Your daily source of fresh takes on news affecting America's passengers. See also the weekly NARP Hotline.
August 7, 2015
If you’ve been tracking Amtrak’s fortunes in Washington, D.C. for any amount of time, you were probably surprised at the speed with which the new passenger rail bill passed through the Senate this summer. After years of talking around the issue, the bill appeared to be a non-starter as late as this spring, not even meriting a draft. Many in the rail community were even viewing this as someth...
July 27, 2015
The Silver Star in Jacksonville, Florida. Photo courtesy of Patrick Rasenberg/Flickr. The Silver Star is testing selling sleeping car accommodations on the line between New York and Miami at a lower price by not including dining car meals-- however, more than just an unbundling of services, Amtrak has eliminated the dining car entirely. Amtrak will run this test through January 31, 2016, to evalu...
July 24, 2015
Public transit champions in the Senate have prevailed in their campaign to restore an 80-20 split between highways and transit in the Senate’s hotly negotiated surface transportation bill. Democratic staffers on the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee were reporting that the initial draft of the Developing a Reliable and Innovative Vision for the Economy (DRIVE) Act was based on...
July 14, 2015
NARP will hold a town hall-style conference call with Council Members on Wednesday July 22 at 9:00 p.m. EDT, to discuss efforts to get a better version of S.1626, the passenger rail reauthorization bill. The staff have created summary documents on S. 1626 that members should read before the conference call. The phone number is 302-202-1104; the passcode is: 665159. In order to keep the call to on...
July 13, 2015
Sens. John Thune (R-S.D.) and Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) The National Association of Railroad Passengers sent a letter today to U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science & Transportation Chairman John Thune (R-S.D.) and Ranking Member Ben Nelson (D-Neb) thanking them for including the Railroad Reform, Enhancement, and Efficiency Act (S.1626) as part of the committee’s portion of the surface tr...