Lobbying for HSR Funding on Capitol Hill
(Note: the following post is by Dennis Lytton, who was in Washington DC last week lobbying for passenger rail funding.)
Last week I attended the National Association of Railroad Passengers annual meeting in Washington, DC. NARP is the largest national membership advocacy organization for train and rail transit passengers. In fact, it’s the only group in Washington, DC with a staff dedicated to this purpose.
The most important part of our three day meeting is our “Day on the Hill” visiting Senators and Members of Congress followed our reception in one of the House office buildings. This year, along with other NARP council members from California, we visited our two senators, Boxer and Feinstein, as well as our House members. Our primary asks (lesson one visiting your Congressmember, always have a concise “ask”, with a handout) were:
- $4 billion for intercity and high speed rail capital grants, and
- Full funding of Amtrak’s appropriations requests for this year.
NARP as well as Californians for High Speed Rail is a member of the Fourbillion.com coalition, which is advocating for this. Please visit and register to let your Congressional representation know that you want HSR and intercity rail. (I think my take away this year may be to always have a website for my “ask” each year!)
Secondly, we were also pushing for passage of the stalled transportation reauthorization bill in Congress and for High Speed Rail to have a dedicated funding source. There is a consensus that this won’t happen before the November election. Which of course scares many of us since the next Congress may not have as friendly a composition as this one. More than one source on the Hill thought that the thorny issue of raising the gas tax would be brought up by the lame duck Congress in November or December.
My overall impression? Having participated in NARP’s Day on the Hill since 2006, things have certainly changed for the better. The Congressional majority and Administration of that time barely noticed that the issue of trains for a sustainable, mobile future for our county existed. The federal DOT famously released a report during these years decrying road congestion but never mentioning rail for passengers or freight. Republican administrations since Reagan had regularly tried to write Amtrak out of the federal budget and even under Clinton a Gingrich inspired reauthorization of Amtrak passed in the late 90s that mandated Amtrak to become profitable with no investment.
Our biggest fight now in Washington will be to get the $4 billion for HSR nationwide. The administration has only asked for one billion, just a year after their groundbreaking inclusion of $8 billion in ARRA (the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act). Anaheim to San Francisco is about $20 billion. We have almost $10 billion from the Prop. 1A bonds. We received a little more than $2 billion from ARRA early this year. Four billion a year, with California getting its fare share as it did in ARRA, will get us to completion of the first segment.
Which leads me back to an earlier point – getting high-speed passenger rail into the transportation reauthorization bill stalled in Congress will be a great accomplishment. Funding HSR isn’t a political football in other countries in Western Europe, for instance. Once we get HSR into our federal transportation funding machinery funding it will be automatic and non-political. Just as it is for highways in this country.
@ Dennis -
thank you for your lobbying efforts on behalf of passenger rail, including HSR, in Congress. Four billion in the upcoming budget would be an improvement on the 2.5 in the current one, but it’s still a drop in the bucket compared to what China, Spain and others are willing to invest. They have understood that the most successful nations in the 21st century will be those that invest in their civilian infrastructure (incl. workforce skills) instead of military might. Rail, especially electric rail, offers massive fringe benefits in terms of construction jobs and diversifying away from oil. Note that many – though far from all – new rail lines and base tunnels in those countries are used for both passenger and light/medium freight traffic.
However, your assertion that “funding HSR isn’t a political football in other countries in Western Europe, for instance” strikes me as misleading. HSR projects are absolutely politicized there, cp. e.g. the long discussion about High Speed 2 between London and the north of England. It’s just that once the decision to go ahead is finally made, the requisite public funding is made available in full from the outset. This is largely a result of political systems that give governments built-in majorities in the respective legislatures, such that voters know exactly who is in charge at any given time and can hold them accountable at the next election.
Afaik, no HSR project already underway has ever been canceled in Europe after a change of government. Even then, strictly local political opposition can still threaten an already mature project. For example, the final section of the Madrid-Barcelona link was long delayed by bitter complaints about tunneling under Gaudi’s Sagrada Famiglia cathedral, which remains unfinished after more than a century of construction. Near Malaga, poorly planned and executed HSR tunnel construction perforated and drained the aquifers of the farming community of Abdalajis. Up in the Basque country, there were massive protests against tunneling through the scenic undulating countryside. France, Germany, Holland, Italy, Japan and others have all had their share of political challenges to HSR as well. The sailing is rarely as smooth as it appears in retrospect or from a distance.
Dennis Lytton Reply:
May 7th, 2010 at 12:57 pm
“This is largely a result of political systems that give governments built-in majorities in the respective legislatures, such that voters know exactly who is in charge at any given time and can hold them accountable at the next election.”
I think also you can thank our federal structure, which difuses power between the national and state governments. The Democrats have a majority in Congress, but there is a sense that it is fragile right now after the healthcare fight.
Also while most of the HSR countries have a fairly unitary government (France and Japan) a couple do not. Mainly Germany and to some extent Spain.
Dennis L.
Dennis, I’m retired and not living in LA for the time being. Which of the SoCal congressmen did you see? Waxman? Sherman? Did they give specific answers to your asks? Did you get an opportunity to pitch 30/10?
Dennis Lytton Reply:
May 7th, 2010 at 12:59 pm
Watson (retiring), Roybal-Allard, Napolitano, Schiff, a couple others. Mostly friendly, can’t really go into details. Definately pitched 30/10.
meanwhile, stop the presses for this
Victor Reply:
May 5th, 2010 at 11:40 am
Just What We needed, Peta to show up.
Anaheim to San Francisco about $20 billion? I thought it was $43 billion. Or is that for the entire planned system?
Peter Reply:
May 5th, 2010 at 11:43 am
Well, 9 billion from Prop 1A, about 10 billion expected in private financing, leaves 23 or 24 billion to be funded by the Feds.
joe Reply:
May 6th, 2010 at 6:20 am
Here’s 43 Billion in a context.
“The Metropolitan Transportation Commission estimates a $43 billion shortfall over the next 25 years for highway, transit and local roadwork in the Bay Area.”
http://www.mercurynews.com/top-stories/ci_15024193?nclick_check=1
Caelestor Reply:
May 6th, 2010 at 4:03 pm
Good to see that Caltrans is finally improving a truly horrific freeway, but that seems really expensive.
What could Caltrain do with 300 million?
Clem Reply:
May 6th, 2010 at 4:18 pm
What could they do, or what would they do? They would build a few new grade separations, which might save one or two lives and improve automobile congestion. Then they would attempt to develop a new train control system, with the hope that it gets adopted as a national standard. Then they might rebuild some more brand new 8-inch platforms.
End result: 300 million spent. Benefit to operating bottom line: zero.
I’m trying to figure this out—-CAHSR estimates that it will spend 19.1 billion for capital costs by fiscal year 2014 (Year ending June 30, 2015)—— If an average of 2 billion per year in Federal funding is obtained for the next five years, that would be 10 billion. (Added to the 2.25 billion already obtained we have 12.25 billion in Federal funding for the period. Prop 1-A funds (which have now run out) contribute 9.9 billion for a total of 22.15 billion available.
At this point CAHSR has a 3 billion surplus, but it won”t last for long because the plan is to spend 7.6 billion for fiscal year 2015. Even if we get another 2 billion from the U S, we would still be 2.6 billion short and and would be facing another 6.9 billion in capital costs for fiscal year 2016. We expect that private funding (a lot of private funding) to have long since entered the mix. Obviously, things won’t happen this way, but it looks to me like 2015 will be like a deadline for the Chinese or whoever to have written some very big checks. I am wondering how soon this will happen and who besides the Chinese Government and Siemens might be writing them. I also wonder what they would expect in return.
Andre Peretti Reply:
May 6th, 2010 at 11:08 am
China is certainly ready to pay whatever it takes to have a foothold in America.
According to some European specialists, it views California as part of its natural zone of influence. California’s supposed “manifest destiny” is to culturally and economically drift away from the Atlantic world. A process that will be helped by the influx of immigrants with no hereditary links to European civilisation.
Alon Levy Reply:
May 6th, 2010 at 11:24 am
Hispanics have no hereditary link to European civilization? What?
Andre Peretti Reply:
May 6th, 2010 at 12:54 pm
I suppose the authors I spoke about had the Anglo-saxon legacy in mind. I wonder whether the Mayflower and the Pilgrim Fathers mean much to Hispanics.
Alon Levy Reply:
May 6th, 2010 at 8:31 pm
Probably not. But they don’t mean much to Jews, Italians, or Irish. The Irish often carry resentment for being oppressed by the English Puritans.
OT, but likely of interest – an LA Blog reports the following:
Roelof van Ark, president of Alstom Transportation Inc., a subsidiary of a French-based conglomerate, is scheduled to be introduced at a California High-Speed Rail Authority meeting Thursday.
An authority source, who spoke on condition that he not be named because the announcement was not yet official, confirmed that Van Ark is the board’s tentative choice. If formally approved by the board as anticipated, Van Ark would succeed Mehdi Morshed, the longtime agency chief executive who recently stepped down.
Van Ark, who has headed major, global divisions of both Alstom and Germany-based Siemens AG, appears to have the project management experience that agency board members want at a crucial time of transition.
Here’s the link: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2010/05/new-high-speed-rail-chief-likely-to-be-named-today-.html
rafael Reply:
May 6th, 2010 at 7:03 am
Would van Ark be required to quit his current job at Alstom? He absolutely should, both in terms of workload and to avoid a glaring conflict of interest. Indeed, the Authority ought to make it very clear that this hire does not imply an implicit decision in favor of Alstom or Siemens as a trainset or infrastructure vendor. It’s way too early to make those decisions, last not least because foreign vendors are the most likely source of private equity investment in the California HSR project.
On the plus side, hiring a foreigner with real-world experience in modern rail infrastructure projects is a very welcome recognition of reality: the US has allowed its own industry to languish for so long that it simply no longer has any nationals with the skillset and experience required to succeed in this critical phase of the project.
Arthur Dent Reply:
May 6th, 2010 at 4:54 pm
Van Ark is smart to jump ship. Look what’s coming down at Alstom. http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2010/05/06/general-multiutilities-eu-switzerland-alstom-investigation_7582554.html?boxes=Homepagebusinessnews
“Swiss prosecutors said Thursday (today) they have indicted a Zurich banker suspected of helping French engineering company Alstom SA make payments to win international contracts.”