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Obama's High-Speed Train Plan Faces Freight Railroads, Passenger Tension
The Obama administration, working to get high-speed passenger rail service running in the U.S., is facing passenger advocates that want dedicated tracks and freight railroads wary of sharing their lines.
The Federal Railroad Administration “is anticipating that a lot of this will take place on the freight” lines, said Andy Kunz, president and chief executive officer of the Washington- based US High Speed Rail Association, speaking in an interview at the organization’s conference in Los Angeles yesterday. “We disagree with the federal government on that. We don’t think that’s a smart policy and have been advocating for that not to happen.”
In January, President Barack Obama announced the awarding of $8 billion in economic stimulus money to jump-start the building of high-speed rail corridors. Most passenger trains in the U.S. use freight tracks owned by companies including Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corp., bought by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. this year.
The freight railroads were “shocked” last month, when the Federal Railroad Administration issued guidelines that included penalties for failing to meet on-time performance standards for passenger traffic on their lines, said Patti Reilly, a spokeswoman for the Association of American Railroads.
Union Pacific Corp. was among freight railroads that balked at the guidance, published May 12, Union Pacific Chief Executive Officer James Young said in a June 15 interview at Bloomberg’s New York office.
“There’s not a lot of incentive in terms of putting high- speed rail on freight railroads,” said Young, whose company has the most locomotives of all U.S. freight railroads.
Warren Flatau, a spokesman for the Federal Railroad Administration, had no immediate comment.
‘Cheap Route’
Among the 31 states awarded grants to develop high-speed passenger rail, California and Florida, the two top recipients, plan to have dedicated tracks for passenger service.
“We really need to think big, and not try to go the cheap route,” said Kunz, of the US High Speed Rail Association. “Putting it on the freight network is the cheap route.”
Young and executives from the other six largest railroads that operate in the U.S. met June 9 with Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood about their concerns on the guidelines for agreements between states, freight railroads and passenger- service operators.
A line owned by Omaha, Nebraska-based Union Pacific that runs between Chicago and St. Louis may be the first to host high-speed passenger service funded by the stimulus package, Young said.
The May guidance led the railroad to “basically stop” the project on that line, he said.
Railroad Leverage
“The railroads are not without leverage,” Ken Orski, a transportation-policy consultant based in Potomac, Maryland, said in a June 16 report. “They know that achieving progress with the high-speed rail program -- one of President Obama’s signature initiatives -- ranks high on the administration’s list of priorities.”
Ensuring safety, including through sufficient spacing between trains, on crowded lines will be a concern, Young said. In 2008, a Union Pacific freight train and a Metrolink commuter train collided head-on, killing 25 people in Los Angeles. A Metrolink engineer, who was sending and receiving text messages on his mobile phone seconds before the crash, was blamed by the National Transportation Safety Board for the crash.
To contact the reporters on this story: Angela Greiling Keane in Washington at agreilingkea@bloomberg.net; Alan Ohnsman in Los Angeles at aohnsman@bloomberg.net
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