Subject: POLITICO's Morning Transportation: In budget fight, appropriators eye long TSA wait times — NTSB report on WMATA L’Enfant Plaza debacle expected Tuesday — Federal court sides with freight rail, quotes Steinbeck
From: Morning Transportation <[email-masked]>
To: <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 2 May 2016 08:03:16 -0600

By Martine Powers | 05/02/2016 10:00 AM EDT

With help from Jennifer Scholtes, Lauren Gardner and Heather Caygle

IN BUDGET FIGHT, APPROPRIATORS EYE TSA WAIT TIMES: The bad news: Security lines at airports around the country are expected to get a longer than ever this summer. The good news (at least for the travel industry): Those increasingly disruptive wait times may prod Congress to up appropriations for the Transportation Security Administration. Our own Jennifer Scholtes has a forecast this morning about how wait times and funding levels are going to play out. As she explains, "Plumping spending accounts at the security agency has never been a popular notion. But neither is the prospect of angry constituents tying up congressional phone lines with stories of snaking screening lanes and missed
 flights. And all signs say this year's security queues will far surpass those of years past."

The current situation: "Lawmakers in charge of divvying up federal dollars have yet to lay out their own proposals for funding the agency next year, leaving the president's fiscal 2017 budget request of $7.6 billion for TSA the only one on the table so far." But the concerns about this budgetary crunch is on the minds of both aviation insiders as well as lawmakers, Jen says. "After all, on most weeks they trudge twice through airport security themselves." Here's what some folks have to say about the issue:

- Jonathan Grella, U.S. Travel Association: "The stakes are high. People are watching. ... It's pretty clear that there's a communications gap between TSA and Congress. ... And it seems pretty evident that they need to talk more and reconcile this disconnect that's going on - because stealth might be good when you're talking security, but not when you're talking appropriations."

- Ross Feinstein, American Airlines: "At LAX, lines are going out the door to a whole 'nother terminal . ... The staffing model doesn't work right now."

- Rep. John Carter, head of the House subcommittee that funds TSA: "We know what he says his problems are, and we're looking at them. ... We're working on deciding what we're going to do, if anything."

- Christian Beckner, GWU's Center for Cyber and Homeland Security: "Because they're so constrained from a budget standpoint, and not wanting to increase fees ... I just don't see where the funds would come from in the current congressional environment to do anything about this issue. ... There's not any low-hanging fruit to pull money from elsewhere in the department."

Read Jen's full story here: http://go.politicoemail.com/?qs=82903a097337b980357b7b1cf6a1078ab58289770c3835845660f291d327bd65

IT'S MONDAY: Good morning and thanks for tuning into POLITICO's Morning Transportation, your daily tipsheet on all things trains, planes, automobiles and ports.

Happy belated May Day! Reach out: [email-masked] or @martinepowers.

"Little GTO, you're really lookin' fine/Three deuces and a four-speed and a 389/Listen to her tachin' up now, listen to her why-ee-eye-ine." (h/t Dr. David Lippman, father of POLITICO Playbook's Daniel Lippman, who bumped into MT during his tour of POLITICO's Rosslyn office on Friday afternoon.)

THIS WEEK: The House and Senate are in recess this week. Look out for big news from NTSB on Tuesday, explained below.

Tuesday: The National Transportation Safety Board is scheduled to announce the probable cause of the Jan. 2015 WMATA incident at L'Enfant Plaza, which killed one person and injured nearly 100 others. George Washington University's Center for Cyber and Homeland Security also holds its annual conference. And the Center for Strategic and International Studies holds a discussion on "The Future of the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration," with PHMSA Administrator Marie Therese Dominguez.

Wednesday: The State Department holds a meeting of the Shipping Coordinating Committee to prepare for the 96th session of the International Maritime Organization's Maritime Safety Committee.

Thursday: The United States Coast Guard holds a meeting of the Navigation Safety Advisory Council to discuss matters relating to maritime collisions, rammings, and groundings, Inland Rules of the Road, International Rules of the Road, navigation regulations and equipment, routing measures, marine information, diving safety, and aids to navigation systems.

OOPS: The Federal Railroad Administration continues to monitor a CSX freight train derailment that happened in northeast Washington D.C. on Sunday morning; no one was injured, but the train cars containing sodium hydroxide, calcium chloride, and ethanol were found to have leaked chemicals before being sealed. Though the derailment did not come into contact with Metro tracks, passenger service was interrupted between NoMa and Brookland stations. (Check out this dramatic photo of the derailment, from the Associated Press: bit.ly/24hqX63.)

And in other not-so-great Washington railway news, the Washington Post reported Sunday that the Federal Transit Administration spotted numerous track defects during inspections that took place throughout April. The documents from the FTA, now made public, also suggest that Metro employees knowingly ignore rules on setting handbrakes when parking trains, and that operators have overrun red lights at least five times since the FTA began safety oversight of the system.

ANSWER THE PHONE, I KNOW THAT YOU'RE HOME: House Transportation Chairman Bill Shuster and Senate Commerce Chairman John Thune finally had that long-awaited chat about FAA reauthorization - it happened over the phone on Thursday. The takeaway? Shuster needs "a few more weeks" to help the House "determine its course" on the future of the FAA bill, a GOP source told Heather Caygle. In the meantime, House lawmakers are waiting to hear more about Shuster's approach as they mull potential provisions to deal with post-Brussels terrorism risks. Heather's got more on those prospective changes, here.

TAKING SIDES: A federal appellate court declared Friday that it's backing the freight rail industry in an ongoing battle over whether Amtrak can act as both a commercial interest and a governmental regulatory authority when helping to determine which railroads get the most, and best, access to track right-of-way. The court's take: A 2008 law that allowed Amtrak to act in both capacities was unconstitutional because, "armed with coercive regulatory power, Amtrak wields a weapon of considerable advantage in its competitive battle for scarce track," a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit said in the opinion.

What are the long-term effects of this decision? Our Lauren Gardner explains: "The decision deals another blow to DOT's 2010 attempt to develop performance metrics with FRA to ensure timely passenger service, challenges to which have wound through the courts for years. What effect it could have on the Surface Transportation Board's clunky efforts to define on-time performance and the decades-old concept of preference to Amtrak over freight operations is unclear."

Flashback from English class: Railroad nerds perusing the court's 34-page decision may notice a literary Easter egg, straight from the post-war American canon: an excerpt from John Steinbeck's "East of Eden" that's used to make a point about train punctuality. "Train schedules are a matter of pride and of apprehension to nearly everyone," Steinbeck writes. "When, far up the track, the block signal snapped from red to green and the long, stabbing probe of the headlight sheered the bend and blared on the station, men looked at their watches and said, 'On time.' There was pride in it, and relief too. ... One thing late or early can disrupt everything around it, and the disturbance runs outward
 in bands like the waves from a dropped stone in a quiet pool."

Back to the courtroom: From Steinbeck's prose, the court's decision segued back to ... the Passenger Rail Investment and Improvement Act of 2008. "It may be said that PRIIA's architects shared Steinbeck's pride in the punctuality of train schedules," the court declared. "But as we've shown, there are limits to how far Congress may go to ensure Amtrak's on-time performance."

SPEAKING OF AMTRAK ... Happy 45th birthday to America's national passenger rail system! Check out Amtrak CEO Joe Boardman's just-posted statement on the sapphire anniversary, here. And take a look at this front-page article from the New York Times, documenting Amtrak's inaugural day: politico.pro/1SUUCt5. (Headline: "AMTRAK CHUGS IN WITH FEW ABOARD - Little Confusion or Fanfare and Usual Low Patronage Mark New Day on Rails.")

COMING TODAY: The Competitive Enterprise Institute is planning to file a lawsuit today against TSA, arguing that a rule published earlier this year on the use of body scanners to conduct security screening. In the lawsuit, CEI says that TSA has downplayed the intrusiveness of body scanners in their push to replace walk-through metal detectors. The organization argues that the body scanners will cause many would-be airline passengers to choose to drive instead, and that change of mode could result in increased traffic fatalities.

From CEI's Marc Scribner: "While the TSA is promoting body scanners as a security measure, the odds are that this rule actually puts the traveling public at greater risk, not less. ... They failed to account for the invasiveness and delays associated with the TSA's scanners that prompt some air travelers to take to their cars instead, which is a riskier mode of travel than flying."

DO WE REALLY NEEED TO 'SHIP AMERICAN'? POLITICO's The Agenda has a deep dive into The Jones Act - a century-old maritime statute requiring that goods shipped from one U.S. port to another must travel on a ship built in America, with an American crew, and owned by Americans - and its role in the heated debate over Puerto Rico's future. From the story, by Danny Vinik: "For Puerto Rico, opponents say the law drives up costs of everything from energy to consumer goods. ... As policymakers look for ways to ease the island's financial burdens, the Jones Act has come under the microscope as an example of ways that domestic U.S. laws disproportionately drive up costs for a distant and cash-strapped
 territory.

" ... Though it's not in the House draft of the Puerto Rico relief package, it has come up at congressional hearings, and an amendment exempting Puerto Rico will likely be offered when the bill hits the floor." Salim Furth of the Heritage Foundation added in his take: "[The merchant marine] are highway robbers. ... They basically said, 'We got the government to say that we could extract rents from everyone who wants to use this route, and we have these 3.5 million people who are stuck on an island and we're just going to take their money because we can.'"

ALL THINGS BEING EQUAL: The Coast Guard has filed a declaration of equivalency asserting that existing U.S. laws on verifying shipping container weights are adequate to comply with the new SOLAS international shipping weight measurement requirements. The declaration, issued late last week, states that "current regulatory regime provides for other entities within the container export chain to work in combination with the shipper to determine and verify container weights."

What does that mean? Now, ocean carriers have extra encouragement to work with shippers to find the least-onerous or least-costly methods to verify the weight of containers and their contents. The ongoing controversy surrounding this issue has been so fraught, it's attracted the attention of Senate Commerce Chairman John Thune; last month, he talked about the "great need for carriers to sit down with shippers, and for both parties to come to a mutually agreeable path forward."

THE AUTOBAHN (SPEED READ):

- Prime Minister Trudeau: "Canada Eager to Consider Investing in New Montreal Rail Network." Reuters.

- "Takata Falls on Report Recalls May Widen to 100 Million Vehicles." Bloomberg.

- "Bombardier Faces Off With Airbus, Boeing." The Wall Street Journal.

- "Uber, Blind Riders Reach Settlement Over Service Animals." The Associated Press.

- "A Warmer, Fuzzier Los Angeles" - thanks to a new, potentially-transformational light-rail project. The New York Times.

- Uber for gasoline: Cool idea, but is it legal? Bloomberg.

- Incoming Delta CEO talks about his successes, including beating former New York Giants running back Tiki Barber in a marathon. The Wall Street Journal.

THE COUNTDOWN: DOT appropriations run out in 153 days. The FAA reauthorization expires in 75 days. The 2016 presidential election is in 191 days. Highway and transit policy is up for renewal in 1,615 days.

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