“The Price We Pay For Conservative Scorn Of Amtrak”: Choosing Not To Invest In Safety And Other Improvements To Our Rail Network
On Tuesday night, an Amtrak train spectacularly derailed on its way through Philadelphia, killing at least seven people. On Wednesday morning, a House appropriations subcommittee voted to cut federal funding for Amtrak by about 20 percent. Those are two dots Republicans don’t want you to connect.
“Don’t use this tragedy in that way,” Rep. Mike Simpson is quoted in a Politico article as saying, after Democrats on the appropriations subcommittee for transportation and housing criticized Republicans for proposing and eventually approving the cuts.
The vote took place before news reports that the train may have been going around a curve at speeds of about 100 miles per hour when the derailment occurred. If those reports had surfaced earlier, the Republican objections to linking budget cuts to the derailment would likely have been much louder.
The objections would also have been equally out of line. Here are a couple of issues to consider.
First, there’s the site of the crash itself, which the New York Times reported is at roughly the same location as another spectacular train derailment in which 79 people died – in 1943.
The curve ultimately proved not to be the key factor in that disaster, but it does raise this question: Why is that curve there in the first place, some 72 years later? Why has there not been an effort to rebuild that curve so that trains could move through that area safely at higher speeds?
The answer to that question is easy: conservative scorn for Amtrak, which has been under sustained attack almost from the time it was created, and which has never received the levels of investment in tracks and rail cars that would be appropriate for a national passenger rail system.
Second, if reports prove true that the derailment was caused by the train operating at twice the speed it should have in that section of the track, why were there not automatic controls that would have slowed the train down and perhaps prevented the derailment? The Philadelphia Inquirer reports that “an automatic train control system designed to prevent speeding was not in place where Amtrak Train 188 crashed.”
In fact, there is a requirement that Amtrak, commuter lines and freight railroads have positive train controls in place by the end of 2015. Unfortunately, the task (and the bulk of the funding) was left to the privately run freight railroads, on whose lines Amtrak runs. Trying to implement the train control system on the cheap appears to have dramatically failed. (This article on the Eno Transportation Center website has some background.) In January, notes Gregg Levine writing for Al Jazeera, Amtrak published a newsletter in which it said it was “hopeful” that positive train control would be implemented throughout the entire Northeast Corridor by the end of the year. But in March, the acting administrator of the Federal Railroad Administration, Sarah Feinberg, told Congress that the railroad industry would miss the 2015 deadline.
Meanwhile, a $17 million increase request from the Obama administration for the safety and operations budget of the Federal Railroad Administration, which includes funding for positive train control, was denied by the appropriations subcommittee. The budget was held level at $186 million.
Interestingly, the Republican committee report on the appropriation for the Department of Transportation had far more to say about the pay of workers serving food on the trains than it did about needed investments to ensure trains could operate safely.
“Yesterday’s tragedy in Philadelphia should be a wake-up call to this Committee – we must provide sufficient funding for Amtrak’s critical infrastructure projects to ensure a safer transportation system,” Rep. David Price (D-N.C.), ranking Democrat on the subcommittee, said in a statement after the vote. “The majority’s shortsighted, draconian budget cuts stand in the way of the investments that a great country must make.”
Price is not out of line. Advocates for increasing investments in transportation infrastructure – ranging from labor unions to members of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce – had planned for today to be a lobbying day on Capitol Hill to call attention to the need for more federal investment in our transportation network. Now the entire nation’s attention is focused on what happens when we choose not to invest in safety and other improvements to our rail network. It’s time to ignore the people on the right who don’t want us to make the connection between a disaster and the obstruction of investments that could have prevented it.
By: Isaiah J. Poole, Campaign for America’s Future, May 13, 2015
“Deepwater Wind”: America Is Finally Getting Its First Offshore Wind Farm. Conservatives Are Trying To Make Sure It’s The Last
European countries long ago decided to take the long-term view of clean energy. Denmark put up its first wind turbine offshore 24 years ago, in 1991; today, Europe has at least 70 complete wind farms and 2,300 turbines in its waters. The United States is just getting started on catching up to its transatlantic neighbors: by July, Deepwater Wind will have steel in the ground for the first offshore wind farm off of Rhode Island. If all goes according to plan, the Block Island wind farm will begin generating power by fall 2016.
In the U.K., though, wind subsidies are now at risk after the Tories won Britain’s recent elections, sweeping in a new wave of austerity government. (Support for wind and solar development there has historically been stable, however, compared to the U.S.) Just 3 percent of the world’s wind power is based offshore, and the United Kingdom is the leader: They generate half of global offshore wind energy.
In the U.S., conservatives like to propose funding only for research, which doesn’t help businesses take the leap into entry—the nascent energy source is still several times more expensive to produce than conventional fuels, like oil and gas, that have benefited from over a century of government subsidies.
The industry requires some taxpayer help to overcome the initial costly barrier to entry and absurd logistics in the U.S. market. For example, the U.S. lacks specialized 500-foot ships to carry steel for wind turbines, so supplies and ships must come from Europe. Potential developers have had to work around an obscure trade law that doesn’t let foreign ships that intend to install wind power sail into U.S. ports (in-depth explanation here).
Onshore, the U.S. wind industry is growing faster than any other electricity source, thanks precisely to this kind of investment. The main wind subsidy is the wind production tax credit, which provides 2.3 cents per kilowatt-hour for the first ten years of production. But Republican infighting over the tax credit (some, like Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley support it, while plenty others don’t) means that it is regularly endangered. Some of that opposition is fueled by fossil fuel trade groups, which have aggressively lobbied against the credit (including the Koch-backed American Energy Alliance). The tax credit expired at the end of 2014; already, wind industry manufacturers scale back their plans when they face uncertainty. It’s a vicious cycle.
Deepwater Wind’s Block Island wind farm is both a less ambitious and less controversial version of another proposed project, the 130-turbine Cape Wind, that’s now sidelined indefinitely because of its biggest critic—the billionaire Bill Koch. In essence, his argument was “not in my backyard.” Koch called the proposed plant “visual pollution” and worried it would hurt his “ability to acquire a special property where I can create a family compound for my children.” The project never gained local support, and, in January, the developer dropped its contracts.
On the other hand, Deepwater Wind will have five turbines spinning 18 miles off the coast of Rhode Island, intended to power 17,000 homes. This one stands a much better chance of survival than Cape Wind. Let’s hope it’s successful.
By: Rebecca Leber, The New Republic, May 14, 2015
“Getting The Sports Moguls Off Our Backs”: The Subsidy-Bloated Profits Generally End Up In The Pockets Of The Owners
It was not out of a sense of decency that the National Football League recently let go of its tax-exempt status. You see, as a tax-exempt organization, the NFL had to disclose Commissioner Roger Goodell’s compensation — $44.2 million in 2012. That seemed an excessive sum for the head of a “nonprofit” freed from having to pay any federal income tax. Now the NFL can keep it secret.
Tax exemption is a subsidy. The taxes the NFL money machine didn’t have to pay, everyone else had to pay. Thanks go to former Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK), Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT), and Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD), for railing against such unsightly deals.
But that’s not the only good news for citizens tired of being milked by billionaire sports moguls. Consider Verizon’s decision to let customers buy TV packages that do not include ESPN or other sports channels.
An explanation: Animal Planet and Food Network are not why TV bills are so ludicrously high. What drive them up are the enormous fees the sports channels extract for their programming.
ESPN alone tacks an estimated $7 on monthly bills. By comparison, USA Network adds less than $1.
An interesting calculation: If every month you put $7 into an investment with an annual return of 4 percent, you’d have $1,027 after 10 years. These things add up.
It was not charity that prompted Verizon to let its customers buy a smaller base package of channels, plus extra bundles containing the channels they actually watch, at lower cost. Every month, thousands of Americans — incensed by their monthly TV bills and now able to get most of what they watch from the Internet — have been “cutting the cord,” that is, dropping their cable, satellite, or fiber-optic TV service altogether.
Anyhow, ESPN has dragged Verizon Communications into court. The sports network, the Disney empire’s most lucrative business, claims that Verizon broke a contract requiring that ESPN channels be part of its basic offerings. Verizon says that any of its customers can obtain ESPN through a bonus bundle at no additional cost and that therefore it is included.
Never did I think I’d say this, but I am rooting for my pay-TV provider.
On to another reason to cheer. President Obama’s proposed budget would ban the financing of professional sports stadiums with tax-exempt bonds. Such bonds lower borrowing costs for the zillionaire team owners. Currently, 22 NFL teams play in stadiums financed by tax-exempt bonds, as do 64 professional baseball, basketball and hockey teams.
Why would tax-exempt bonds — created to help cities, towns, and states pay for needed infrastructure — go to benefit mega-businesses? Because the team owners have succeeded in conning locals to see sports arenas as economic magnets pumping money into their weary tax bases.
Lots of studies contradict this self-serving propaganda. First off, the economic activity generated by the teams often pales next to the concessions wrenched from the taxpayers. Secondly, many of the dollars spent at the games are dollars that would have otherwise been left at local businesses, such as restaurants.
Furthermore, the subsidy-bloated profits generally end up in the pockets of the owners and their magnificently paid players — who promptly take them out of town. With all due respect to Cleveland, one doubts that LeBron James spends many of his millions there.
Ending tax-exempt bonds for sports arenas might reduce our elected officials’ temptation to sacrifice their taxpayers in return for good tickets to the game. That would be the best outcome.
They who love professional sports should pay for them.
By: Froma Harrop, The National Memo, May 7, 2015
“The Next Amtrak Catastrophe”: This Is Still An Infrastructure Story
Maybe five or six years ago, I was reading a magazine article about The Beatles’ first trip to America in 1964, a topic on which I am something of an expert. As some of you will know, they did Ed Sullivan’s show and then took a train from New York to Washington DC, where they performed their first live U.S. concert (with a young Al Gore in attendance, fwiw).
I was reading along learning nothing new because I know all there is to know about all that until I came across a line that just staggered me. It wasn’t anything about the group; rather, it was a reference to their “two hour and 15 minute train trip.” Their what?! That trip today, as you know, is at best two hours and 40 minutes, but that is only for the “high-speed” Acela, and in truth that’s only theoretical. It’s usually more like two hours and 55 minutes. That is, if it gets there, as we might add after Tuesday night’s tragedy.
It seemed totally beyond belief that the train ride from New York to Washington could have been faster in 1964 than it was the year I was reading this article. But it was true: I was so floored by this that I called Amtrak and some rail experts I know to check, and it checked out. The reason: aging sections of track that trains have to slow down for.
Technology is supposed to go forward, not backward, especially here in the US of A. In the years since, American go-getters of various stripes have invented computers and smart phones and have seen to it that pizzas reach our doorstep in half an hour and perfected the chips that taste like melted cheese. But somehow, our trains, running in our nation’s most commercially important and rail-dependent corridor, are slower.
As I’m writing these words, we don’t yet know the reason for the Tuesday night derailment in North Philly. The preliminary informed conjecture points toward speed. It’s an area of the Northeast Corridor route that’s rated at 50 mph. If you know the route, you know why—it’s urban (just two or three miles north of the Philadelphia Zoo, which you can see out to the right on northbound trains), and it’s curvy. It seems the train was going well in excess of that speed.
So, speed, you say; well that’s probably just human error, so at least I won’t have to listen to the liberals bellyache about infrastructure. Sorry to disappoint, but this is still an infrastructure story. Here’s why.
There’s this thing in the train game called PTC—Positive Train Control. Basically, it would allow for a modernized version of what happened back in the original The Taking of Pelham One, Two, Three, when an override switch stopped that Number 6 barreling toward doom in lower Manhattan. It would break track into sections, establish safe speeds for each, and use broadband connectivity in a way that would permit a train’s computers to override the conductor if the train is exceeding the safe speed and slam on the brakes.
Amtrak is installing PTC on the Northeast Corridor, and in fairness to Congress, it has mandated that Amtrak do so and provided funding to do it, although not as quickly as Amtrak has requested. Right now PTC is installed only on three short-ish sections of the Northeast Corridor—for example, from Perryville, Maryland to Wilmington. If this incident had happened there, the derailment presumably would not have happened.
Congress is constantly shorting Amtrak, and especially the Northeast Corridor, even though the Northeast Corridor makes all the money ($500 million a year, roughly). See, it works like this. It’s the same old story of the red states—you know, where they hate government—getting largesse from the blue states.
There are three categories of Amtrak routes. The first is the Northeast Corridor routes, which bring in all the dough. The second are certain intrastate routes—Albany to Buffalo, say, or Harrisburg to Pittsburgh; for these, the states have to make up any operating deficits, so by law these have to break even. Third are the long-haul interstate routes out West. These are huge money losers, and a lot of the routes should just be cut, probably, but the Republicans running Congress won’t allow that, even as they keep wanting to slash Amtrak funding overall. Rather incredibly, the House Appropriations committee stood firm on approving a $260 million cut (nearly 20 percent) to Amtrak from the previous year on Wednesday—literally the day after the tragedy, strictly along party lines. Amtrak asked for about $2 billion for next year. It may end up getting as little as $1.14 billion.
So down the road, here’s what’s going to happen. Right now, there are two tunnels under the Hudson River that carry all the passenger train traffic back and forth between New York and New Jersey. They’re a hundred years old. During Hurricane Sandy, they were flooded with salt water, which experts say sped up their deterioration. They might have to be taken out of service in seven to 10 years.
They will be taken out of service one at a time of course. But imagine what a reduction from two tunnels to one would do to service. The delays would be unbearable. Think about when one lane is closed on a two-lane highway. It doesn’t merely double your travel time during peak hours. It can triple it. So imagine boarding a train at Penn Station at 6 pm, moving 50 feet, and sitting there for 40 minutes before the tunnel is clear.
Two new tunnels are needed, and given the time that’s involved in design and environmental review and so on, seven years is just around the corner. The cost is $7 billion. That’s not chump change, but it’s a fraction of the cost of Marco Rubio’s aggressively stupid tax cuts. And even if Hillary Clinton and not Rubio is the president, two new tunnels are still going to be awfully hard to come by, although by God that all-important route across northern Montana is going to stay open—and with we Northeasterners paying for it.
By: Michael Tomasky, The Daily Beast, May 14, 2015
“Boehner Rejects Amtrak Question As ‘Stupid'”: U.S. Investment In Infrastructure Has Become A National Embarrassment
It became clear yesterday that congressional Republicans came up with one talking point in response to the deadly Amtrak derailment in Philadelphia: “human error.”
The point, of course, is obvious. If the Amtrak 188 tragedy was the result of a person making a mistake, then there’s no need for federal policymakers to act, there’s no need for Congress to make additional investments in infrastructure, and there’s no need for Republicans to be embarrassed by slashing Amtrak’s budget just hours after the accident.
This morning, as National Journal noted, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) didn’t hold back on this point.
Boehner downright dismissed claims that underfunding for the rail system was responsible for the derailment in Philadelphia that killed at least seven people and injured 200 on Tuesday night.
“Are you really gonna ask such a stupid question?” Boehner said during his Thursday morning press conference when a reporter began to ask about Democratic concerns that Amtrak was underfunded because of Republicans. “They started this yesterday: ‘It’s all about funding. It’s all about funding.’ Well, obviously it is not about funding. The train was going twice the speed limit.”
House Ways and Means Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) sounded a similar note on Fox News this morning, dismissing those who want to increase “the size of government programs,” all in response to an accident he said was “human error.”
The congressman added that he hopes “people won’t seize on political opportunities out of tragedies like this” to spend more money.
Let’s set the record straight.
Just on a surface level, even without consideration of the tragedy in Philadelphia, U.S. investment in infrastructure has become a national embarrassment. The United States used to lead the world in infrastructure innovation and development, and the more Republicans decided public investment in “government programs” is necessarily bad, the more other countries have surpassed us.
But specifically on this week’s Amtrak disaster, to dismiss this as nothing more than a tragic case of “human error” is to overlook the relevant details.
According to Boehner, “obviously it is not about funding.” In reality, it’s also obvious that a Positive Train Control system could have prevented the accident.
It’s equally obvious that PTC is not free. If Congress wanted to invest in the system, it could have. Indeed, it can make those investments now. At least for now, however, Boehner and his party don’t see it as a priority.
This might make the Speaker uncomfortable, but it’s anything but “a stupid question.”
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, May 14, 2015
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