Transit in '05 signs & portents

Railway Age, Jan, 2005 by Luther S. Miller

When President Richard M. Nixon signed the Urban Mass Transportation Act of 1970, he set into motion a process that has since delivered tens of billions of dollars in federal matching funds to public transit systems. At about the same time, the federal government was creating Amtrak to preserve a modicum of intercity rail passenger service; the government investment in Amtrak to date is around $37 billion. The first of these historic initiatives has helped produce an expanding new universe of light rail, heavy rail, and regional/commuter systems, as well as strengthened bus and paratransit services. The second has given us a system of intercity trains that has survived Ronald Reagan's zero budgets, George W. Bush's draconian reform edicts, and its own occasional spasms of bad management.

What will the New Year bring to the passenger scene?

Federal funds will continue to flow, though not always where they're needed most. For Fiscal Year 2005, the Omnibus Appropriations Bill signed by President George W. Bush on Dec. 15 provides $7.644 billion for rail and road transit, up 5.2% from FY 2004. Of this amount, $3 billion is for capital improvements including $1.3 billion for new starts and $1.2 billion for fixed-guideway modernization. The omnibus bill also contains $19.3 million for Next Generation High Speed Rail.

Federal aid to Amtrak this year will be $1.22 billion, a little less than last year and far less than the $1.8 billion Amtrak asked for in both years. The Bush Administration will renew its fight to require the states to pick (and pay for) the trains they want to keep, hiring private operators to run them. Because there is no place in Bush league transportation for the long-distance trains so important to heartland politicians, Congress is not likely to go all the way on this.

Railroad suppliers will continue to harvest a substantial part of their business from the passenger sector. Capital investment in commuter, heavy, and light rail construction, modernization, maintenance, signaling/communications, and rolling stock has recently been running at around $8 billion annually. Builders will be working in 2005 on an undelivered backlog of 2,749 rail passenger cars, according to Railway Age's annual survey (see p. 60). Last year, 1,257 new and substantially rebuilt cars were delivered, roughly a billion dollars' worth.

New-starts matching federal funds in 2005 will go to light rail and related fixed-guideway projects in a wide range of cities: Baltimore will get $29 million; Charlotte, N.C., $30 million; Dallas, $8.5 million; Denver, $80 million; Houston, $8.5 million; Las Vegas, $30 million; Los Angeles, $60 million; Minneapolis, $33.7 million; Northern New Jersey, $100 million; Phoenix, $75 million; Pittsburgh, $55 million; Portland, Ore., $23.5 million; Salt Lake City, $8.8 million; San Diego, $82.6 million; San Francisco, $10 million; Seattle, $80 million. Funding for commuter rail new starts will go to Fort Lauderdale, $11.4 million; Chicago's Metra, $52 million; New York's Long Island Rail Road, $100 million; Philadelphia, $10 million; Raleigh, N.C., $20 million; Rhode Island, $6 million; Salt Lake City, $8 million; San Diego, $55 million; Seattle, $4 million; Washington County, Ore., $9 million. Heavy rail new-starts funding will go to Chicago, $125 million; San Juan, $44 million; and Washington, D.C., $77 million.

The New York City Metropolitan Area will continue to see rail transit activity on a scale matched nowhere in North America, though two major projects may be in jeopardy if New York State doesn't provide additional capital support deemed essential by the New York MTA.

One, the $6.3 billion East Side Access project, will extend LIRR commuter service to Grand Central Terminal. Federal grants totaling $155.3 million have so far been committed. The other, the $16 billion Second Avenue Subway, has been on the drawing board for 60 years. Major funding for both comes from the MTA's $27.7 billion 2005-2009 capital plan, but the MTA--projecting a $16 billion gap in that plan--is now saying the money needs to be devoted solely to state-of-good-repair infrastructure projects and equipment acquisitions.

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey adopted a capital budget that includes funds for the start of construction on a "spectacular" transportation hub at the World Trade Center site that will connect with an equally imposing downtown subway hub under construction by New York City Transit. The PANY/N] budget also provides initial funding for a study of the feasibility of building a rail link between lower Manhattan and JFK International Airport estimated to cost $6 billion (a project for which New York Gov. George Pataki has been trying to pry loose $2 billion in unused federal tax-credit commitments for rejuvenating post-9/11 Lower Manhattan).

Throughout the country, regional "high speed" (79 to 110 mph) planning will keep moving this year, though not at breakneck pace. Cost is the sticking point. A consultant's report released last month showed that a proposed 3,000-mile, nine-state Midwest Regional Rail system would require $7.8 billion for upgrading tracks and buying equipment vs. an original estimate of $4 billion.