The floor is open for comment:

http://transportation.house.gov/uploade ... _prria.pdf

A pilot program so that carriers which own the infrastructure Amtrak currently operates trains over can bid to operate passenger rail service of equal quality over those same routes themselves.

Oh yeah, the freight railroads will be beating down their door to sign up for that.

I have a hard time reading all of that, I thought I heard somewhere funding went up for Amtrak, local governments last time were put on the barrel to help support the service, but this is a national service. New Illinois governor has put the rockford line on hold, but I think the cities involved should tap on the federal government's shoulder than the state to get it available, screw the state, its going to end up like Wisconsin.

Hmmm..... On the one hand, it sounds encouraging for improving and or increasing passenger service......on the other hand, it seems perhaps a bit nieve? I don't see any class one being willing to do that.....the class ones would probably rather get rid of passenger trains (other than their own special ones).
The cost for starting a service are huge.....equipment, infrastructure , insurance, operation cost, etc....
Then there are the issues......like dealing with the unions.....
This sounds like something that has been politically set up for operations like Iowa Pacific....
I'm not positive, but I think it is possible already to negotiate and set up a passenger operation on most any line that Amtrak doesn't already operate on.....

As for Section 402--the REALLY important section as far as this forum is concerned--I seem to recall being contacted by Md. Senator Ben Cardin's office on behalf of the NRHS with regards to a "Rail Heritage Corridors" program being proposed. They somehow did a spectacular job of not following up.

On the face of it, the bill sounds an awful lot like the next version of ISTEA, TEA-21, SAFETEA-LU, or whatever acronym is/was assigned to what some will call critical transportation infrastructure investment and others will call "the pork barrel run amok".

The devil, as always, will be in the details. Is the idea to designate lines like the Northeast Corridor and Chicago-Milwaukee, or New Orleans-Orlando (covered elsewhere in the bill), as "heritage corridors" to win people over to the idea of putting tax dollars in them? Or are we talking the East Broad Top, Grand Canyon Ry., Camden & Amboy, and/or B&O from Baltimore to Ellicott City? And of what value will any such designation be, aside from some piece of paper hanging on some wall somewhere? (The contactee from Cardin's office made it sound like the idea was tourism promotion.)

I doubt they'd do it "on spec". Someone would only spend the time drafting such a provision if some citizen (read: corporate) interest asked them to do so.

That is what Title I, Sections 101-104 cover. This bipartisan bill (PRIIA 2015) was passed by the House Transportation & Infrastructure Committee last Thursday, February 12th. It calls for over $1.7 billion for Amtrak annually starting with the 2016 fiscal year, which is a $400 million increase from PRIIA 2008. Some of the exact amounts as follows:

For the "Northeast Corridor Improvement Fund":

2016: $439,000,000
2017: $464,000,000
2018: $480,000,000
2019: $498,000,000

For the "National Network":

2016: $973,000,000
2017: $974,000,000
2018: $985,000,000
2019: $997,000,000

For the "Office of the Inspector General of Amtrak":

2016: $23,000,000
2017: $24,000,000
2018: $24,000,000
2019: $25,000,000

For "National Infrastructure Investments" an amount of $300 million is listed per annum.

The recent Trainorders thread on this bill, which included a link to an article on thehill.com: http://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?4,3661488

The Hill article: http://thehill.com/policy/transportation/232696-house-transportation-committee-approves-78b-amtrak-bill

I may be a bit dim this morning, but this doesn't seem to have much of anything to do with railway preservation except in the most loosely constructed sense. Feel free to continue the discusion in Railfanning

"I may be a bit dim this morning, but this doesn't seem to have much of anything to do with railway preservation except in the most loosely constructed sense."

Try a dark roast coffee and actually read Section 402, you know the one entitled "HISTORIC PRESERVATION OF RAILROADS."

ISTEA, TEA-21, etc, sure as hell didn't have "anything to do with railway preservation except in the most loosely constructed sense"--but lots of rail museums and rail trails got an AWFUL LOT of pork spen-- erm, ahem, "grants for the preservation of transportation efficiency" out of those bills once they were passed. Too many grouse that "we need a Heritage Lottery Fund like the British," while ignoring the almost equally lavish spending we've seen from these previous bills.

I second the motion to move it back.

Moved back to the Interchange, as requested.

For those wanting to read the text of the bill, Section 402 is part of Title IV, and the relevant section begins on page 73 of the bill (line 14)

Reading Section 402, does this mean railroad projects would automatically be subject to review for historic impact? I am thinking of the project that would possibly replace the current railroad bridge over the Potomac River in Washington, DC as an example.

Wesley

If the FEC succeeds with their passenger plans, this may be the next trend... especially if government dollars flow to support it. Stay tuned. Section 205 may be the most significant part of this bill.

Section 402 is interesting, but it doesn't sound like the windfall that the TEA programs were.

Rob

I'm wondering the same thing about Amtrak's ongoing bridge replacement project on the NEC in Connecticut, which involves multiple ex-NYNH&H structures from the 1890s-1900s that would certainly qualify as historic.

But then again, aren't historical and archaeological reviews already required as part of the environmental impact assessment for pretty much any government-funded construction project? What exactly is new here?

-Philip Marshall