One state's bad dream about fast trains

But why blame budget-cutting Republicans for the loss of this money? The parties themselves — the Federal Railroad Administration and Amtrak on one side, and Washington State Department of Transportation and BNSF Railway on the other — are at an impasse in negotiating terms of that grant. So says Paula Hammond, Washington state secretary of transportation, in a blunt letter sent last week to Federal Railroad Administrator Joe Szabo.
 
Washington’s project involves building bypass tracks in both Tacoma and Vancouver, Wash., new or longer sidings, improvements to enhance reliability, an advanced signal system, and a new trainset. When finished, the state could add two more Amtrak Cascades round trips on faster schedules, in addition to the present four and Amtrak’s Coast Starlight. The 186-mile double-track route also hosts Sounder commuter trains north of Tacoma, and around 40 freight trains from BNSF Railway and tenant Union Pacific.
 
After months of negotiations, and of having numerous agreements by the state and railroad on future “service outcomes” rejected by FRA, the parties are deadlocked over what could charitably be called minutia: whose account of delays to trains will be accepted. FRA, with Amtrak’s backing, wants delay reports filed by Amtrak conductors to be the controlling source. Washington and BNSF insist on using the railroad’s delay reporting data. Conductors’ reports reveal the immediate cause of a delay, whereas BNSF’s data might reveal a different underlying cause. So while the conductor might report a 30-minute delay before an opposing freight train passes as freight train interference, the railroad could report the root cause as being a derailed car 50 miles away.

But it’s all moot if the grant is withdrawn by Congress. Odds are that the House will approve taking back that $4.5 billion in unobligated money for high speed rail. The rescission is a very small part of legislation that will fund the entire federal government for the last seven months of fiscal 2011, which ends in September. Present funding authorization ends in early March. Democrats hold a three-vote majority in the U.S. Senate, where this legislation would go next. It’s conceivable that the funding legislation will pass the Senate with the high speed rail takeback still attached to it. In that event, President Obama would face an unhappy choice: Veto the bill and shut down the government over a relatively small matter, or sign it and let political opponents harpoon one of his key initiatives.