Two vacant seats on the five-member Surface Transportation Board (STB) could be filled by early 2020, as a Democrat—to be paired with an already nominated Republican—has emerged as a likely nominee.
Amtrak CEO Richard Anderson proposes to eliminate most of Amtrak’s interregional trains because, he says, they cater predominantly to “hobbyists” and “experience-seekers.” And, he asserts, hardly anyone rides between endpoints. This vision explains in large measure why Amtrak does so poorly in the competitive marketplace for intercity travel, and why its trivial market share for intercity passenger transport (smaller than motorcycles) continues to decline.
It feels a little strange to paraphrase Karl Marx in this publication, but the circumstances seem to warrant it in this instance. There are advocates all over the country who want an improved Amtrak, at least as they see it, and this writer knows or has known many of them. Unfortunately, sometimes their advocacy serves to undermine the efforts of other advocates, pitting two advocacy camps against each other and furthering the goals of the anti-rail forces who want to make our trains disappear permanently. A recent editorial piece here in Railway Age, a blog post, a magazine story and an advocate’s response to it from earlier this year comprise two cases in point.
The news of the day the other day read “Train Engineer in Fatal 2016 Hoboken Train Crash Wins Back Job with NJT.” The locomotive engineer, Thomas Gallagher, had been dismissed after over-running the end of Track 5 in Hoboken Terminal. The resulting collision damaged the supports for the train shed roof. A woman not on the train but walking on a platform was killed as she was struck by the collapsing structure.
A recently issued arbitration decision directs New Jersey Transit (NJT) to re-employ Thomas Gallagher, the locomotive engineer who in 2016 ran an NJT commuter train into a bumping post and onto the platform at Hoboken Terminal. While the arbitrator found that the engineer “… bore some responsibility for the crash,” she also found that, “… NJ Transit had failed to follow its own procedures for screening engineers in his case.”
By age 10, two lessons should be learned—no ketchup on hot dogs, and government does not move at the speed of for-profit business.
FINANCIAL EDGE, RAILWAY AGE SEPTEMBER 2019 ISSUE: On Aug. 14, the ESPN show ¿Highly Questionable? showed a video clip of a skateboarder sliding underneath a moving passenger locomotive, riding the rail on the skateboard and then sliding back out from underneath the train before the second wheelset (1). (The clip can be seen starting at about 16:30 into the video.) The hosts were suitably shocked and aghast over the audacity of the act of sliding underneath a locomotive and unsurprisingly thoughtless about the carelessness of the rider.
RAILWAY AGE, WATCHING WASHINGTON, SEPTEMBER 2019 – Although a purchase is said to be worth precisely what a buyer agrees to pay, not all buyers possess equivalent market power as sellers. United Parcel Service (UPS), for example, may choose between truck and rail. But where freight cannot efficiently move by truck, shippers wishing to remain in business typically pay higher freight rates than if they had effective alternatives to rail.
The Railway Supply Institute (RSI) sent a letter to Congress on Sept. 5 urging members of the House and Senate Armed Services Committees to preserve, in Conference, existing language in H.R.2500/S.1790, the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2020, that would prevent federal funds from being used to award a contract or subcontract for the procurement of transit vehicles to priority enterprises owned, controlled, or subsidized by SOEs (State-Owned Enterprises) falling under three specific definitions.
Intermodal rail—a transportation mode choice that was to take trucks off the road—is slowing down. Where is it heading? Over several decades, the premise was that railroad intermodal trailer on flat cars (TOFC) and containers mostly on double-stacked well cars (COFC) would grow in volume and therefore reduce highway truck congestion.
