Christie withholds Amtrak payments from NJT

[Carolina Special]

Per Bloomberg due to recent derailments. Claims lack of proper maintenance.

I'm at doctors so someone else can link/elaborate.

 

[dlagrua]

As there have been two derailing incidents within two weeks, It is alleged that Amtrak is not doing proper maintenance at Penn Station . The damaged switching machine has blocked access to six tracks in the station causing a logjam of Amtrak NEC and NJT trains. Everything is currently off schedule. According to reports its is going to take a bit of time to repair the problem.

 

[John Bobinyec]

How is Christie's action going to help exactly? Let's see, if he withholds money from Amtrak, there'll be even less money for Amtrak to do proper maintenance, leading to more derailments ...

Perhaps he doesn't realize that Amtrak has more leverage - all they have to do is keep the signals at Stop so that the NJ Transit trains simply stay off of Amtrak's tracks. No money - no Clear signals.

jb

 

[jis]

Per Bloomberg due to recent derailments. Claims lack of proper maintenance.

I'm at doctors so someone else can link/elaborate.

Irony abounds in Christie who presides over NJTransit with one of the worse safety and maintenance record, complaining. Of course he is delighted to stop spending money on passenger rail given any odd excuse.

 

[railiner]

Amtrak is coming under heavy fire, from all sides, (possibly deservedly so) over these incidents. The governor's of NY and NJ, the heads of MTA (LIRR) and NJT, are among them...

If Amtrak is not careful, perhaps the government will take

control away from Amtrak, and have the LIRR and NJT via some new joint agency take over the track responsibility...perhaps even the Port Authority, since they are already a bi-state rail (PATH) agency...

Any thoughts on this?

 

[Bob Dylan]

The Port Authority?? Talk about jumping out of the Frying Pan into the Fire!!

"You can't be Serious! And don't call me Shirley!"

 

[John Bobinyec]

Amtrak is coming under heavy fire, from all sides, (possibly deservedly so) over these incidents. The governor's of NY and NJ, the heads of MTA (LIRR) and NJT, are among them...

If Amtrak is not careful, perhaps the government will take

control away from Amtrak, and have the LIRR and NJT via some new joint agency take over the track responsibility...perhaps even the Port Authority, since they are already a bi-state rail (PATH) agency...

Any thoughts on this?

Who would want to take over responsibility for the maintenance of everything and be held accountable for it, given the inadequate funding that's provided for it?

jb

 

[Devil's Advocate]

Per Bloomberg due to recent derailments. Claims lack of proper maintenance.

I'm at doctors so someone else can link/elaborate.

Irony abounds in Christie who presides over NJTransit with one of the worse safety and maintenance record, complaining. Of course he is delighted to stop spending money on passenger rail given any odd excuse.

Irony? More like proud hypocrisy from a walking beanbag. Maybe we should call it Hippocristi?

 

[Lonestar648]

Christie is thrilled to point the safety finger at some other agency other than his own NJT. With his state's financial issues, here is an excuse to make the public think he is saving them tons of money and making the system better, when in reality he is making it worse.

 

[PerRock]

Amtrak is coming under heavy fire, from all sides, (possibly deservedly so) over these incidents. The governor's of NY and NJ, the heads of MTA (LIRR) and NJT, are among them...

If Amtrak is not careful, perhaps the government will take

control away from Amtrak, and have the LIRR and NJT via some new joint agency take over the track responsibility...perhaps even the Port Authority, since they are already a bi-state rail (PATH) agency...

Any thoughts on this?

Not really sure how they would do that NYP is entirely owned by Amtrak. They could however try and move as much traffic as possible to GCT.

peter

 

[JoeBas]

Christie withholds Amtrak payments from NJT

Time for train traffic problems in Secaucus Jct.

 

[PRR 60]

Statement from Amtrak CEO Wick Moorman, 4/6/2017:

NEW YORK – I apologize to everyone who has been inconvenienced by the recent delays and cancellations at New York Penn Station. It’s our job to make sure that commuters and intercity passengers can safely and reliably travel along the Northeast Corridor and we know we let them down with these recent derailments. Our customers and partners deserve better. I have just visited with our hard-working crews and we expect to have all tracks at New York Penn Station at full service tomorrow.

Based on our recent investigations, we can confirm that problems with our tracks in Penn Station were a cause of both recent derailments. With the March 24 Acela Express derailment, we had a mismatch between two pieces of rail that connected together in a curve, which created a step-like condition that contributed to a wheel of our Acela Express trainset derailing. This week’s NJ Transit derailment appears to have been caused by a wide gauge condition due to defective wood ties.

We are working around the clock to both repair the damage caused by the second incident and to ensure that we have no other track problems in this busiest and most important terminal. The immediate steps we’ve taken to fix the issues we’ve identified so far include:

• Upon discovering this misaligned rail, we immediately surveyed all other sites at the station that could possibly have the same condition, and we can confirm that none were found.
• We have changed our specs to eliminate the possibility of a mismatched condition.
• We have launched joint inspections with the Federal Railroad Administration to ensure that all aspects of our infrastructure at New York Penn Station are in good order. We will share the full results of these inspections with both NJ Transit and Long Island Railroad so that they understand what we’ve found.
• We are assembling a team that will be dedicated to address any maintenance deficiencies at the station and will reprioritize our work and support of various other projects to ensure, first and foremost, the basic condition of the terminal.
• I am leading a comprehensive review of our maintenance practices and Engineering department, including bringing in independent experts, to ensure we have the right processes and organization to maintain and improve our infrastructure.

For more than 40 years Amtrak has worked alongside commuter rail lines on the Northeast Corridor. It is a proven partnership and we are dedicated to providing the levels of service necessary so that people can rely on rail travel. We are committed to providing a consistently reliable transportation service for everyone – and to provide a better experience for the customers of Amtrak and our commuter partners.

Statement, with photos

 

[railiner]

Amtrak is coming under heavy fire, from all sides, (possibly deservedly so) over these incidents. The governor's of NY and NJ, the heads of MTA (LIRR) and NJT, are among them...

If Amtrak is not careful, perhaps the government will take

control away from Amtrak, and have the LIRR and NJT via some new joint agency take over the track responsibility...perhaps even the Port Authority, since they are already a bi-state rail (PATH) agency...

Any thoughts on this?

Not really sure how they would do that NYP is entirely owned by Amtrak. They could however try and move as much traffic as possible to GCT.

peter

A precedent was made a number of years ago, in a related sense...

After Amtrak came under fire for its dispatching of trains in the New York terminal area by tenant, LIRR, a joint responsibility operation was set up, and continues to this day (NJT has no share in this)...

So even though Amtrak is still the "landlord", they have yielded some control...

*

I read Mr. Moorman's statement, accepting responsibility with a good explanation, as well as corrective steps being taken...I think it was well said...

 

[jis]

LIRR is not a tenant. It actually is a partial owner in the sense that it paid real money to acquire its slots from PC, and Amtrak has no control over those and cannot take them away. The rearrangement of dispatching was merely regularizing the logical consequence of that ownership. It forms absolutely no precedent for anything since that ownership relationship predates Amtrak control of anything.

Rest assured there is zero likelihood that a bankrupt NJT will take over anything from Amtrak. Just won't happen. And if it happened it would be an utter disaster for the NEC and Penn Station since NJT on its best days is managed much worse than Amtrak on its worst day. We will be guaranteed a poorly maintained 60mph railroad though NJ

If you want to get a feel for what the PA will do just look at the fiasco PATH is. Nobody in their right mind would want the PA to try to run a railroad.

 

[railiner]

Okay...

 

[Green Maned Lion]

Let us remember that intitals are not the only reason NJTs maintence base is referred to as the Mickey Mouse Club by everyone- including senior management.

 

[west point]

Though this action stinks you have to agree it was a smart POLITICAL move. Anything to divert the NJT riders attention away from their incompetent mismanagement.

 

[Thirdrail7]

Let's see. Underfunded MTA wants to team with underfunded NJT (the group that decimated their capital budget for operating expenses and added MORE trains to the mix last year) to take over Amtrak's underfunded operation of Penn station.

Let's merge the mess into a new division named Conrail-Depleted Assets.

 

[John Bobinyec]

I'm reminded of Boardman's comment that the NEC trains are profitable - then adding under his breath, "above the rail." I wonder who he would have said is responsible for the track conditions in NYP.

The recent incidents underscore how ridiculous his comment was.

jb

 

[jis]

I'm reminded of Boardman's comment that the NEC trains are profitable - then adding under his breath, "above the rail." I wonder who he would have said is responsible for the track conditions in NYP.

The recent incidents underscore how ridiculous his comment was.

jb

Why is it ridiculous to say that a service is profitable above the rails if that is true? You don't seem to be making much sense I am afraid.
One could question the truth of the statement and analyze the financial statements and see what trackage charges are used while keeping in mind that Amtrak is not the only party responsible for funding maintenance of the NEC. It is more than likely that the commuter agencies do not pay what it costs to maintain the infrastructure which they use more intensively than Amtrak does, specially in NYP. It is complicated and given that fact, at least I find the current competition at who can be more holier than the next guy among all, that seem to be unable to run their trains safely and have been or are under FRA investigation, quite pitifully fascinating.

 

[John Bobinyec]

I'm reminded of Boardman's comment that the NEC trains are profitable - then adding under his breath, "above the rail." I wonder who he would have said is responsible for the track conditions in NYP.

The recent incidents underscore how ridiculous his comment was.

jb

Why is it ridiculous to say that a service is profitable above the rails if that is true? You don't seem to be making much sense I am afraid.
One could question the truth of the statement and analyze the financial statements and see what trackage charges are used while keeping in mind that Amtrak is not the only party responsible for funding maintenance of the NEC. It is more than likely that the commuter agencies do not pay what it costs to maintain the infrastructure which they use more intensively than Amtrak does, specially in NYP. It is complicated and given that fact, at least I find the current competition at who can be more holier than the next guy among all, that seem to be unable to run their trains safely and have been or are under FRA investigation, quite pitifully fascinating.

Although technically true (perhaps), it was grossly misleading. The "above the rail" part got lost. It let the politicians focus on getting rid of those "money losing long distance trains" as the way to solve all of Amtrak's problems. It wasted time, therefore, because instead of focusing on that, they should have been focusing on the part of Amtrak which is "below the wheels", which will become a huge money pit.

jb

 

[Carolina Special]

Profitable "above the rail". Isn't that like "earnings before the bad stuff"?

The bad stuff does count.

 

[Devil's Advocate]

I'm amazingly profitable before expenses myself. Just like Amtrak. h34r:

 

[jis]

Yet every transportation mode that claims any profitability is essentially profitable above the wheel, because all of the below the wheel stuff is publicly funded to a large extent. It is necessary to frame Amtrak service cost in the same framework to explain things to the Congresspeople.

This is in the same spirit that Neroden tries to tease out the actual OTR financial situation of the LD trains and finds many of them to be close to profitable or already so. Too bad Amtrak has not done so even though they are required to do so.

Unless the discussion can be framed with clear separation between over the rail and underlying infrastructure costs and revenues, we have no hope of moving the discussion forward in Congress and with the administration.

But I can see that some do not consider that important.

 

[John Bobinyec]

Yet every transportation mode that claims any profitability is essentially profitable above the wheel, because all of the below the wheel stuff is publicly funded to a large extent. It is necessary to frame Amtrak service cost in the same framework to explain things to the Congresspeople.

This is in the same spirit that Neroden tries to tease out the actual OTR financial situation of the LD trains and finds many of them to be close to profitable or already so. Too bad Amtrak has not done so even though they are required to do so.

Unless the discussion can be framed with clear separation between over the rail and underlying infrastructure costs and revenues, we have no hope of moving the discussion forward in Congress and with the administration.

But I can see that some do not consider that important.

So when the discussion is about the long distance trains, should any payments made to the host railroads be excluded? After all, that represents the under the wheel costs.

jb