Cong. John Mica lost House, considered for transportation secretary

[Devil's Advocate]

Bill Shuster won reelection handily so I'm not sure why we're so excited about John Mica being replaced. Not to mention the humongous elephant in the room that we're not allowed to discuss. Looks as though Amtrak Unlimited is every bit as irrationally exuberant today as it has ever been.

Who is Bill Shuster? Never heard of him; Has he been as much an outspoken and unreasonable critic of Amtrak as John Mica?

Bill Shuster replaced John Mica as Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman in the 113th Congress back in 2013. Bill Shuster introduced The Passenger Rail Reform and Investment Act of 2015, also known as PRRIA (H.R. 749), that requires Amtrak to reverse food and beverage losses within five years.

I fail to see why the subject of Amtrak is sometimes judged as a partisan issue. Amtrak is there to serve the American people. Serving the American people should be in the interest of both parties. I just never understood where John Mica's interests were and I am glad that he is gone. The populist president elect must now be held to his promise to rebuild our passenger rail infrastructure.

Or the "angry American" people who helped elect Trump, view Amtrak as a special-interest folly, and it will be killed off quickly (faster than Obama-care).

Again, no.

I understand that some people here may be upset their candidate lost, but can we please stop with the nonsense?

Why no?

I don't see even a slightest hint that anyone who's now headed to Washington, has any interest at all in Amtrak. The talk about transit and infrastructure has never mentioned Amtrak by name (not like there are too many different LD train companies in America to remember all their names).

Its total fantasy to think that Amtrak has gotten any kind of clear-track-ahead signal by anyone.

It is also by the very nature of your argument that Amtrak might be left alone since they don't quite know what it is and does.

Except that they seem to be acutely aware that Obama supported it and that seems to be more than enough to hate/halt/kill it in today's GOP.

 

[Ziv]

After the Amtrak accident near Philadelphia, Trump tweeted, " The only one to fix the infrastructure of our country is me - roads, airports, bridges. I know how to build, pols only know how to talk! "

So he seems to have been thinking that he was going to "fix" the problem that caused the accident, i.e. the lack of PTC, perhaps. I don't think a Manhattan person is going to be against rail, it plays too big a role in a New Yorkers life.

Could he be thinking of privatizing the NEC and spinning off the rest? Maybe, but I doubt it.

 

[Carolina Special]

Any infrastructure spending bill, assuming it happens, is more likely to pass under a president from the same party: that's the nature of the beast.

It will be Amtrak and their friends job to lobby for a piece of the pie in what looks to be a wide open field, as nobody was planning on what just happened.

Federal funding for the California HSR is likely dead, but I doubt Amtrak will be. There is too much local support across the country in both parties. And even Mica supported passenger rail in Florida.

 

[SP&S]

What is that old supposedly Chinese curse - May you live in interesting times? Well, welcome to interesting times.

 

[Devil's Advocate]

It will be Amtrak and their friends job to lobby for a piece of the pie in what looks to be a wide open field, as nobody was planning on what just happened.

Good point. Now that green science is out and patriotic pollution is back in vogue perhaps Amtrak can find a coal company to pair up with and help fund the development of a new generation of passenger rail locomotives which would appeal to the Oracle of Appalachia.

 

[Albo5000]

It will be Amtrak and their friends job to lobby for a piece of the pie in what looks to be a wide open field, as nobody was planning on what just happened.

Good point. Now that green science is out and patriotic pollution is back in vogue perhaps Amtrak can find a coal company to pair up with and help fund the development of a new generation of passenger rail locomotives which would appeal to the Oracle of Appalachia.

But wont it all be clean coal?

 

[Bob Dylan]

" ..the Answer my friend is Blowin'in the Wind.. "

 

[NorthShore]

When even the ranking Democratic Congressman on the transportation committee, a Chicagoan (and my district's representative) does not seem to understand or appreciate the importance of long distance rail service, I'm not extremely excited about the possibilities. At least he is committed to infrastructure improvements and the better development of a Midwest High Speed Rail corridor. Perhaps such is where one focus will shift. But, unfortunately, it isn't sexy to fund new railcars or offer meal service subsidies. An elected official can't stand in front of cameras championing how he brings back bacon for "jobs" and infrastructure improvements to pay back contractors that will kick back to one's campaign fund when it doesn't so clearly directly benefit a grasp on political power, um I mean the home district.....even if the passenger rail service it does assist immensely supports the economy, jobs, and local taxes for its constituents and their city.

 

[neroden]

Bill Shuster won reelection handily so I'm not sure why we're so excited about John Mica being replaced. Not to mention the humongous elephant in the room that we're not allowed to discuss. Looks as though Amtrak Unlimited is every bit as irrationally exuberant today as it has ever been.

Who is Bill Shuster? Never heard of him; Has he been as much an outspoken and unreasonable critic of Amtrak as John Mica?

Bill Shuster replaced John Mica as Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman in the 113th Congress back in 2013. Bill Shuster introduced The Passenger Rail Reform and Investment Act of 2015, also known as PRRIA (H.R. 749), that requires Amtrak to reverse food and beverage losses within five years.

Shuster did not write that provision, however. That was Mica's pet provision.

 

[neroden]

What is that old supposedly Chinese curse - May you live in interesting times? Well, welcome to interesting times.

It's been "interesting" in the US since the President was selected by a 5-4 vote of unelected judges, two of whom had conflicts of interest, back in 2000. That was something I *never* thought I'd see happen.

This was just an election.

 

[neroden]

WIth this sweep of government, Amtrak could likely be no more.

No. Amtrak's support has always been in Congress, even with the same party holding the Presidency and both houses.

Amtrak somehow survived the Bush Jr. years, when Bush proposed zeroing out Amtrak *every single year*, and had Republican control of both houses of Congress for six years. On top of that, Amtrak had gotten into a financial mess under Downs, which had been made worse under Warrington. Somehow Congress kept providing funding.

I think Amtrak is in a much safer position right now than it was in 2000.

 

[sldispatcher]

As a conservative, I disagreed with Mica's tactics. I line up more Trumpian with his assessment of our passenger rail infrastructure is so far behind other countries. Unfortunately, most want to attack the problem with just throwing more money at the problem. I think California can benefit from high speed rail, but are they and the feds willing to address the problems of enormously costly regulations requiring so many "environmental impact" studies, etc. that just serve to pad pockets?

I have been saddened by the overall structure of Amtrak for many years now. It is stuck in a time warp for those of us outside of corridors. I'm ready for a radical makeover.

Labor hamstrings it with costs.

Congress hamstrings it with chronic underfunding.

Freight railroads destroy on time performance.

Onboard service is below the expectation for the price.

And Amtrak appears to have some institutional/corporate issues that there is a refusal to change (accounting, middle management, etc.)

It's time for fresh ideas and a new approach.

 

[neroden]

The core EIS regulations are pretty reasonable honestly. Though the 4(f) rules about never ever displacing parkland are overkill, and need to be relaxed (in favor of being allowed to make substitute parkland). EISes are great. If done well, they give a comprehensive and clear overview of what the project will do, what risks it poses to nature and humans, and how to address those risks. I've read a lot of them, they're super useful documents for the public, and they can be done quite quickly when there are no litigious jerks trying to find excuses to sue.

The Buy America regulations are a disaster.

 

[Anderson]

As I said in a message to a friend last night, "The Toupee is down. Repeat, The Toupee is down."

I will say that one thing we might see (and I'm actually somewhat optimistic about this possibility) would be Trump taking an axe to the EIS process (and indeed invoking federal preemption in some fashion to run over CA's EIS processes in the future). Basically, see this as construction lobby vs consulting firm lobby. Trump seems to fall into the former's camp given his campaign tacks (and I suspect he'd love to take a bat to some NIMBYs given the Television City affair). Making ten thousand construction jobs at the cost of perhaps a few hundred consultants seems like a palatable trade.

[Edit: To clarify, I see two points of attack here. One is the time required to make a study happen. Knocking this down by 50% would be reasonable (e.g. shooting for a two-year cycle instead of 3-4 years). The other is reducing the number of "points of attack" for lawsuits and derailing objections, which is where stuff often goes bad. Something which merely raised the burden for "stop the project" lawsuits (the Purple Line shrimp comes to mind, as does the FEC archaeology case) would go a long way. Another thing would be to make it easier to simply force the suits into "money fights" (e.g. only allow someone to seek compensation rather than an injunction if they're complaining about, say, property value impact).]

I really don't see him zeroing out the Amtrak budget in a proposal (nor do I see such a proposal, if made, going anywhere...such proposals went basically nowhere earlier this year, arguably under a more hostile climate). I also see Obama not being on the stage as a good thing since it pulls a lightning rod out of circulation for the GOP at the moment. It won't be Obama's stuff, it'll be Trump's stuff...but on this front it would be really odd to see a bunch of Dems try to kill a significant (if lower-salience) priority for their party. If anything, I could see him pushing a plan which would provide some limited support to CAHSR in exchange for most of the money going elsewhere.

My gut says that Wick Moorman (a highly competent railroad executive) being in charge of Amtrak means that the head of Amtrak will be able to talk the right language with Trump's people.

Also, one thing to consider positively? Generally speaking, Trump did not care about the party platform. Some schmuck threw in a line about Amtrak being a "very expensive railroad", but that thing was basically thrown on everyone's seats about four hours before the vote amid a pile of other stuff and passed amid no debate. It represents the views, in essence, of a committee of perhaps 100 people and it did not mention defunding Amtrak (the most offensive item was a line on food service).

Amtrak aside, I could also see him slamming through some RRIF loans to folks like FEC/AAF. I mean, hell, the money's already there...$30-35bn (IIRC) can go a long frakking way towards some projects and he wouldn't even need Congress to sign off on it. One shenanigan I'd pull in his shoes if I wanted to make this happen? Allow applicants to use projected government subsidies to help secure the loan and then if the loans go bad, it can rhetorically become Congress's fault. Also slip some language in exempting these loans from full NEPA reviews.

Anyhow, I think there are reasons to be optimistic, not least being where Trump's instincts seem to lie.

 

[neroden]

As I said in a message to a friend last night, "The Toupee is down. Repeat, The Toupee is down."

I will say that one thing we might see (and I'm actually somewhat optimistic about this possibility) would be Trump taking an axe to the EIS process (and indeed invoking federal preemption in some fashion to run over CA's EIS processes in the future). Basically, see this as construction lobby vs consulting firm lobby. Trump seems to fall into the former's camp given his campaign tacks (and I suspect he'd love to take a bat to some NIMBYs given the Television City affair). Making ten thousand construction jobs at the cost of perhaps a few hundred consultants seems like a palatable trade.

[Edit: To clarify, I see two points of attack here. One is the time required to make a study happen. Knocking this down by 50% would be reasonable (e.g. shooting for a two-year cycle instead of 3-4 years). The other is reducing the number of "points of attack" for lawsuits and derailing objections, which is where stuff often goes bad. Something which merely raised the burden for "stop the project" lawsuits (the Purple Line shrimp comes to mind, as does the FEC archaeology case) would go a long way. Another thing would be to make it easier to simply force the suits into "money fights" (e.g. only allow someone to seek compensation rather than an injunction if they're complaining about, say, property value impact).]

I strongly believe that injunctions should be reserved for irreparable environmental damage, like driving endangered species extinct. I'd include demolishing people's houses as a category which you should be able to get an injunction for, if you can prove that the EIS did not analyze the risks right. And chopping down mature trees. But if you're claiming something dumb like noise or parking or property value or whatever, it should be thrown into money damages immediately. And if you're making an archaeology claim, you'd better have an archaeologist to testify. The Purple Line shrimp case should have been thrown out as frivolous as the state had already looked for the shrimp and found that they were not there, and the complainants didn't have any contrary evidence.
The best lawsuits I've seen are basically "You lied about the project" suits against EISes, like the one Milwaukee won against a giant highway project, and those should still be valid.

(Also, California does seem to have a particularly problematic EIS system compared to the rest of the country, but the federal government can't really change that!)

 

[Anderson]

As I said in a message to a friend last night, "The Toupee is down. Repeat, The Toupee is down."

I will say that one thing we might see (and I'm actually somewhat optimistic about this possibility) would be Trump taking an axe to the EIS process (and indeed invoking federal preemption in some fashion to run over CA's EIS processes in the future). Basically, see this as construction lobby vs consulting firm lobby. Trump seems to fall into the former's camp given his campaign tacks (and I suspect he'd love to take a bat to some NIMBYs given the Television City affair). Making ten thousand construction jobs at the cost of perhaps a few hundred consultants seems like a palatable trade.

[Edit: To clarify, I see two points of attack here. One is the time required to make a study happen. Knocking this down by 50% would be reasonable (e.g. shooting for a two-year cycle instead of 3-4 years). The other is reducing the number of "points of attack" for lawsuits and derailing objections, which is where stuff often goes bad. Something which merely raised the burden for "stop the project" lawsuits (the Purple Line shrimp comes to mind, as does the FEC archaeology case) would go a long way. Another thing would be to make it easier to simply force the suits into "money fights" (e.g. only allow someone to seek compensation rather than an injunction if they're complaining about, say, property value impact).]

I strongly believe that injunctions should be reserved for irreparable environmental damage, like driving endangered species extinct. I'd include demolishing people's houses as a category which you should be able to get an injunction for, if you can prove that the EIS did not analyze the risks right. And chopping down mature trees. But if you're claiming something dumb like noise or parking or property value or whatever, it should be thrown into money damages immediately. And if you're making an archaeology claim, you'd better have an archaeologist to testify. The Purple Line shrimp case should have been thrown out as frivolous as the state had already looked for the shrimp and found that they were not there, and the complainants didn't have any contrary evidence.
The best lawsuits I've seen are basically "You lied about the project" suits against EISes, like the one Milwaukee won against a giant highway project, and those should still be valid.

(Also, California does seem to have a particularly problematic EIS system compared to the rest of the country, but the federal government can't really change that!)

I'll generally agree, though in the houses cases (or similar) I'd still want a substantial error to be required as part of the complaint in order to get such an injunction (and this brings up another type of issue, namely "demanding something be reconsidered which likely would not have impacted the end result").

With archaeology, I'd also suggest that it might be worth considering limits on what they can seek to do, even with evidence. Delaying a project for six months and conducting an excavation is probably reasonable (this actually happened in Williamsburg when they were widening 199: They completed other portions of the project first, did a dig, and then finished the project after they had found what they could find in the time they were given), as is pressing for another alternative to be selected if practical. However, the mere possible presence of incidental artifacts which would at best contribute a cursory amount of understanding to ancient hunter-gatherer cultures should not be grounds to stop something in its tracks (which was the argument in the AAF case...it basically amounted to "but we might find an arrowhead while putting a second track back in place" if I recall the suit properly).

Basically what I want to see is an end to foot-dragging suits.

As to CA (in particular), I do have to wonder whether or not some degree of federal preemption couldn't be brought to bear under a combination of the Supremacy Clause and the Interstate Commerce Clause. Granted, this would be more likely if it were happening somewhere like Delaware or Indiana and the project was a pass-through project in present form (e.g. Michigan was willing to take up the tab on Porter and NS/CSX were cooperating but Indiana was obstructing them from being able to complete the project and get to Chicago).

 

[Devil's Advocate]

California is the one and only state legally allowed to implement stricter than federal environmental protections. Apparently even that is one too many.

Bill Shuster won reelection handily so I'm not sure why we're so excited about John Mica being replaced. Not to mention the humongous elephant in the room that we're not allowed to discuss. Looks as though Amtrak Unlimited is every bit as irrationally exuberant today as it has ever been.

Who is Bill Shuster? Never heard of him; Has he been as much an outspoken and unreasonable critic of Amtrak as John Mica?

Bill Shuster replaced John Mica as Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman in the 113th Congress back in 2013. Bill Shuster introduced The Passenger Rail Reform and Investment Act of 2015, also known as PRRIA (H.R. 749), that requires Amtrak to reverse food and beverage losses within five years.

Shuster did not write that provision, however. That was Mica's pet provision.

...And now Shuster is in charge of defending and enforcing it as a core provision of a bill he personally introduced.

 

[sldispatcher]

. I've read a lot of them, they're super useful documents for the public, and they can be done quite quickly when there are no litigious jerks trying to find excuses to sue.

The Buy America regulations are a disaster.

I think the time frame it takes to complete them are inhibitors to success. And the lawsuits...well......they are a problem. I also, as conservative as I am, do not think that "Buy America" is smart. It ought to be "buy the best".

 

[sldispatcher]

I think overall, the obstructionist style Republicans may have to eat some crow before this is all over with.

I'm quite optimistic that Trump and the Congress will push through a more aggressive pro-rail policy than any prior Republican or Democrat administration.

We all know on here that passenger rail requires subsidies. It always will. It just doesn't touch enough people in a reliable, comfortable way. Long Distance service needs minimal twice daily service to be a truly effective transportation alternative in my book. Coast Starlight and the NYC/DC-CHI routes should be the first to be doubled or tripled in my book. That requires money.

BUT, the onboard product for sleeper services/dining really should be wrestled away from AMTRAK proper. I'd even be happy for a wholly owned subsidiary of AMTRAK, if that is possible, to operate the onboard product with a different labor/commissary/comfort collection of offerings and cost structure.

Understandably to a degree, AMTRAK has been a pariah and punching bag that was always hamstrung. The establishment type republicans have been shoved to the side and are now owed nothing.

Again, with new President of Amtrak and a new President of the US (both business minded and business backgrounds who love to succeed), let's see how they roll!

 

[jis]

Suffice it to say that usually the President of the US does not have a whole heck of a lot of influence on Amtrak, mostly by omission. They seldom exercise even the control they are able to have, and let things just bungle along. However, it would be interesting to see what President Trump proposes in his first bu7dget. That will give a good indication of where his administration stands. Of course what Congress will do is a different matter. I have been listening to PAC calls from various PACs and there are very few that think the relationship between the President and Congress will be all cordial bonhomie.

 

[Devil's Advocate]

Suffice it to say that usually the President of the US does not have a whole heck of a lot of influence on Amtrak, mostly by omission. They seldom exercise even the control they are able to have, and let things just bungle along. However, it would be interesting to see what President Trump proposes in his first bu7dget. That will give a good indication of where his administration stands. Of course what Congress will do is a different matter. I have been listening to PAC calls from various PACs and there are very few that think the relationship between the President and Congress will be all cordial bonhomie.

Cheerful cooperation? Maybe not. Aligned in lock step against anything and everything that Obama has ever requested, instructed, enacted, or supported? Absoeffenlutely. Relaxed cheeriness isn't what the GOP is really about anyhow. Nearly all of their biggest and brightest proposals involve unwinding and/or discarding someone else's ideas. I've only seen Trump spontaneously laugh once, at a joke about Hillary being hit by a car, so I wouldn't expect much in the way of cheerful leadership from him or McConnell or Ryan or whoever else ends up in control over the House.

 

[Karl1459]

Good that Mica is gone but Amtrak could be toast. He was not alone in his antipathy for it. Trump is likely to go along with the fairly tale that Amtrak could be "sold" and run privately. But there is still the factor of all the Republican districts and states that Amtrak routes run through.

It all depends on how you define "profit". If a true "private" company was to run Amtrak with a contract for services to run x amount of train service, for y billion dollars a year, then if there was money left over at the end of the year it would be a "profit". The fiction is national rail passenger service can operate without government support, just as highways and air passenger service require government support. An argument could be made that if Amtrak were to run "under budget" that that would represent "profit".

The enticing thought is this could be a mult-year contract which would make capital investment a possibility.

 

[Andrew]

So how do you folks think a Trump Administration would impact Amtrak's Northeast Corridor?

 

[Bob Dylan]

So how do you folks think a Trump Administration would impact Amtrak's Northeast Corridor?

Best guess: Talk about "Privatization", then defer to the desires of the Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer D-NY and the other Washington and New York Big Wigs who are the Core Riders that make Acela FC Amtrak's Money Cow!

 

[trainviews]

I honestly think all bets are off. Trump has been tweeting one thing one day and the opposite the other. Neither facts, knowledge nor his own previous statements seem to matter much to him. Economywise his proposals for tax cuts and spending doesn't add up at all. He likes big shiny things better than mundane people stuff like health care, but whether it's going to be roads or rails, there's no clue (he might be a New Yorker, but I doubt he has been in a train for many, many years, if ever). So which are going to become reality?

But I agree Congress will matter more, and here two things will determine the outcome: How long and forcefully Obamahate will linger. If we see an all out "erase everything" rampage, anything transit might get killed, as Obama tried to push it, even if unsuccessful, at least since 2010. The other is how the powerstruggle within the Republican caucus will play out. There's definately an "any government spending, especially near any large cities is bad"-wing, and they probably smell blood. We might see a congress which is every bit as paralyzed as the current one, where internal Republican infighting has been as much the cause as lack of bipartisanship. Public transport might end up collateral damage in that fight.

Or maybe not. But there is at least as much cause for pessimism as for optimism. There's a potential upside not seen since the stimulus in 2008-10, but in contrary to that period there's also a real danger of total slash and burn. Most likely scenario: Amtrak will fly under the radar and continue slogging along without any of the fundamental problems getting solved.