PTC Showdown approaching (resolved)

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Actually the hold up right now is on the Democratic side as far as the latest I have heard. The house, which is otherwise really not able to do anything at the moment has actually passed an extension. But in the Senate the Democrats have threatened to filibuster the bill as they want it as part of a renewal of a larger transportation bill and are not prepared to let the Republicans pass single pet issues.
 
The House Republicans are still at fault here. They were supposed to review and mark up the transportation bill *nine months ago*, and they've just been fooling around introducing anti-Obamacare resolutions and holding Benghazi hearings and threatening to defund Planned Parenthood.

I can see why the Senate is mad at them; the Senate passed its version of the transportation bill a very long time ago.
 
NS has just served notice of discontinuance of service effective 1 Jan.... 1 Dec for hazardous materials except those in the pipeline.

http://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?4,3871040

Ted Cruz may finally be able to shut down something at least, starting with his filtered water supply.....
 
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Where "something" is simply "kick the can a little further down the road".

I am pleasantly surprised that it was 3 years and not something dumb like 6 months so that the game could be repeated over and over.
 
jis said:
NS has just served notice of discontinuance of service effective 1 Jan.... 1 Dec for hazardous materials except those in the pipeline.

http://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?4,3871040

Ted Cruz may finally be able to shut down something at least, starting with his filtered water supply.....
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Not sure how they can sell this in the name of safety. Surely it is inherently more dangerous to send said hazardous substances by road? PTC or no.
 
The House's highway funding bill is kind of terrible, and *very* different from the Senate's bill, so we're basically going to the conference committee stage now. The question is whether something passable will come out of the conference committee. It appears that the conference committee can send a PTC extension to the floor without sending the whole damn transportation bill to the floor, so it may be possible to get early action on this.
 
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Something has to pass before the Highway Trust Fund turns into a pumpkin. That will be too painful for too many of even the obstructionist blowhards. The contingency plan in place is to pass a simple separate bill just for PTC, but the Plan A appears to be to attache it to the highway bill.
 
Well, the thing is, nothing bad happens *immediately* if the Highway Trust Fund runs out. It just can't make payments after that date. Obviously it completely screws the budgetary planning of state DOTs for *next* year, but if they let it run out and waited two or three months to refill it, nothing would happen. Particularly for the northern half of the country if those three months were in the winter no-construction season when they can't actually do any work.

I would therefore expect Congress to dither and filibuster well past the date of the fund running out. Remember what they did with the "debt limit" ceiling? Three times? They've also allowed certain "must pass" tax policies, like the "AMT patch" to expire in the fall, and then reinstated them retroactively before April 15 -- many times. It's no way to run a government, but it's the government we've had most of my life.
 
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jis said:
The bottom line is I will be more than surprised if an extension to the PTC deadline is not a law by 31st Dec 2015.
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That, I believe. I could see them passing it as late as December, though. :-(
 
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jis said:
The bottom line is I will be more than surprised if an extension to the PTC deadline is not a law by 31st Dec 2015.
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The industry honestly needs it done well before then, though. The disruptions for passenger rail alone would be particularly severe as train service is suspended in advance of the pending deadline. You can't just shut the trains down overnight if a December 31st reprieve didn't come. Both intercity and commuter rail passengers would have to plan for alternate arrangements; Revenue would be adversely affected for months.

Congress likes to wait until the 11th hour - or even slightly after - to get things done. In this case, much of the damage will already have occurred.
 
My guess is it will happen by mid-November at the latest. Because by then Amtrak will have to start issuing notices of service suspension already, and freight railroads will have to start issuing notices of service suspension like BNSF's. Ideally it should have been done by the end of October.

From what I am hearing, STB is unlikely to step in to force service continuance with guarantee of no punitive fines. There may be political motivations working behind all that. I don;t know.
 
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jis said:
From what I am hearing, STB is unlikely to step in to force service continuance
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It's kind of their actual *job* to force service continuance; it's the job they inherited from the ICC. I know we've got a lot of government officials who don't do their jobs or know what their jobs are, but still.
 
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Looks like a done deal. The House managed to pass a temporary transportation bill and I'm sure the final compromise version with the senate will include the PTC extension. I'm sure President Obama will sign the bill (he, unlike some House Republicans isn't someone willing to shut down the government - or railroads - on some idealogical issue) and we can forget about a shutdown until 2018 when, I'm sure, a few railroads will continue to drag their feet on the issue. But by then 90 percent of the passenger rail trackage will have PTC.
 
Actually, at one point President Obama did threaten to veto a PTC extension bill, but I think Senator Booker among others had a calm tete a tete with him and after that we haven't heard that piece of belligerence from him. I know that at least I wrote off a missive to Senator Booker's office asking him to intervene, hoping that his chief sidekick who we spoke to at length during the Day on the Hill remembered me and a few of my friends who also sent of similar missive to his office.
 
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MikefromCrete said:
Looks like a done deal. The House managed to pass a temporary transportation bill and I'm sure the final compromise version with the senate will include the PTC extension. I'm sure President Obama will sign the bill (he, unlike some House Republicans isn't someone willing to shut down the government - or railroads - on some idealogical issue) and we can forget about a shutdown until 2018 when, I'm sure, a few railroads will continue to drag their feet on the issue. But by then 90 percent of the passenger rail trackage will have PTC.
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The Senate has passed the 3 week transportation funding extension: The Hill Senate approves three-week highway bill. The bill is now headed to Obama to sign.

If I am following this story correctly, the 3 week extension bill contains the 3 year extension plus 2 year option for PTC, so the PTC deadline problem is about to be fixed. Regardless of what happens with the multi-year transportation authorization in November. The threats and lobbying from the railroad companies has paid off for them. Boy, was this a messy process, but that has been the norm for Capital Hill since the 2010 mid-term elections.
 
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