FRA Long Distance Study

But Trump did delay Gateway thru his sec of transportation..

Officer/Captain West Point, I don't know if this can be viewed, but they ARE actually working on Gateway in place of "Politicking"

post1647490.html#p1647490

Obviously, much more has been done than when Gov. Christie pulled the plug on ARC. Gateway reportedly is fully funded, and I think the second Trump administration will want to attack more visible Biden initiatives.

eolesen wrote: ↑Tue Jul 09, 2024 7:07 pm Nah, Trump has made it pretty clear in prior budget proposals Amtrak should be focused on what's sustainable e.g. the NEC, Auto-Train and state funded corridors. The long distance network as it stands today should be considered at some degree of risk of losing some existing funding.

Will it be a priority to try and cut Amtrak back vs. something like the Department of Education? Probably not.

We've talked at length here about the funding that the Biden Admin was able to secure.

What's not guaranteed and ultimately requires Congress to matter? The annual grants needed to operate the long distance network. It's already split up between the NEC and the Long Distance network, so Congress could easily cut the latter, and suddenly that the funds for equipment and studies was already authorized becomes a bit of a moot point.

And Trump’s budget proposals were written, word for word, by the Heritage Foundation. It’s well known what their views are on Amtrak. I think for the current views it’s better to look at what the House has done - and they have in fact more targeted the NEC grants. And in the most recent round - cut each Amtrak account by a certain percentage. I think the long distance targeting was more a pre Trump GOP position (which are the types that wrote those budgets.) The house pretty largely voted against a proposal to totally cut the national network grants during the last THUD bill - and it wasn’t even close . By the way - a reduction or cutting of the national network account also axes the state supported corridors - they are not 100% state funded contrary to many peoples’ beliefs they receive significant federal dollars as Amtrak still loses money after state payments. The current GOP views seem much more tribal and about “owning the libs” - hence I’d more likely expect an attack on the Northeast programs. So far this year the state supported business line is $218.9 million dollars in the red. That is covered by federal subsidies. Changes to the formulas under the infrastructure bill have resulted in state payments covering less costs and Amtrak ending up with a larger share.

I think you're on to something re cutting the LD funding, and you may actually be saying this: reallocate the funding that the LD's get to the NEC, AT, and state-supported corridor service. THAT may get the 218+51+1.

lordsigma12345 wrote: ↑Tue Jul 09, 2024 9:13 pm And Trump’s budget proposals were written, word for word, by the Heritage Foundation. It’s well known what their views are on Amtrak.

Dog-whistle. It's a revived media fad to call out the Heritage Foundation because calling conservatives Nazi's has backfired given how the pro-Palestine movements are turning out to be more like the Nazi's in just about every way possible.

lordsigma12345 wrote: ↑Tue Jul 09, 2024 9:13 pm The current GOP views seem much more tribal and about “owning the libs” - hence I’d more likely expect an attack on the Northeast programs.

To be fair, the bills that just provided an extraordinary amount of funding to the Northeast programs was done with zero GOP support. Should control of Congress shift away from the "Libs", then it's only reasonable to expect those who "got their share" during this term might see a little less in a future term.

lordsigma12345 wrote: ↑Tue Jul 09, 2024 9:13 pm Changes to the formulas under the infrastructure bill have resulted in state payments covering less costs and Amtrak ending up with a larger share.

Again, who wrote and passed that bill shifting the responsibility for shortfalls over to the Federal tab?

It's my opinion, and that of a bunch of other fiscal conservatives, that Federal funds shouldn't be paying the bulk of regional transportation initiatives that don't contribute to a positive GDP. Projects like Gateway and CREATE do facilitate commerce. Funding more long distance rail across South Dakota or Montana? Whatever incremental tourism those generate will easily be wiped out by the costs of operating the service.

Of course the FRA study makes that clear. It was written to close out silly ideas like the cross South Dakota line. I don’t think anyone read $7 billion and thought That’s the line we should start up. Talking about South Dakota as if the FRA wants it is disingenuous.

It’s not really a dog whistle. They don’t do anything that any other washington think tank does - the left certainly has its share of think tanks. But if i recall it was pretty well stated that Trump enlisted support from Heritage and other think tanks in crafting his “budgets” and it’s not surprising as president’s budgets are really just political manifestos. Im sure Biden did the same with his budget requests in utilizing liberal think tanks.

lordsigma12345 wrote: ↑Wed Jul 10, 2024 6:41 pm It’s not really a dog whistle. They don’t do anything that any other washington think tank does - the left certainly has its share of think tanks. But if i recall it was pretty well stated that Trump enlisted support from Heritage and other think tanks in crafting his “budgets” and it’s not surprising as president’s budgets are really just political manifestos. Im sure Biden did the same with his budget requests in utilizing liberal think tanks.

At risk of going off-topic here, you might reconsider that. The Heritage Foundation's members include 140 of Trump's presidential staff. It can be rightfully assumed that this group has a lot of their hands into Trump's current run.

Now only if they can secure their servers better... but I'm not going to link to that. I'd rather link to more train related material.

eolesen wrote: ↑Wed Jul 10, 2024 12:32 pm Projects like Gateway and CREATE do facilitate commerce.

Interesting idea that a project that has zero impact on the movement of goods somehow manages to facilitate commerce.

Regardless, the funding agreement for that has been finalized so it's unlikely that it would change. But let's no kid ourselves and suggest that there's any logical reasoning behind what could be happening a year from now.

lensovet wrote: ↑Sun Jul 14, 2024 4:36 pm

eolesen wrote: ↑Wed Jul 10, 2024 12:32 pm Projects like Gateway and CREATE do facilitate commerce.

Interesting idea that a project that has zero impact on the movement of goods somehow manages to facilitate commerce.

How do those programs have zero impact on the movement of goods?

The CREATE Program is a public-private partnership that has worked since 2003 to improve the way passengers and goods move over rail. We are making Chicago’s railroad network safer, more efficient and better able to accommodate growth in freight and passenger
traffic..

One of every four U.S. freight trains passes through Chicago. That’s about 500 freight trains and 800 passenger and commuter trains every day. The U.S. rail network depends on our region, and growth is on the horizon. The CREATE Program is stepping up to modernize our rail network to better handle our region’s freight and passenger needs, both today and in the future.

CREATE is a PPP that has been operating for 20+ years to streamline all facets of Chicago railroading and freight is a big piece of that. If you go to their website you can see there are quite a few freight-only projects.
https://www.createprogram.org/what-we-do/maps/

Some people are under the mistaken impression that the only way you can facilitate Commerce is through the movement of boxes.

How much of our economy is now services or banking, and how many of the people engaged in those sectors are likely to use Amtrak for a day trip?

STrRedWolf wrote: ↑Thu Jul 11, 2024 11:27 am At risk of going off-topic here, you might reconsider that. The Heritage Foundation's members include 140 of Trump's presidential staff. It can be rightfully assumed that this group has a lot of their hands into Trump's current run.

Yeah, let's put some context around that. The White House staff usually numbers around 500 to 700, and the Executive Branch has over 3,000 positions, 2,800 of them not requiring Senate confirmation. That goes up and down with the political tides.

If those 140 people are still working at Heritage, my guess is they are hardly movers and shakers, so no, you can't rightfully assume these people have any influence, let alone credibility.

I scanned through that list and barely recognized more than four or five of the names in that CNN link.

SO in other words, 4.6% of the Trump executive branch were Heritage. I'd like to see how many Obama or Biden staffers had links to hardcore left leaning groups. Probably more.

The point is this, we can throw around meaningless numbers like the "140 heritage Foundation on staff" or we can argue the merits of the legislations in the works or enacted.

Right now Joe has a few months before the election to rattle some windows in swing states with good corridor passenger trains and other than Wisconsin, it's not happening. There's no Detroit-Cinci or Detroit-Cleveland passenger train, no Cleveland-Pittsburgh daytime train. Just this FRA map that is about as coherent as a drunk after a night of malort.

eolesen wrote: ↑Mon Jul 15, 2024 11:15 am Some people are under the mistaken impression that the only way you can facilitate Commerce is through the movement of boxes.

How much of our economy is now services or banking, and how many of the people engaged in those sectors are likely to use Amtrak for a day trip?

Good point -- and even boxes only move at the direction of people, many of whom tend to be concentrated in the NEC.

In 2021, the movers and shakers of the Trump Administration moved to various law firms, financial houses, and television network consultancies throughout the national capital region. If Trump wins, the 47th Presidency will staff up with Senatorial confirmation and restricted schedule (political) Civil Service jobs far faster than it did in 2017.

What does that mean? The Administrator of FRA will be an anti passenger rail person in short order.

The shooting this past weekend changed the dynamic of the 2024 election, imo. “Battle Speed, vortator.”