House Vote Jeopardizes Key Northeast Rail Projects

>> A House vote last Friday to rescind high-speed rail awards could cancel Northeast rail projects. The FRA can secure projects by obligating funding now.

On Friday, July 15th, the House passed a 2012 Water and Energy Appropriations Bill that included an amendment to strip funding for high-speed rail that has already been awarded, but yet to be spent.

For the Northeast region, the bill would rescind nearly $1.2 billion in badly needed investments. Projects threatened by the bill include a dramatic upgrade to the NEC in New Jersey and Pennsylvania ($449M), the replacement of the busy and congestion-plagued Harold Interlocking in Queens, New York ($295M), and improvements to rail corridors in Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Vermont and upstate New York. (For more detailed information, see the list below.)

The House provision would use the high-speed rail funds to offset emergency disaster relief for the victims of flooding in the Midwest. While these victims certainly deserve Congress's support, their aid should not come at the expense of these rail projects. Congress is not in the practice of using transportation spending to provide "emergency" relief and for good reason. States will be unable to make long-term investments if their Federal funding is subject to weather-related disasters. In this case, the justification that flood mitigation is an "emergency" is unusual, since the funding will not be available until September.

The House vote does not mark the end of the line for these projects. The Senate's Water and Energy bill will not include any rescission to high-speed rail funding. As a result, the subsequent negotiations between the two chambers could strike the rescission out of the final bill. In addition, states can pursue a more certain route to protecting their funding. On Streetsblog, Tanya Snyder explains that the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) can protect these awards by obligating the funding, at which point Congress cannot rescind it. If the rescission provision holds in Congress, it won't go into effect until September, providing the FRA with a small window of opportunity to get the grants out the door.

The process of obligating funds, however, requires more than a stamp of approval by the FRA. Before funding can be released, the FRA must have legal agreements among all relevant stakeholders, including all rail operators on the line, state transportation departments and, of course, the line's owner. In New York, for example, the state must hammer out an agreement with freight operator CSX in order to secure $240 million in grants toward improvements on the Empire Corridor. While the state is pushing its plans to raise top speeds from 79 to 110 mph on parts of the line, CSX, the line's owner, is backing a more modest increase to 90 mph.

Potential Impacts

The cancelation of these projects would have a big impact on the Northeast. The bill "will eliminate thousands of jobs, will halt a large number of rail projects across the country. . . and hurt local and station economies," said Rep. Louise Slaughter of New York, chair of the Congressional High Speed & Intercity Passenger Rail Caucus.

Consider the largest grant: $450 million for Amtrak to upgrade a 24-mile stretch of track between NYC and Philadelphia. The project will raise speeds from 135 to 160 mph and replace the decades-old electrical system serving the line. On the surface, these improvements appear to be highly technical and mere incremental adjustments to service. For the users of this line, however, the project is making badly needed repairs. Suffering from years of poor investment, the line's electrical system is increasingly susceptible to failure (including two breakdowns in a single day in June) causing delays for the over 140,000 riders on NJ Transit and Amtrak who rely on the line to reach jobs in NJ and NYC. And the benefits of the project go well beyond transportation. The project is estimated to create over 12,000 jobs.

Projects at Risk

As described above, the Northeast stands to lose up to $1.2 billion in grants. Projects that remain unobligated and could be affected by the rescission include:
- Amtrak: Upgrades to 24 miles of track and electrical equipment in Pennsylvania and New Jersey and track improvements at the entrance to NY Penn Station ($449 million)
- New York: Construction to replace Harold Interlocking in Queens, NY, where frequent conflicts create delays for over 300,000 daily Long Island Rail Road and Amtrak riders ($295 million)
- New York: Construction of signal, track, and station improvements to reduce travel time and increase service on the Empire Corridor ($240 million)
- Pennsylvania: Design and construction of improvements on the Keystone Corridor ($66 million)
- Connecticut: Construction of the New Haven-Hartford-Springfield Rail Project to expand intercity service and introduce commuter rail service ($30 million)
- Maryland: Design and preliminary engineering for the replacement of the Susquehanna Bridge, a century-old span carrying the NEC from Baltimore to Washington, DC ($29 million)
- Rhode Island: Construction of a third track on NEC at Kingston station to reduce delays on Acela Express service and accommodate future commuter rail extension ($22 million)