Your daily source of fresh takes on news affecting America's passengers. See also the weekly NARP Hotline.
June 17, 2013
Written By Sean Jeans Gail CNN is at it again. The latest entry in their series of anti-rail attack ads focuses on California’s statewide high speed rail project, which will connect the state’s biggest cities through 220 mph service. In it, they found an unlikely ally in Quentin Kopp, one of the key architects of California’s high-speed rail project. Kopp is angry that the California High...
June 12, 2013
Written By Logan McLeod Wikicommons; Author: Cool Hand LukeRecent statements by House GOP leadership underscore how transportation, once a bipartisan issue in the U.S. Congress, has become politicized at the national level. But as Angie Schmitt’s story on DC Streetsblog proves, that partisan divide vanishes at the local level, where local leaders more interested in bolstering mobility and facil...
June 11, 2013
Tell Congress a National Network is "non-negotiable"! Amtrak’s long-distance trains are under the microscope again! On June 6, House Transportation & Infrastructure Chairman Bill Shuster (R-PA) reportedly said Amtrak’s nationwide service mandate is “something we have to take a hard look at… There are places that it costs us a lot of money and the ridership is not there.” Some 173...
May 30, 2013
Written By Colin Leach A recent article in Bloomberg contended that Amtrak may be wasting hundreds of millions of dollars on “equipment it doesn’t need”and runs the risk of requiring further federal subsidies. These concerns, voiced in Amtrak’s Inspector General’s May 28th report on fleet planning practices, stem from the railroad’s purported lack of a “disciplined process to anal...
May 29, 2013
Written By Malcolm Kenton Train advocates hear it all the time: "Americans like their cars too much, and our communities are too spread out, for passenger trains to really be viable here," or some variation on that statement. But those who make such sweeping declarations likely aren't paying close enough attention to what's happening in most of the country's metropolitan regions, and are unaware...