News & Commentary
What the bipartisan budget agreement may mean
December 13, 2013
Written By Ross Capon The House has passed the new, two-year bipartisan budget agreement. Senate passage is considered likely. It appears that appropriations committees will soon be deciding how much Amtrak and other programs will get for the current fiscal year. The best guess is that Amtrak will end up in the vicinity of $1.4 billion. A slight increase over the $1.3 billion from fiscal 2013 is possible, but still far below the real needs, and still we need to remind legislators of that.
Transit Advocates Fight for Cincinnati Streetcar at Crucial Juncture
December 13, 2013
Written By Sean Jeans Gail With a crucial decision looming for the Cincinnati streetcar project, local advocacy groups are uniting to demonstrate public support for the transformational project. Believe in Cincinnati, in conjunction with the Cincinnati Streetcar, is organizing a city-wide petition campaign to harness the wave of public support for the line: We've been truly inspired this week with the passion and the heart driving people to get signatures. Your dedication has not gone unno
Bricks will Burst Bubbles
December 13, 2013
Written By Logan McLeod In this week’s The Economist, An article was written on the topic of another foreseeable financial bubble. This time not in the form of bundled low rated mortgage-backed securities, rather this bubble is one of “secular stagnation.” The Economistexplains the term as a time when “appetite to invest is persistently below people’s desire to save.” This suggests a permanent lid on growth. The current practice of “quantitative easing” (printing money to buy b
Empire Builder Schedule Slashed by Half Until Dec 15
December 12, 2013
Written By Abe Zumwalt In normal times, The Empire Builder is perhaps the premier long-distance train operating on the Amtrak network, offering scenery that unfolds like a novella of the American West, a lifeline to the northern plains, and quality onboard amenities. However, as of late the train has become beleaguered with delays to an epic extent. The crude oil boom in North Dakota, almost in the middle of the Builder’s 2,000 mile journey, is causing unprecedented levels of freight traffi
Spain welcomes Paris-Barcelona TGV, auctions off new “ghost airport”
December 11, 2013
Written By Ross Capon Yet another important new high-speed rail service will begin Sunday, December 15. Twice-daily Paris-Barcelona through-trains will end a long history of changing trains at the international border. The running time will be six hours 25 minutes. The Financial Times reported that travelers starting from London St. Pancras will be able to leave at 9:31 AM and reach Barcelona within 10 hours 9 minutes. Meanwhile, Spain is auctioning off a new-but-disused airport at Ciudad
Rail investment meets Amtrak critic’s standard for wise policy
December 10, 2013
Written By Malcolm Kenton Washington Post columnist Robert J. Samuelson is a conservative who recently sounded very reasonable notes on the subject of climate change, echoing arguments NARP has often made in favor of using higher taxes on the users of other modes to fund the ramped-up expansion and modernization of America’s passenger train network. He quotes MIT Economist Robert Pindyck, who says the results of climate change could be either much worse or much milder than the predictions of
Building Up the Steel Interstate
December 9, 2013
Written By Colin Leach Amtrak's Cascades outside of Seattle, WA. Licensed through Wikimedia Foundation. Our readers know that the major hallmark of U.S. passenger rail operations is that, in most places, Amtrak’s passenger trains run on track owned by the private freight railroads. This arrangement unfortunately can cause significant delays for Amtrak passenger as well as logistical difficulties for the freight railroads. To remedy this, the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act appr
Follow the money
December 6, 2013
Written By Ross Capon The concept of treating transit users and automobile commuters equitably when it comes to employer-provided pre-tax parking and transit fares sounds incredibly logical, but Congress still can’t get it right. They do a periodical “fix” for transit, not always on time. By contrast, the parking allowance is permanent and keeps rising with inflation -- always on time because it’s embedded in the law. Here we go again. Effective January 1, 2014, the maximum Federal t
Amtrak, NARP thank Hoosiers for saving and riding their train
December 6, 2013
Written By Malcolm Kenton To celebrate the successful work of citizen advocates on the grassroots level--with the help of NARP, the Midwest High Speed Rail Association and other organizations—to preserve Amtrak’s Chicago-Indianapolis Hoosier State by winning state support for its operation, and to thank Hoosier State riders for their patronage, NARP members Doug Yerkeson and Joe Krause, along with volunteers Ed Ufkes and Derek Zollinger, organized a unique mobile thank-you event. They arran
Will Cincinnati's leadership learn from past mistakes?
December 5, 2013
Written By Logan McLeod Cincinnati once again has been stopped in its tracks trying to improve the lives of community members and business developers by a misguided and selfish political agenda. This is at least the second time a Cincinnati Mayor deliberately shut down a project that didn’t quite align with his plans for the city. I call them “his plans” because the decision was not based on what was best for the community. In 2002 Cincinnati Mayor Charlie Luken and Congressman Steve C