Passenger Trains > ARRA and 2010 High Speed Money

Curious what we've gotten in service from the $10B in Obamabucks money at this point that is an actual gain to Amtrak and other passenger railroads and their riders.

1) One additional Piedmont round trip for $500 million
2) Bought the Michigan and Hudson Lines and rebuilt them
3) Hartford-Springfield commuter rail corridor in service
4) Pretty concrete ties on the St. Louis line
5) State interlocking renewal
6) ???
7) Studies and 30% designs complete
8) ???

I'm really straining trying to come up with anything else.

Cars and engines are not in service yet, right?
Raceway still not complete in NJ
Harold duckunders not complete
No additional Cascades service because of catastrophe
St. Louis line fiasco
California High Speed Rail initial segment obviously not complete
Delaware 3rd Track not complete

Please fill out the list, not familiar with any progress that might have resulted from the California money to the in service lines.

Redirected money from states that rejected the HSR funds to other states.
Extended Downeaster service to Brunswick
Rebuilt the NECR and ex B&M into Springfield, MA  for the Vermonter
Probably a few other examples that I forgot.

Contributed to the Miami airport direct access, then declined to use it.

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Also: rolling stock purchases, including the snakebit NextGen Nippon-Sharyo bi-levels (eventually awarded to Siemens) and the state corridor Charger locomotives.

Paul Wilson
Arlington, VA

Interesting discussion this morning on Fox and Friends about the CA high speed rail fiasco. The cost overruns alone would pay for the much needed boarder security enhancements many times over. 

CA HSR money should be spent on rail. If not on HSR, then on more conventional trains.

abyler Wrote:
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>
> 4) Pretty concrete ties on the St. Louis line
>

And pretty black iron fences !!

As already mentioned, the new Chargers in the Midwest are the one thing that are reallly noticable, and all of the pretty new stations.  But the servce itself is essentially unchanged.

One Talgo trainset in use. Others rotting down.
Palmer, Mass. double-back erased, or is that already covered above?
Did the Brunswick, Maine extension of Downeaster benefit from the ten-year "shovel ready" excercise?
Lots of concrete for "ADA platforms" and numerous open-air locations around the country.  New lighting for the open air "platforms" at stations that were closed, agents fired, and that generally don't work or were turned off to save money.
And don't forget half a billion on wi-trackers for locomotives, so that CNOC instantly knows when a dump truck hits a locomotive, and so we can see what siding they are waiting for freight train interference on the fancy googoyle map.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 01/11/19 08:05 by 79mph.

I thought some of the ARRA funding went to projects like the Amtrak yard rehab in Chicago, track and signal improvements at Brighton Park,IL, Toledo, OH, St. Louis, MO and St. Paul, MN. While small projects, they were "shovel-ready" designs. I also think that some ARRA funding was used for the Seattle Holgate Yard reconstruction.

kevink Wrote:
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> I also think that some ARRA funding was used for
> the Seattle Holgate Yard reconstruction.

The yard was state / AMTK / Sound Transit

ARRA did the King Street Station south end interlocking as part of the package for additional trains..

TAW

I assume that ten billion $ was successfully shoveled from USTreasury.

This should have been done from the start. There's no need for a system to launch Walnuts at 150 up and down the valley. Spend the money on upgrading equipment and existing lines so trains can run at 90 where possible.

joemvcnj Wrote:
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> CA HSR money should be spent on rail. If not on
> HSR, then on more conventional trains.

kevink Wrote:
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> I thought some of the ARRA funding went to
> projects like the Amtrak yard rehab in Chicago,
> track and signal improvements at Brighton Park,IL,
> Toledo, OH, St. Louis, MO and St. Paul, MN. While
> small projects, they were "shovel-ready" designs.
> I also think that some ARRA funding was used for
> the Seattle Holgate Yard reconstruction.

That was separate from the $10 billion.  Amtrak got another $1.5 billion which had to be spent in 18 months.

Some projects were shovel ready, but not the ones you listed.  The shovel ready ones were shops in Boston, Hialeah, and LA, the Niantic Bridge and a few similar projects.  I did a very quick design for the track projects you listed, others for facility and civil contracts, and we shoved them out the door and bid them and got some of them built.  The ones that weren't built (Toledo, St. Louis, Brighton Park) were done by Amtrak forces over the next few years.​  Amtrak also spent a bunch of the money internally on maintenance, especially running the TLM.

Wonder how much $$$$ were stuffed in someone's pocket? 

The other Southeast items were:

• Incomplete 3rd track around Quantico (project scope evolution)
• Additional crossovers on the A-line in NC (working great)
• Raleigh new Union Station
• Piedmont trains at 80% on time or better (Welp)
• 1 more Piedmont slot (need more rolling stock to get this)

NCDOT currently has an RFP on the street for more coaches, so I assume once enough of those come back they can go to 4 Piedmonts and 1 Carolinian. By that time the new station at Charlotte will be close to complete so the corridor's actual future ridership will only be slightly in the future, not far in the future, as it has been for 10 years now.

Does NC want their coaches, current or future, on the Carolinian and being touched by Sunnyside yard forces ?

NC needs to do whatever it can afford. Right now this is Amfleets on the Carolinian as fully depreciated stuff is about as cheap as it gets.

In a future where Amtrak finally replaces the Regionals, then a decision point arises. If there is enough 60s era fleet lying around to make up a new-model Carolinian it is worth looking at. However, this outcome is pretty unlikely at this time; 60s era coaches are disappearing and the opportunity to find at least 12-15 more is not obvious. As long as it is just the Carolinian and not the Southeast 'High Speed Rail' that has been planned, the Carolinian probably is an appendage of the Regionals. If Amtrak decides to neuter the Regionals and make them something unpleasant for Carolinian-users, then NC will be stuck until they can come up with something else economical or (at worst) truncate the Carolinian to get it out of Amtrak's hands. Not a lot of good options.

Amtrak is supposed to have Acela II units on the property, which will bump the current 19 year old units to NEC "regional service". 

And bump the 40 year old Amfleet somewhere.

I think the current Acela will be scrapped, not bump them  to Reginal service. The whole point of Acela-II is to get rid of them and not perform their expensive mainteance. They can't handle low level platforms either. Siemens cars are to replace Amfleet. 



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/11/19 14:30 by joemvcnj.

andersonb109 Wrote:
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> Interesting discussion this morning on Fox and
> Friends about the CA high speed rail fiasco. The
> cost overruns alone would pay for the much needed
> boarder security enhancements many times over. 

It's a nice narrative to soothe political emotions, but the argument is utterly useless. There would have been other places to waste money away from border security, like "schools, win, too!" Or legislate naive free market idea like "energy deregulation" and create rolling blackouts!

California does the right thing once in a while, Proposition 116. It's rail-related, if people are motivated enough to look it up.