

3

The CB’s would either fix the bridge or blow it up in a couple of hours.

4

What Gunn needs to do is tell congress that Amtrak needs the ca***o replace the bridge so the Ohio class Subs can get out of harbor otherwise they are just 2.5 billion targets that could be destroyed in harbor that should free up the cash needed to fix or replace the bridge in question[8]. It also would put Bush on the defensive since his precious military toys aka men and ships can not do the job he wants them to do next. From his speech today sounds like either North Korea or Iran is next my guess is on Iran since we already have the troops there.

5

I respect the President, but he really needs to get a serious grip! His inaugaration is costing us $40,000,000. ( How many passenger cars and locomotives could be overhauled with that amount?!)

The NEC is heavily utilized by passengers. The complaint from his Transporatation “flunky” Norm Mineta is that Amtrak’s long distance trains are too expensive and the whole system needs an overhaul. O.K fine and dandy, but we have a bridge that needs repairs right away! If the mayors of the towns along this section of the Northeast Corridor ganged up and raised a stink, something could happen.

Though I am conservative, after doing a lot of reading I am more and more convinced that corporate America does not wi***o see a resurgence in passenger rail travel. As much as we (me too) poke fun at California, this state has proven that passenger rail does work!

The day that Norm Mineta leaves or retires will be a day to celebrate!

6

A couple of considerations here:

  1. When DOD operations are hampered by obstacles that are fixable, the private corporation or owner usually gets them fixed quickly. The nature of the fix is usually long enough to get DOD through whatever it is they are doing- be it the transit of an Ohio class submarine, or the channel blockage of Pearl Harbor by the skipper of the garbage scow that runs aground.

  2. I have heard the 40 mill number bandied about a lot concerning the innauguration. I also heard that something on the order of 150 corporations made significant contributions to the festivities. Which leads to the question: How much taxpayer money is getting spent here? How much would have been spent regardless of who was elected? The uniformed services and Homeland Security would still have been placed on alert; there still would have been a million Inaugural balls; the guest list would still be huge.

  3. I know about the towns affected here. The mayors of those towns are much more concerned about the safety of I-95 bridges than the railroad, which has a minimal effect on them. Those who use the NEC to travel from New York to Boston don’t vote in those towns. Electric Boat operations and the US Coast Guard Academy don’t rely on rail passenger service to do their jobs. The concern over proper function of a bridge over a waterway will bother the locals only when they can’t drive over it, or when their livelihood is harmed because of it.

Erik

7

You know, this is a broken drawbridge. A part has to be specially made to repair it. That’s all it is.

Drawbridges fail to open/close on a somewhat ongoing bases and require repair.

A labor union chose to make this in to a political issue in an effort to get their hands further into the taxpayers’ pockets. I don’t know why anyone thinks Amtrak should have a perpetual claim on the Federal Treasury - the people who ride those trains should pay for the trains. They shouldn’t be looking to other folks to pick up part of their transportation costs.

As to the $40 million–

  1. It’s mostly from private donations
  2. It’s less than Clinton spent in 1996
8

The ultimate fate of the bridge doesn’t matter. It can be rebuilt, removed, abandoned to fall in the river or collapse under the weight of a train, but the money to take care of the disposition is not going to come from internally generated Amtrak funds.

If you have a plan that would allow the money to come from a passenger train operation, send your resume to Secretary Mineta. You’ll have a job in a heartbeat.

9

The Thames River is a navigable river so the money to fix the draw bridge will be found. Having the Thames River bridge’s moveable span in reliable operating condition is especially crucial since the Coast Guard Academy’s training ship the Eagle has to get out to sea, but I don’t know if a submarine can clear that bridge if its moveable span is closed.

The Thames River Bridge is one of several bridges on the Northeast Corridor that will have to either be repaired or replaced. The Northeast Corridor is essential. The Susquehanna River Bridge is another bridge that is older than the Thames River Bridge and needs to be replaced. The Susquehanna River Bridge has a swing moveable span. If at all possible the Thames River Bridge should be rebuilt that it is high enough to clear the masts of any river craft

I read an article in the Washington Post last November that The Department of Transportation’s Inspector General criticized Amtrak for spending money on repairing sleepers instead of spending money on maintaining and repairing its infrastructure.

According to all reports about the FY 06 budget it will even be more austere than the FY 05 budget what with more tax cuts and the war in Iraq and Afghanistan so like it or not Amtrak not get every thing it asks for in its FY 2006.budget request It will have to make some hard decisions.

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I guess the IG would accept serviceable infrastructure regardless of whether or not ATK has anything to RUN over it![banghead][banghead][banghead] Sounds like the highway construction mentality is alive and well.

Perhaps they should consider buying 100,000 desks. Nobody to sit at them and work, but if the whim to hire ever materializes, they’ll sure be ready!

OH! Wait a minute! You mean we need a revenue stream to help amortize that empty infrastructure???[(-D][(-D]

11

Busboy-

No labor union wrote this story. It was a newspaper writer if you read it carefully. The BLET merely posted it on their site as news.

Second, like it or not the NEC serves a vital transportation need. If we want to have it we should expect to pay for it.

As to the costs of the inauguration, I’d love to see the details of how private donations were used to pay the salaries and overtime of the hundreds of law enforcement folks from Federal and local levels who were providing security. I’d love to see how you figure that the costs were “mostly” borne by private donors.

LC

12

Sit there and wait for the DOT, Amtrak, the State of Connecticut and the twenty thousand environmental groups who come out of the workwork to protect a previously unknown now suddenly endanged northeastern bridge cockroach to come to terms with fixing it.

13

What he’ll get is a permanently open bridge followed by a letter of recommendation for his next job. What everyone to the north will get is no Amtrak.

Everyone seems pretty quick to the draw to tie everything to a military or national defense issue…so I’d say if that’s the case…1.4 Billion for Amtrak…hmmmm or 1.4 billion in useful globally deployable airlift capacity to support all these coming wars we’re apparently destined to get into…then I’d guess it’d be bye bye Amtrak. I wouldn’t want to be the one to press to test that one.

14

Amtrak obviously needs to ask for a lot more than it needs. How about 3.6 billion in unallocated money? That way it could get its 1.8 billion to run.

15

Getting discretionary funding or any unallocated funds is going to be pretty tough over the next couple of years. Every agency and department is taking hits or reallocations.

16

That was an old bridge. Good shelf life actually but now requires a replacement. What perplexes me is if Amtrak Acelas use this, I’m a little surprised that they would allow the bridge to crack without making repairs or planning to replace it before it was a safety problem.

17

Except DOD.

18

“or reallocations” Funds going someplace other than the intent are funds that are lost.

19

Andrew.

The plans are there. Everybody in congress and the administration has been made aware of the situation. To this point no money has been made available.

The need here is just chump change compared to the overall need to repair transportation infrastructure. The Federal Highway Administration says that there is a $50 billion backlog on maintanence of the federal highway system. A good chunk of that is for needed highway bridge repair. Mostly we have our head in the sand on these things and nothing will happen until the bridge becomes inoperable. Of course, at that point the cost for handling the situation on an emergency basis will be far greater than following a rational plan to make whatever fix is called for now.

Jay

20

Well, I certainly wouldn’t want the bridge to collapse under a train but…

I’ve already proposed a plan for Amtrak. Effective May 1, 2006 no money from the Federal Govt. will be allocated to Amtrak. That’s my plan.

Transporting people and goods is an economic activity. Economic activities are measured as to wether they improve the welfare of people or harm the welfare of people. This measurement is wether the actvity produces more wealth than it consumes (it makes money) or consumes more wealth than it creates (it looses money.)

Economic activities that consume more than they produce should be discontinued since their overall impact on people is negative. Now, not everything is an economic activity - but, as I said, transportation is an economic activity and should be treated as such.

Some folks will counter and say there are “externalities” that are not included in the profit/loss figures. “Externalities” are the last refuge of scoundrals. Externalities can rarely be indentified or quantified. The costs and benifits are unassignable.

Given that, a national passenger train network can not be economically justified, and since it is an ecnomic activity, it should be scrapped.

Passenger trains may have some justification in locations such as the Northeast and California. But the benifits from those services are not national - they are regional. Now, if the folks in the Northeast and California want to tax themselve