Orphan Road

Amtrak CEO Alex Kummant has resigned:

Amtrak spokesman Cliff Black declined to comment on the specific reasons for Kummant's departure, but said the executive and Amtrak's board ''had differences in strategic direction and management philosophy.''

Our past Kummant coverage here. It's hard to see why the CEO would want to go out after Amtrak had two of its best years ever, and is about to see the inauguration of one of the most transit-friendly administrations since... well, ever. These are heady times for Amtrak.

If I had to make a totally uneducated guess, I would say that Kummant was more of an incrementalist, focused on small-bore, yet vital upgrades. He's pooh-poohed the idea of building HSR in the Northeast Corridor in the past, saying it would be more cost-effective to beef up medium-speed rail corridors nationwide instead. It may be that the Amtrak board wants to use this opportunity to think big, and Kummant wasn't down with that.

(Via the NY Observer)

Finally:

The legislation, pushed by New Jersey Democratic Sen. Frank Lautenberg, would allocate $1.6 billion for rail safety, renew and expand the Federal Railroad Administration, and invest nearly $13 billion over the next five years to expand and upgrade passenger rail in the U.S.

Of that $13 billion, Amtrak would get about $1.6 billion a year -- $300 million more than what it now receives -- for operations and capital projects like replacing tracks and repairing tunnels. States would also receive funding to

$13B over five years is a drop in the bucket, obviously, but it's a start. Amtrak Cascades should benefit handsomely from this bill.

The Amtrak Bill has cleared both houses, been through conference committee, and is finally ready to hit the President's desk, where he'll sign it.

A separate appropriations bill will actually provide the cash. There's lots of good stuff in there, for Amtrak nationally and for the Cascades corridor in particular.

WSDOT's own Pt. Defiance bypass project got the biggest share of $30M in federal grants that were doled out today. The project is "underfunded by as much as $14.9M" before the grant came out, so presumably this will help close that gap and further savings can be found to make up the rest.

Virginia also got a few million to improve service between DC and Richmond.

The prolfieration of low-cost bus service between cities in the Northeast is either total genius, or a stunning indictment of our rail infrastructure (I think you know where I stand). The fact that rail service between DC, NY and Boston continues to be too slow, expensive and unreliable for regular use is very sad. And this is Amtrak's best route!

Matt and I were talking about that Amtrak bill I blogged about this Summer. Turns out it's still winding it's way through Congress. It's passed the House and Senate with veto-proof margins, but it still needs to go to conference committee and get signed by the President.

This is what I like to hear:

Across the aisle, a Newark-bound passenger Chrissy Dumbert took in the commotion and observed, “This is the craziest train ride I’ve ever been on.”

In the next car, Biden told another passenger that “If we get elected, it will be the most train-friendly administration ever.”

Like I said...

SeaPort Air claims it's the first "green" airline, since it buys offsets for the small, fuel-effiicient turbo props it flies between Seattle and Portland.

The original "green" way to get to Portand, Amtrak Cascades, saw July ridership on the Seattle-Portland route increase 26 percent over last year.

SeaPort Air, which operates out of Boeing Field, claims 90 minutes from "downtown to downtown." Prices start at $99 each way. Amtrak Cascades currently takes about 3.5 hours, with a goal of getting it down to 2.5 sometime in the future.

Sometimes it's hard to be a supporter of "19th-century choo-choo trains." You read enough goofy op-eds and nasty blog comments, and you start to wonder, "am I crazy to think that improving America's rail infrastructure would be a smart way to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels and create more livable communities?" After all, in just the last few years, Seattle voted to kill both the Monorail Project and Sound Transit 2.

But slowly, finally, things seem to be looking up. Global warming, $4 gas, and increasing traffic and airport congestion have made our pundits and politicians slowly realize that something needs to change. Even better, they're making the realization that solving these problems will require a holistic approach, involving not only new and improved transit systems, but better neighborhood planning as well.

I don't want to get ahead of myself, but it occured to me today that we may wake up on the morning of November 5 to a world in which:

• Califonia has voted to begin construction on SF-to-LA high-speed rail
• Seattle has voted to begin construction on the next phase of Sound Transit, and
• America has voted to elect an Amtrak advocate to the Vice Presidency

All in all, not too shabby.

There's an interview with Alex Kummant, Amtrak's CEO, in the New York Observer. The Observer has a conservative bent, but rail transit in New York is like National Health Care in Britain -- even the conservatives don't question its existence.

Kummant seems like a sensible guy (see this 2006 profile in the NY Times), one who's not interested in privatizing the system or even breaking off the NE Corridor.

In fact, Kummant downplays the idea of spending tens of billions on a 2-hour DC-to-NY HSR in the Northeast Corridor (where Amtrak already has 60 percent of the air-rail traffic), and instead suggests spreading that out over the system:

That's right. You cannot have commuters on [a high-speed NE Corridor line]. Again, we run 750,000 commuters a day on our line. You can't have any freight trains--we run 50 freight trains a day. You have to have completely different curvatures. You have to have different tunnels. And, again, wonderful, great, they're vision statements; but, at the end of the day, you have to spend tens and tens of billions of dollars to do that. Then you have to ask yourself, ‘Is that really where you would put that capital?'

We continue to hear about, ‘Gee, how much more could be done?' Fine. Maybe you can capture the other 40 percent [share of intercity Northeast air-rail commuters]. But I would argue you could capture that if we had new equipment; you could expand our capacity with new equipment; you could, again, drive the connectivity of the stations; you could make much higher-quality stations that basically drive connectivity with local operations. And I have little doubt that you could pick up another 20 points in share.

On the other hand, he suggests that HSR between Phoenix and LA is inevitable in his lifetime, which seems pretty aggressive (in a good way). He also uses the inevitability of such a line as a reason why we can't abandon long-haul routes. Why dismantle the tracks, the stations, and the infrastructure on those long-haul lines if HSR (or pseudo-HSR) is just a couple of decades away?