News & Events

Members of the U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure convened in New York City on Friday for a hearing about the importance of the Northeast Corridor. The hearing took place in the Farley Post Office, home of the future Moynihan Station. Rep. Jeff Denham (R-CA), chair of the Railroads Subcommittee, wielded the gavel while Rep. Bill Shuster (R-PA), chair of the full committee, participated along with Ranking Member Corrine Brown (D-FL) and Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY). The witnesses included the President and CEO of Amtrak, Joe Boardman; Commissioner of New York State Department of Transportation, Joan McDonald; President of Drexel University, John Fry; and President of Regional Plan Association (RPA) and Chair of the Northeast Alliance for Rail (NEAR), Bob Yaro.

The impetus for the hearing is that the current federal rail bill, PRIIA, expires this fall and Congress will begin negotiating the next bill this summer. The next federal rail bill will authorize a five to six years worth of appropriations for the Federal Railroad Administration and Amtrak, and hence capital improvements to the Northeast Corridor (NEC). The FRA's High-Speed & Intercity Passenger Rail Program is a potential source of future funding for NEC improvements. After Florida Governor Rick Scott rejected $2.4 billion in federal high-speed rail funds in 2011, nearly $1 billion was redirected to the Northeast. Amtrak's federal funding for capital improvements is also largely dedicated to the NEC, where nearly 40% of their capital budget is spent.

In his testimony before the Committee, Bob Yaro outlined the main components of an improvement program that can be authorized in the reauthorization of the rail bill. RPA calls this program, "NEC Now." The NEC Now proposal addresses the corridor's highest-priority infrastructure needs: to remove bottlenecks, increase capacity, improve reliability and reduce travel times along the entire corridor. It also proposes funding for the construction of a high-speed bypass in New Jersey for express trains to overtake local trains on a segment with heavy NJ Transit commuter rail traffic, would cut trip times between New York and Philadelphia to well under an hour.

Download RPA's NEC Now Legislative Proposal & Infrastructure Program.

Download Bob Yaro's testimony as prepared.

The Federal Railroad Administration is currently managing a comprehensive planning effort to define, evaluate and prioritize future levels of investment in the Northeast Corridor (NEC) through 2040. This effort, launched in February 2012, called NEC FUTURE, will produce a Service Development Plan that articulates the overall scope, alternatives and approach for proposed improvements, and a Tier 1 Environmental Impact Statement that evaluates and identifies ways to address broad, corridor-wide environmental impacts due to these improvements. This process is a federally-required step before major construction to overhaul the corridor's aging, unreliable, and congested infrastructure can begin.

But, before the FRA could analyze the impacts of the multitude of visions for improved NEC rail service, first it needed to narrow down the alternative visions to a reasonable number by weeding out the alternatives that are clearly inferior to others. So far, they've winnowed the list down to 15 alternative visions. Earlier this week, the FRA published its new "Preliminary Alternatives" report, which contains descriptions of these 15 different visions of the NEC, ranging from mundane to ambitious. The FRA hopes to carry around 8 or 9 alternatives forward to the Tier 1 EIS process to be weighed against the "no action" alternative (essentially doing the bare minimum to keep the corridor operating safely). The FRA's goal is to have established a final preferred alternative by mid-2015.

Last week, Amtrak sent Congress its annual funding request, which asks for an increase in capital investment and a decrease in operating support. This year's capital request continues to show Amtrak's long-term commitment to improving the Northeast Corridor, "one of America's most important transportation assets, [which] traverses the length of a region that is vital to the national economy," and where nearly 40% of Amtrak's capital budget is spent. Amtrak is seeking $167 million to advance critical components of the Gateway Program.

Highlights from Amtrak's federal funding request after the jump.

The Business Alliance for Northeast Mobility has officially been renamed, The Northeast Alliance for Rail (NEAR). The new name more clearly describes the work that the coalition does - it is no longer just a business alliance, as many civic and planning groups are active members, and our advocacy work is now more focused on passenger rail investments in the Northeast Megaregion, as opposed to broader mobility. The Northeast Alliance's new acronym, "NEAR," speaks to the proximity created by investments in passenger rail that reduce trip times between major urban hubs, and the hope that these investments will be made in the near-term.

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Amtrak recently announced that the railroad broke their all-time annual ridership record for the ninth time in 10 years in fiscal year 2012, carrying 31.2 million passengers, surpassing the previous record, set last year, by one million trips. More people rode Amtrak trains in July 2012 than during any other month in the company's history. Since 2000, Amtrak ridership has grown by nearly 50%, as people seek out alternatives to highway traffic congestion, and hassles and delays at airports. However, these are not the only milestones that Amtrak has achieved of late.

Transportation experts and agency chiefs from New Jersey and New York told a packed audience at RPA's "Crossing the Hudson" conference that expanding rail capacity in and out of New York City is vitally important for both states.

New Jersey Transportation Commissioner Jim Simpson expressed support for Amtrak's Gateway project, which calls for building two new rail tunnels beneath the Hudson River. The new tracks would reduce severe congestion and service problems for NJ Transit and Amtrak riders between New Jersey and New York that ripple out along the entire the Northeast Corridor. "Gateway is the best project out there," Simpson said.

Big transportation and other infrastructure projects typically take many years to complete, in part because of delays in the environmental review process. Regional Plan Association, the Eno Center for Transportation and the Bipartisan Policy Center will hold a policy discussion on Thursday, June 28, in Washington, D.C., to address the issue. Register here.