Subject: Aging Infrastructure Plagues Nation’s Busiest Rail Corridor - The New York Times
From: "Eric Schwerin" <[email-masked]>
To: "Hunter Biden" <[email-masked]>
Cc: "Eric Schwerin" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 26 Jul 2015 09:53:52 -0400

> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/27/nyregion/aging-infrastructure-plagues-nations-busiest-rail-corridor.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=first-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0 <http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/27/nyregion/aging-infrastructure-plagues-nations-busiest-rail-corridor.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=first-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0>
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> Aging Infrastructure Plagues Nation’s Busiest Rail Corridor
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> New Jersey Transit and PATH trains entering and leaving Newark Penn Station, where riders experienced major delays on four days last week. Credit Ángel Franco/The New York Times
> In Maryland, a century-old rail tunnel needed emergency repairs this winter because of soil erosion from leaks, causing widespread train delays.
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> In Connecticut, an aging swing bridge failed to close twice last summer, shutting train service and stranding passengers.
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> And last week, New Jersey Transit <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/n/new_jersey_transit/index.html?inline=nyt-org> riders had a truly torturous  <http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/23/nyregion/new-jersey-transit-service-again-disrupted-by-electrical-problems.html>experience. There were major delays on four days because of problems with overhead electrical wires and a power substation, leaving thousands of commuters stalled for hours. One frustrated rider, responding to yet another New Jersey Transit Twitter post announcing a problem, replied: “Just easier to alert us when there aren’t delays.”
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> These troubles have become all too common on the Northeast Corridor, the nation’s busiest rail sector, which stretches from Washington to Boston and carries about 750,000 riders each day on Amtrak <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/companies/amtrak/index.html> and several commuter rail lines. The corridor’s ridership has doubled in the last 30 years even as its old and overloaded infrastructure of tracks, power lines, bridges and tunnels has begun to wear out. And with Amtrak <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/companies/amtrak/index.html?inline=nyt-org> and local transit agencies struggling to secure funding, many fear the disruptions will continue to worsen in the years ahead.
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> Problems with overhead electrical wires and a power substation affected thousands of New Jersey Transit commuters last week. Credit Ángel Franco/The New York Times
> “We’re seeing two trends converging in an extraordinary way,” said Thomas Wright, president of the Regional Plan Association <http://www.rpa.org/>. “Ridership is hitting all time highs on the Northeast Corridor at the same time that the system is just too brittle and does not have the ability to withstand heat waves, storms and other incidents.”
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> The delays are not just miserable for the passengers stuck on the trains; they have a ripple effect, sending more traffic on to roads and wasting hours for commuters who could be working. The shutdown of the corridor for one day could cost the country $100 million in added congestion, productivity losses and other effects, according to a report from the Northeast Corridor Infrastructure and Operations Advisory Commission <http://www.nec-commission.com/reports/nec-five-year-capital-plan-fy-2016-2020/>, a group established by Congress to improve the network.
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> The two passenger train tunnels under the Hudson River between New Jersey and New York City, which opened in 1910, are perhaps the worst choke points along the corridor, and the federal transportation secretary, Anthony Foxx, said last week that replacing them was one of the top rail priorities in the country. But there are plenty of other problems that date from another era. The Susquehanna River Bridge in Maryland, a railroad and swing bridge built in 1906, requires as many as 30 workers to open and close. Trains must slow to 30 miles per hour to pass through the Baltimore and Potomac tunnels in Maryland, which opened not long after the Civil War, in 1873.
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> Steve Chan, 61, the chairman of a local council of riders, compared the Baltimore tunnels to living next to Mount Vesuvius – residents know that disaster could strike.
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> Workers, he said, “keep an eye on the tunnel.”
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> “If they see things that are repairable, they fix them,” he added. “If they see something that is a safety concern, they’ll shut it down. But long term? We need the tunnel rebuilt.”
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> Amtrak, which owns the majority of the tracks, stations and equipment along the Northeast Corridor, has been unable to get the money it says it needs, partly because of partisan politics but also because of the way it was set up.
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> Amtrak was created in 1971 to bring together struggling rail lines, and officials have pushed for it to become financially self-sufficient so that it no longer needs federal subsidies. That never happened. The Northeast Corridor routes, including the high-speed Acela, make money, but not enough to cover its upkeep and make up for losses on less popular, long-haul routes in rural parts of the country that politicians from those areas have fought to keep.
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> Joe Boardman, Amtrak’s president and chief executive, addressed the problems facing New Jersey Transit at a news conference on Friday. Credit Christopher Lee for The New York Times
> While President Obama is calling for $2.45 billion <http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/16/us/politics/wreck-adds-fuel-to-debate-on-amtrak-funding.html> for Amtrak next year — about $1 billion above the current year’s subsidy — Republicans in the House passed a bill in June <http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2015/06/09/us/politics/ap-bc-congress-amtrak-.html> to reduce spending on Amtrak by about $250 million.
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> On Friday, Representative Mario Diaz-Balart, a Republican from Miami <http://mariodiazbalart.house.gov/> and chairman of a House subcommittee on transportation, said Amtrak’s operations were vital, especially in the Northeast Corridor. He said the House measure fully funded Amtrak’s safety and operational needs, although it would trim capital grants and other funding. Mr. Diaz-Balart argued that Amtrak had a “slew of internal financial issues that no level of congressional funding can fix.”
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> “Amtrak’s leadership must reflect and determine how they can better manage their current funding to avoid these types of delays in the future,” he said in a statement.
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> Amtrak also depends on money from states, and its relationship with Gov. Chris Christie <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/c/christopher_j_christie/index.html> of New Jersey, soured last week. On Friday, Mr. Christie accused Amtrak of “abject neglect” of its infrastructure. He said he had asked New Jersey’s attorney general to determine how the state could make sure that the nearly $100 million it pays Amtrak each year was being used properly.
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> Amtrak officials countered that New Jersey Transit’s payments mostly go toward operating costs, like train dispatching and inspections, and for electricity to run the trains, and that in the 2014 fiscal year, for example, only about $13.6 million was left for system upgrades.
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> Stephen J. Gardner, Amtrak’s executive vice president for the Northeast Corridor business development, said, “The investment levels necessary to stabilize and improve the Northeast Corridor need to grow substantially both from New Jersey Transit and others if the railroad’s performance is to get better.”
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> In a radio interview  <http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/25/nyregion/chris-christie-claims-he-will-pursue-the-trans-hudson-tunnel-project-as-president.html>last week, Mr. Christie defended his decision in 2010 to kill a plan to build new tunnels under the Hudson River, saying he feared New Jersey would be responsible for cost overruns. Mr. Christie, a Republican who is running for president, said if he got the job, he would call a meeting with his transportation secretary and the governors of New York and New Jersey and ask each to give an equal share toward building new tunnels.
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> “If everybody gets in the pool, then I am in too,” Mr. Christie said.
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> Trains must slow to 30 miles per hour through the Baltimore and Potomac tunnels in Maryland. Credit Matt Roth for The New York Times
> In the meantime, the deterioration of the corridor has caused a trail of woe for the trains, and passengers, that use it. At Princeton Junction train station in New Jersey on Friday morning, an announcement informed the crowded platform that trains to New York’s Penn Station were delayed by 30 minutes. Soumitra Patil, 37, shook his head and laughed. Mr. Patil, who works in information technology at a bank in Manhattan, said he had missed meetings because of the delays.
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> “I’m playing catch-up the whole day because of this,” he said.
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> The commuter trains from Providence, R.I., which run along the northernmost stretch of the corridor, have usually been among the worst in on-time performance among all Boston-area rail lines, according to data from the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority <http://www.mbta.com/>.
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> “Whenever the train is late, the conductor always has a new excuse,” said Ryan Feeley, 23, who commutes about 40 minutes on the Providence line to his information technology job at Massachusetts General Hospital. “When you get to Mansfield, they’ll say, ‘We were late getting out of Providence.’ When we get to Sharon, they’ll say, ‘We were late getting out of Mansfield.’”
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> Nearly 1,000 Long Island Rail Road trains have been held up this year because of problems or congestion in the short section of track it shares with Amtrak at Penn Station.
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> That is partly because Amtrak trains, which generally have priority, have been later arriving at their destinations in recent years, according to Amtrak’s own statistics. From October 2014 to May 2015, the most recent data available, Amtrak trains along the Northeast Corridor reported a 76 percent on-time rate, down from 89 percent in the comparable period three years ago.
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> In Baltimore, Monica Harris Susel, 48, had planned to take an Amtrak train to her job in Washington on Friday morning only to learn of a 25-minute delay at Baltimore’s Penn Station. She decided to take a 7:40 a.m. commuter train instead.
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> Ms. Harris Susel, a principal and compliance officer at the Carlyle Group in Washington, recalled one evening commute last summer when an accident inside one of the Baltimore and Potomac tunnels stopped her Amtrak train just short of its destination.
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> “We literally sat on that side,” she said, “five minutes away from the station, for five hours.”
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Eric D. Schwerin
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