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Way too early for the official FY2017 annual report to be released. Those typically are posted in the following February or March. Amtrak has issued a press release about the preliminary FY2017 ridership and revenue numbers that i assume WSJ based its story on. Press release webpage: Amtrak...

Reviving an old thread... The Maryland Purple Line project, after a year long delay due to a Federal judge, had a public ground breaking ceremony for start of construction on Monday, August 28, 2017. The judge came damn close to killing the project, but it managed to survive and get the...

The $177 million HSIPR grant for the Chicago to Quad Cities corridor came from FY2010 funding, which does not have the Sept, 2017 deadline that the ARRA stimulus grants did. Congress, AFAIK, did nothing to extend a funding extension for the Quad Cities grant, it was done by the US DOT and the...

Dang small odds I would venture. But there are enough of these incidents that it can make one wonder if Amtrak trains have a field of some sort that attracts heavy construction equipment or commercial vehicles to get stuck on or fall on the tracks. Looking at the news report, the guardrails on...

The Washington Post has a short news report on the incident, but it provides little additional information beyond that it occurred just south of the Woodbridge station and VRE had to bus passengers: Train strikes pedestrian in Northern Virginia. As noted, these incidents are unfortunately too...

Amtrak posted its FY2018 Appropriations Request (55 page PDF) a few days ago. A number of interesting items and capital projects cost estimates in it. Surprised no one noticed it for discussion in a new thread. It should be noted that this is Amtrak's request which it submits to Congress...

While I agree with the gist of much of your post, I started this thread to discuss the April monthly report. Let's leave discussion of the upcoming FY2018 budget battles, the Trump administration's budget proposals, and actions to threads on the FY2017 budget. Well, to the extent we can keep the...

The April 2017 Monthly Performance report is out. It was posted on the website several days ago, so Amtrak appears to be getting back to putting out the monthly reports around the end of the following month. I suspect the delays in getting the MPRs out were due to the new CFO and other new...

For information on the current status, the multiple studies, and challenges in restoring the Coast Daylight (CD) service, check the meetings and agenda documents for the Coast Rail Coordinating Council. Lots of stuff in there for anyone who wants to dive in. A skim read of the meeting documents...

I think the omnibus bill was the product of the conference committee. The House can pass a bill pretty quickly when the leadership wants to and has the votes. Which it has with the Democrats on board, The Senate can take longer if a Senator wants to slow the bill passage down, but the process...

The direction to provide funding for the Caltrain electrification project is a bit of good news. I suspect Minority Leader Pelosi and the 2 Democratic California Senators had a hand in this to make sure that the CA House Republican members would not be able to get the Trump administration to...

You are more optimistic on the decision process for the FY17 TIGER grant applications than I am. Perhaps the permanent federal employees will make the decisions as acting agency and department heads, but they will still get guidelines from the political appointees, starting with Secretary Chao...

The news is for the fiscal year 2017 appropriations. The LD trains and national network are funded through end of September. What will be in the FY 2018 appropriations is yet to be decided. But based on the outcome of the FY2017 appropriations process, odds are that most of Trump's...

I just posted this in the Trump and Amtrak budget cutting thread, but if we will have a thread for the actual FY2017 appropriations, it is more relevant to this thread for those interested in the actual language. A link to a House committee webpage with what is supposed to the final...

Found a link to a House committee webpage with what is supposed to the final appropriations bill. Excerpts from Division K PDF (warning nuts and bolts details): Other stuff: TIGER grant program survives for FY2017.

An early report from the Washington Post on what is in the FY2017 omnibus appropriations agreement: From another news report that didn't get specific, I suspect that much of the $105 million in additional funding is for the NEC. Regardless, the takeaway is that the big funding cut proposal is...

We are getting a clue in the fate of the Trump's Administration budget slashing proposals in the FY2017 appropriations. The federal government has been running on continuing resolutions since the start of October. The Hill reports that a budget agreement has been reached in Congress, so the...

When discussing the budget slashing proposals from the Trump administration, it is quite likely that President Trump himself has not even read the budget specifics for the various transportation department items, let alone has had said anything to his staff about funding the Amtrak LD routes...

No, Amtrak got a waiver from the FRA for the Buy America requirements for components in the Avelia (aka Acela II) 28 trainset order. The 100% Buy America rule applies to RRIF loan funding, which is one (major) reason the RRIF loan program has been underutilized. The waiver was granted for the...

This is off-topic for this thread about the entirely self-inflicted stupid very bad PR day for United Airline, but President Trump has not cut any funding for Amtrak. His administration released a budget guideline proposing deep cuts, but it is up to Congress to determine what the annual funding...