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Dakota 400 said:
Restoring The Ohio State Limited: you're my man! (Just don't expect the current Ohio General Assembly to supply any funds needed to do so.)
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Actually it doesn't require the Ohio General Assembly at all. The route is 878 Miles from New York-Pennsylvania Station to Cincinnati Union Terminal. My reason for reinstating the Ohio State Limited is simple. It is long enough that it doesn't fall under that 750 mile rule so it can be started fairly easily. Secondly if you time the departure from Cleveland to the morning, and from Cincinnati in the evening you have the beginning of a decent corridor. Then to get a decent level of service the State of Ohio only has to fork up the money for one Piedmont style trainset to get morning, and evening service in both directions. The best way to get people on board with new trains is to demonstrate how well they work.

Personally I'm in favor of reinstating the Southwestern Limited to St. Louis via the Water Level Route, Big Four, and Pennsylvania (across IL) as well.
 
Seaboard92 said:
Actually it doesn't require the Ohio General Assembly at all. The route is 878 Miles from New York-Pennsylvania Station to Cincinnati Union Terminal. My reason for reinstating the Ohio State Limited is simple. It is long enough that it doesn't fall under that 750 mile rule so it can be started fairly easily. Secondly if you time the departure from Cleveland to the morning, and from Cincinnati in the evening you have the beginning of a decent corridor. Then to get a decent level of service the State of Ohio only has to fork up the money for one Piedmont style trainset to get morning, and evening service in both directions. The best way to get people on board with new trains is to demonstrate how well they work.

Personally I'm in favor of reinstating the Southwestern Limited to St. Louis via the Water Level Route, Big Four, and Pennsylvania (across IL) as well.
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Also, if you have to make it a NYC-Chicago train for some reason (it depends on how you read the clauses in question in PRIIA), the resulting CHI-CIN run would be a daytime service (albeit at the cost of at least one equipment set).
 
McConnell has already declared his intention to start blockading all Biden cabinet nominees, including Secretary of Transportation, so we may have to look into what Biden will do to manage DOT if that happens. :-(

The Republicans in the Senate need to stop enabling McConnell.
 
Seaboard92 said:
Then to get a decent level of service the State of Ohio only has to fork up the money for one Piedmont style trainset to get morning, and evening service in both directions.
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Before November 3rd, our General Assembly would have not been interested in providing money for this service. After November 3rd, it will be even more uninterested. The GOP majorities in both Houses increased in this election.
 
This came out of left field to me. He’s progressive and forward thinking. Since policy will be set by the Administration I don’t think his lack of experience is a huge factor. He‘s smart and has shown he can hold his own in dealing from people from opposing view points. Plus with a background from small town America, the odds are he would be a better advocate for maintaining/and or expanding the network then say the mayor of Los Angeles or a city in the Northeast.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/pete-buttigieg-emerged-frontrunner-become-161529199.html
 
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Sarah Feinstein and another woman [names escapes me now] in New York City are also under consideration.
 
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Amtrakfflyer said:
This came out of left field to me. He’s progressive and forward thinking.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/pete-buttigieg-emerged-frontrunner-become-161529199.html
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I think this would be good - but I don’t know his position on transportation issues in particular.

Of all the candidates - Mayor Pete was by far my favorite. Smart, articulate, practical, progressive but moderate. His biggest issue is inexperience.

His interviews with FOX News during the latter stages of the campaign were great. He wasn’t afraid to defend Biden and debunk Trump on any network. He was polite, never snarky, and used his intelligence to make his points. I never saw them get the better of him.

Now how that would relate to transportation policy, I have no idea.
 
jis said:
Man! The execution of the HSR program in the Obama administration was quite atrocious IMHO. Trying to distribute crumbs to try to win over red constituents did not prove to be a winning strategy, and all that happened was everything got delayed by many years and the final result was less than spectacular. I hope the same mistake that the likes of Ray presided over are not repeated.
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Wisconsin and Ohio, two of the most prominent examples of the dynamic you're referring to, were IMHO not efforts "to distribute crumbs to win over red constituents." Both states had viable passenger rail projects already planned, and in the case of Wisconsin beyond planning to equipment procurement. Both plans would've open up passenger service to significant unserved markets. Service connecting Chicago, Milwaukee and Madison (state capital and university) multiple times a day wasn't crumbs. Neither was service connecting Cincinnati, Dayton, Columbus (also state capital and university), and Cleveland multiple times daily.

Also, both plans were made under Democratic administrations. The feds pressed on because they were still thinking like transportation planners & managers of decades past: politics have a role in which projects get green-lighted but an approved project proceeds regardless of who's in the White House or the governor's mansion. Politics sets policy, but policy is implemented apolitically. Before Walker and his ilk, "there's no Democratic or Republican way to build a sewer" was common wisdom.

Before Walker came onto the political scene riding to office on a train-bashing platform, it was almost literally unprecedented for a state government to reject federal capital funding. If a preceding governor had applied for money for a project the present governor was unenthusiastic about, he still would take the federal money because (pre-Walker) who passes up federal money? Not everyone believed Walker would actually follow through on his campaign rhetoric. Even after that, it wasn't obvious that Ohio with "moderate" governor Kasich would follow along, nor Florida's governor reject the money for that state's pre-existing plans.

How should LaHood have run the thing differently? The money was for stimulus, fiscal relief for the economy. Waiting for states to devise sufficiently grand plans (true HSR, electrification, or the like) instead of grabbing an already-vetted plan off their shelves would've delayed the effect of rapid stimulus, and giving the money to one or two grand projects only would've defeated the effect of stimulating the economy in various places. That said, and to tie back to my first point, the Wisconsin and Ohio projects (and even the Florida plans) were IMHO simultaneously good stimulus projects and good passenger rail projects. Had those plans proceeded, the HSR program would have a concrete legacy of an Amtrak system measurably bigger for the last decade or so on its map, station list, and schedules.
 
Well, so how did it work out at the end is what finally matters. It was a disaster for HSR and passenger rail expansion plans for a decade or more. It was a huge mistake to not allocate some money to places with friendlier governments. It is not like a Governor whose primary electoral platform was against passenger rail was going to be bought off by some money to get to abandon the platform on which he was elected. It was a fools errand to send money in those directions, as was proved by how the events unfolded. Some of us had pretty much predicted that at the time. Others were being starry eyed idealist. Anyway, that is my humble opinion, and like veryone else I am llowed to have one, and it supported by the flow of events.
 
jis said:
Well, so how did it work out at the end is what finally matters. It was a disaster for HSR and passenger rail expansion plans for a decade or more. It was a huge mistake to not allocate some money to places with friendlier governments. It is not like a Governor whose primary electoral platform was against passenger rail was going to be bought off by some money to get to abandon the platform on which he was elected. It was a fools errand to send money in those directions, as was proved by how the events unfolded. Some of us had pretty much predicted that at the time. Others were being starry eyed idealist. Anyway, that is my humble opinion, and like veryone else I am llowed to have one, and it supported by the flow of events.
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While I agree that things didn’t end well, but you might be misremembering some of the facts in your hindsight criticism. It was Wisconsin DOT secretary Frank Busalacchi that lobbied personally to Joe Biden during the campaign and early stimulus days to get funding for rail, because WisDOT already had a project more-or-less ready to go.

The money was awarded to the state long before the election took place. The money was awarded in January 2010, and the gubernatorial campaign didn’t really heat up (and killing HSR didn’t really become a campaign platform) until months later, with the election occurring in November 2010. If you are suggesting that the Obama administration should have predicted this electoral outcome 11 months into the future, fair enough, but allow me to politely disagree with that view.
 
Trogdor said:
While I agree that things didn’t end well, but you might be misremembering some of the facts in your hindsight criticism. It was Wisconsin DOT secretary Frank Busalacchi that lobbied personally to Joe Biden during the campaign and early stimulus days to get funding for rail, because WisDOT already had a project more-or-less ready to go.

The money was awarded to the state long before the election took place. The money was awarded in January 2010, and the gubernatorial campaign didn’t really heat up (and killing HSR didn’t really become a campaign platform) until months later, with the election occurring in November 2010. If you are suggesting that the Obama administration should have predicted this electoral outcome 11 months into the future, fair enough, but allow me to politely disagree with that view.
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Good point. Thanks for jogging my memory. But as you agree, the eventual result was disastrous for passenger rail. California and Northeast got less funding than they could have effectively used pretty immediately, leading to later scrambles.

Interestingly, the argument that Scott used in Florida for rejecting the funding was that they were unwilling to take on the risk of having to fund operations down the line, and even today it appears that a majority in Florida agree with that position. The same Scott pretty enthusiastically pushed for federal funds for SunRail, for which of course the State DOT has no responsibility to fund operations beyond fiver years. The Counties have to pick up the tab through Sales Tax or other tax and fees adjustments. Maybe if the concerned Counties were on board, things might have gone differently, though later developments suggest that the plan was probably still too ambitious.

One thing that comes to mind is that misreading how things might go in Wisconsin dates back to 2010. It is not something that just happened suddenly in 2016. But that is a discussion for another place another day.
 
How ironic is it that a millennial is now going to oversee Amtrak? (He’s 38 right at the upper cusp)
 
Trogdor said:
While I agree that things didn’t end well, but you might be misremembering some of the facts in your hindsight criticism. It was Wisconsin DOT secretary Frank Busalacchi that lobbied personally to Joe Biden during the campaign and early stimulus days to get funding for rail, because WisDOT already had a project more-or-less ready to go.

The money was awarded to the state long before the election took place. The money was awarded in January 2010, and the gubernatorial campaign didn’t really heat up (and killing HSR didn’t really become a campaign platform) until months later, with the election occurring in November 2010. If you are suggesting that the Obama administration should have predicted this electoral outcome 11 months into the future, fair enough, but allow me to politely disagree with that view.
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I'd also add that intercity rail had enjoyed bipartisan support at the gubernatorial level in Wisconsin in the decades leading up to the 2010-2011 debacle. (I don't know enough about the situation in Ohio to suggest whether that was the case there as well.)
 
Eric S said:
I'd also add that intercity rail had enjoyed bipartisan support at the gubernatorial level in Wisconsin in the decades leading up to the 2010-2011 debacle. (I don't know enough about the situation in Ohio to suggest whether that was the case there as well.)
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The in-state rail proposals were developed when Governor Ted Strickland (a D) occupied the Office. Yet, even then, our General Assembly was a R in both Houses. Had he been re-elected, he would have had a devil of a time getting the General Assembly to cough up much, if any money. Each General Election keeps seeing the General Assembly becoming more R and less D. Even if Governor DeWine, our Governor currently, supported a rail proposal, he would have no success with a General Assembly that seems to be in opposition to a Governor of their own Party more often than they support his proposals.
 
I would expect with Biden’s horrendous schedule once sworn in, he would want someone who would be pro rail like him to be DOT Secretary. We can’t expect Biden to have much more than a minute here and there at best, but next best thing is someone who also has an interest in passenger rail. Amtrak management will be doing a quick shuffle based on where Amtrak falls on the DOT food chain.
 
Palmetto said:
New yesterday afternoon is that it will be Pete Buttigieg.
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A great thing about Pete is that he was the Mayor of a city (South Bend) served by (2) Amtrak trains ( Capitol Limited and Lake Shore Limited), as well as NICTD-South Shore Line service to and from Chicago. If anyone understands the value of Amtrak Inter-City Service, as well as local rail service it would be him.
 
Maverickstation said:
A great thing about Pete is that he was the Mayor of a city (South Bend) served by (2) Amtrak trains ( Capitol Limited and Lake Shore Limited), as well as NICTD-South Shore Line service to and from Chicago. If anyone understands the value of Amtrak Inter-City Service, as well as local rail service it would be him.
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Hopefully he had a few leisurely rides into Chicago doing the Norfolk Southern shuffle as Amtrak is switched from track to track to overtake a freight and then get out of the way of oncoming freights only to then follow a freight into the Englewood yards.
 
Maverickstation said:
A great thing about Pete is that he was the Mayor of a city (South Bend) served by (2) Amtrak trains ( Capitol Limited and Lake Shore Limited), as well as NICTD-South Shore Line service to and from Chicago. If anyone understands the value of Amtrak Inter-City Service, as well as local rail service it would be him.
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It's also been reported that, as Mayor, he was supportive of the (thus far unsuccessful but ongoing) effort to re-extend South Shore service back to downtown South Bend, perhaps in conjunction with an intermodal station near the old Union Station serving Amtrak as well as local and intercity buses.
 
The new Administration, Biden, Mayor Pete, House/Senate members, new board members, RPA and advocates like us are more than 1 person and politician. Gardner, Flynn and Anderson (who apparently is still around behind the scenes) picked this battle. Game on!
 
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