Posts about Amtrak

All values are adjusted for inflation and reported in 2010 dollars. Most of the road values are from 2007 but since then, driving is down more than 15% and road user fee receipts are down as well.

Here is how each cost contributes to the total, and how I arrived at each estimates:

Direct subsidy: In 2010, Amtrak received $563 million in operating subsidies and $1 billion in capital and debt service grants while carrying passengers a total of 6.52 billion passenger miles, for a direct subsidy of 24¢ ppm. Meanwhile, in 2007 roads received a $94.6 billion (49% of $193 billion) subsidy to carry automobile passengers (including drivers) 4.24 trillion miles for a direct subsidy of 2¢ per passenger mile.

This is where a lot of people like to end the story. And doing so makes Amtrak seem like a bad deal, but if we consider all the external costs of both, it becomes a very different story.

Air pollution: According to McCubbin and Delucchi (1996), the external cost of air pollution caused by driving was $0.112 per vehicle mile traveled (VMT) in 1990 dollars. According to the Federal Highway Administration, there are approximately 1.59 passengers per vehicle. So dividing the VMT by passengers per vehicle and adjusting for inflation gives a value of $0.118 ppm.

While a similar analysis is not available for Amtrak, we do have the energy intensity ppm for passenger cars (3501 Btu ppm) and Amtrak (2398 Btu ppm) which can serve as a reasonable proxy for air pollution emissions. If anything, this ratio is unfair to Amtrak, since the bulk of its energy use (carrying Northeast Corridor riders) is electricity which produces fewer emission per BTU than gasoline does due to the use of nuclear, hydroelectric, natural gas and renewables. Using this ratio, the cost of air pollution caused by Amtrak is $0.081 ppm.

Global warming: In addition to air pollution, the burning of fossil fuels like gasoline or coal creates an assortment of greenhouse gases which have been shown to add to global warming. According to the Victoria Transport Policy Institute (VTPI), the external cost per vehicle mile of GHG creation is $0.164 in $2007 which is equivalent to $0.109 ppm in $2010. Meanwhile, Carbon Fund calculates rail travel as creating 0.42 lbs CO2 per passenger mile.

The EPA calculates that the annual emissions from a typical passenger vehicle are 5.5 metric tons of carbon dioxide. Dividing that by the 12,000 miles the average car travels in a year (also from the EPA) results in 1.01 lbs per vmt or 0.64 lbs ppm. Using the lbs ppm to create a ratio (0.42/0.64) and multiplying it by the value for cars gives us the value for rail travel of $0.072.

Parking: While some parking costs are paid by users, others are external because, for example, of tax-exempt "free" employee parking or because of municipal parking minimums. Shoup (2005) sets the external cost of parking at $0.22 $0.05-$0.14 per vehicle mile in $2005. VTPI determines a value of $0.062 pvm. Accounting for inflation and passengers per vehicle this becomes $0.151$0.041 ppm. Amtrak, on the other hand, pays for its rail yards where it parks its trains, which means its parking is covered in its direct costs. Its subsidy is $0 ppm.

Resource consumption: The external costs of resource consumption refers primarily to the cost of producing, importing and distributing petroleum that are not passed directly to users. It includes the military costs associated with protecting oil supplies, macroeconomic costs of oil dependence, uncompensated ecological costs (like loss of a species), subsidies for drilling and costs associated with depleting a non-renewable resource. VTPI prices this at 76¢ per gallon or 4¢ ppm (in 2010) for roads.

Amtrak, meanwhile, used 62 billion gallons of diesel in 2009 to carry passengers 5.914 billion miles. Which puts its resource consumption external cost at $0.008 ppm in $2010. [(62B gallons*$0.80 per gallon)/5.914 billion miles]

Damage from crashes: While some crash costs are internal to the user, like insurance premiums or personal property damage, others are external because they're uncompensated or paid by an external user, such as when a pedestrian is injured in a hit and run crash. Looking at a series of studies and estimates of the external cost of automobile crashes, VTPI determined that the external cost per vehicle mile is $0.055 in $2007 which becomes $0.037 ppm.

Miller, Douglass and Pindus' 1994 paper on railroad injuries determines that per passenger mile, train injury costs comprise only one-fifth those of cars. There's reason to believe that less of the crash cost for rail is external than it is for autos because of Amtrak's greater ability to absorb such costs than an individual motorist. External Cost of Transport: Accident, Environmental and Congestion Costs in Western Europe puts the ratio for external costs of auto vs passenger rail at a much higher 41:1, so we can safely use the 5:1 ratio, making the external cost for rail $0.007 ppm

Congestion: Traffic congestion carries a very real transport cost that consists of incremental delay, vehicle operating costs (fuel and wear), pollution emissions and stress that result from interference among vehicles in the traffic stream. VTPI estimates the cost of congestion for roads at $0.035 pvm in $2007, which becomes $0.023 ppm in $2010. Unlike the highway system, most of our rail network is below capacity (Figure 13) which means Amtrak causes very little rail congestion.

While there has been little attempt to quantify the congestion Amtrak might cause, there is plenty about how it reduces congestion on roads and at airports. A USDOT study, in fact, determined that expanded rail service would have a net positive effect on congestion. And an Amtrak study put the benefit of the reduction of airport congestion along the Northeast Corridor alone at $104 million. Therefore I've conservatively set the Amtrak congestion charge at $0.00.

Lost tax revenue: Most of Amtrak's train routes use railroads owned by freight companies for which Amtrak pays rent and the owners pay property, sales and franchise tax. If roads and highways were similarly owned by private companies, they too would pay billions of dollars in taxes. TeleCommUnity set the value of the land used for roads in America at $7.1 trillion in $2007. Taxed at the average state property tax rate of 1.38% in $2010, roads would have contributed 2.8¢ ppm to states' coffers.

Before being made exempt in 1979, Amtrak paid state and local taxes which totaled $14 million in 1979. Adjusting for inflation and dividing by total passenger miles, lost tax revenue from Amtrak is 0.64¢ ppm.

Land use: ecological impacts: Building roads and railroads has an ecological impact that also carries a cost. These land use changes can, for example, cause a heat island effect, sever and fragment wildlife habitat and result in "roadkill." VTPI puts the cost of these ecological impacts for roads at $0.03 per vehicle mile in $2007 (or $0.0198 ppm in $2010).

Using the rail and road costs ppm defined in a 2005 Swiss ARE paper (from VTPI), we can determine a ratio between road and rail which is 0.7 centimes to 0.775 centimes per passenger kilometer (1.2 per vehicle kilometer/1.59 passengers per vehicle). This means that the ecological impact of passenger rail is 92.75% the value of the one for roads ppm. Multiplying this by $0.0198 gives a value for rail of $0.0184.

Noise: Noise from roads and rail can have real and measurable impacts on nearby land values. VTPI looked at several studies of the external cost of road noise and determined a value of $0.011 pvm ($0.0075 ppm in $2010). A study by INFRAS/IWW placed the ratio of ppm passenger rail noise costs to roadway noise costs at 3.9/5.2 (page 74). Multiplying this ratio times the cost for autos gives $0.0057.

Transportation diversity: Many communities are automobile dependent. This lack of diversity can often result in inefficiency and inequity, such as when people feel the need to drive for very short trips because they can't easily walk or bike on roads that don't accommodate that kind of travel. This eliminates options, leads to less physically active (and therefore less healthy) lifestyles, and can often trap people who can't, for whatever reason, drive. VTPI determines the value of the impact of roads on transportation diversity at $0.007 pvm ($0.0044 ppm). Amtrak doesn't create the same kinds of dependency, so it's cost is zero.

I omitted some costs because adequate values were not available for both. This includes the delays, discomfort and lack of access that vehicle traffic imposes on nonmotorized modes; waste disposal; water pollution and hydrological impacts; and other land impacts such as reduced property values, reduced community cohesion, and the costs associated with sprawl. Together these constitute another 4¢ ppm for roads, with most of that cost related to sprawl.

Amtrak is unlikely to have a larger ppm cost for these factors. Amtrak isn't considered an engine for sprawl. Railroad surfaces are capable of absorbing twice as much rainwater as paved roads—and there is far less land dedicated to Amtrak rail than to roads per passenger mile. So it is reasonable to believe that the addition of these omitted values would not change the relative values between the two subsidies very much or change them to be further in favor of Amtrak.

Based on these numbers, it appears that roads are subsidized at almost 12 1¢ per passenger mile more than Amtrak. To bring the two into balance, the gas tax would either need to be raised from the national average of 48.1¢ per gallon to about $3.30 $0.96 per gallon, or the Amtrak subsidy would need to be increased from $1.565 billion to $2.348$1.630 billion.

Another way to think about this is to combine the subsidized cost with the portion paid by user fees to get a total public cost. (Drivers' user fee revenue in 2008 was $94.512 billion and miles travelled was 4.9 trillion passenger miles for an inflation adjusted contribution of $0.020.)

Total public cost, unpaid + paid
Amtrak: $0.439 + $0.318 = $0.757
Roads: $0.557 $0.447 + $0.020 = $0.577 $0.467

Which means that Amtrak users are paying 44.5% of their public costs, while drivers pay only 3.6% 4.3% of theirs.

To be clear, this does not mean that motoring is cheaper. Drivers are also paying their own internal costs (purchase and maintenance of a car and insurance) which the IRS estimates to be 51¢ per mile total (or 48.5¢ per mile, less tax). That increases the total cost of driving to $1.062 $0.952 per mile. That's without considering the travel time costs. Comparing all the costs, Amtrak becomes much cheaper than motoring.

We should not ignore the environmental, political, human and other non-obvious costs of transportation when discussing how to fund it. By focusing only on the direct costs, as many choose to do, we run the risk of making the wrong decisions. While a more thorough scholarly analysis would surely come up with different values and totals than my amateur one, it's more than possible that Amtrak is the bargain paying most of its own way, and roads are the resource-consuming boondoggle that need to have their subsidy cut.

Why is content filtering necessary at all on Amtrak? US law does not hold service providers responsible for the information people access via their networks. People are even bringing their own computers.

If Amtrak is worried about other people seeing certain content on computers, those computers could already have offensive content on them. Or, like many public entities that put content filtering on Wi-Fi, maybe there's just a generic knee-jerk assumption that they "ought to" filter without any real justification.

Some types of filtering, for bandwidth rather than content, can be appropriate. Amtrak has limited bandwidth to its train-mounted devices, which connect to the outside world using the same systems as Internet-enabled mobile phones. If one person tries to use HD video chat or some other very bandwidth-intensive use, it could deprive others of decent service, so Amtrak and its contractor who operates the service, GBS and Nomad Digital, would be acting reasonably to "shape" network traffic to limit higher-bandwidth uses to a portion of the data stream and maintain service for others.

Amtrak deserves kudos for rolling out Wi-Fi, but should instruct its contractor to only filter out material based on its bandwidth usage, not its subject matter.

The extension will stick to current funding levels, authorizing $24.78 billion in spending from the Highway Trust Fund for the first half of FY2012 (which begins October 1). That's almost $19.8 billion for highways and $4.2 billion for transit.

That's far more than the FY2012 budget just passed by the Transportation and HUD Appropriations subcommittee in the House, which agreed to $27.7 billion for highways and $5.2 billion for transit for the entire year. Although this extension can authorize more spending than that, actual spending levels are up to the appropriators. Experts say that at this level, most of the money would go to pay states back for projects already built, and new highway project funding could be cut by as much as 75 percent.

But higher spending levels also have their down side. "Maintaining current highway and transit spending levels for any period of time deepens the Highway Trust Fund's revenue hole," writes Jeff Davis, noting that according to the CBO, "the Highway Account of the Trust Fund will run out of cash at these spending levels in the first few months of calendar year 2013, with the Mass Transit Account running dry a year or so behind that)."

Rail advocates: House bill would kill Amtrak

The 2012 transportation budget passed by a subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee yesterday cut all high-speed rail funding and slashes Amtrak's operating grant by 60 percent. What's more, it forbids Amtrak from using that money to fund short corridors.

Ridership on those short corridors grew five percent in the last year (PDF). Twenty-seven train lines, including several in and out of Chicago, would suddenly see their federal funding disappear, if the House budget were to become law. That would only leave the Northeast Corridor and a handful of cross-country routes; half Amtrak's ridership would be cut instantly.

According to the National Association of Railroad Passengers, a rail advocacy group, the danger goes further than just the short corridors. The organization asserts that "the bill really would kill all of Amtrak because loss of the short corridors would cut revenues and balloon costs for Northeast Corridor and national network (overnight) trains… Overhead costs—such as for station facilities and maintenance back shops—which now are shared among routes would be dumped on the surviving trains. For example, the Texas Eagle would become the sole user of the St. Louis and Fort Worth terminals and six Illinois stations. And Amtrak's Chicago terminal costs would be borne solely by eight overnight trains."

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Good news and bad news: Obama's plan would work, but GOP won't pass it

[Friday] morning brought some useful indicators about the outlook for President Obama's jobs bill. Good news first: Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Analytics, says President Obama's job creation plan will likely add 1.9 million jobs, cut the unemployment rate by a percentage point, and grow the economy by 2 percent.

The plan includes $50 billion for infrastructure, with an emphasis on transportation and schools, and the creation of an infrastructure bank capitalized at $10 billion. ...

Despite Moody's upbeat analysis of the president's proposal, stocks tumbled [Friday] morning. According to Bloomberg, the gloom wasn't about the merits of the plan but the likelihood of Congressional passage. "Even as President Obama made an effort to put that plan together," said James Dunigan, chief investment officer in Philadelphia for PNC Wealth Manage­ment, "there's not a whole lot of confidence that Congress will pass [it]."

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It's faster than driving—only 70 minutes from Union Station or 45 minutes from the Rockville station, which is right next to the Rockville Red Line stop. And best of all: toddlers love big trains.

The lounge car on the Amtrak Capitol Limited.

If you need to leave later in the day, the MARC train leaves Union Station at 4:55, 5:40, and 7:15pm. It costs less too, but isn't as fun.

Where to stay: You have two choices for accommodations with kids that don't require a car, the Town's Inn and the KOA Campground. We've stayed in both, and which one you stay in depends on whether you plan to spend most of your trip in town or at the campground.

The Town's Inn is the only hotel in downtown Harpers Ferry. You can walk there from the train station in 2 minutes. Best of all, it's in the middle of everything you will want to do.

The KOA Campground is a mile from the train station. You can either walk there or take a National Park Service bus. The walk is a pleasant one through Harpers Ferry and the next-door town of Bolivar, except for one crossing of a 6-lane expressway at an intersection with no walk signal. Most of the walk is part of the Appalachian Trail, so you'll see hikers. I walked to the campground, with my supplies in a big backpack and my little guy in a stroller.

NPS shuttles people in and out of town every 10 minutes.

What to do downtown: There are basically 2 fun things for kids to do downtown. They can play in the Shenandoah River, and watch NPS reenactments of 19th century Harpers Ferry. Both are within a 5 minute walk. And pedestrians essentially rule the road, as there are few cars in downtown, so you can feel safe with your kids running around free.

View of Shenandoah from the shore.

Making cider.

Keep in mind that the downtown restaurants don't currently serve breakfast, as they make most of their money off of day trippers. Fortunately, the Town's Inn sells breakfast food and has refrigerators and microwaves. Also, the Country Cafe serves a fantastic breakfast, and is a 2/3 mile walk from downtown and 3 blocks from the fabulous Bolivar Public Playground.

What to do at the KOA campground: The Harpers Ferry KOA is a kids' paradise. A regular pool and kiddie pool, super pillow for jumping, playground, arcade and mini-golf make the day fly by.

Kiddie pool at KOA campground is a big hit.

For the parents, a coffee shop and wine store has daily wine tastings on the campground. Anytime you want to go back into town, the NPS bus stop at the Visitors' Center is a 10 minute walk away.

Getting back: The only real challenge to visiting Harpers Ferry without a car is taking the Amtrak train back to DC. The train is supposed to stop in Harper's Ferry 7 days per week at 10:55am, stopping next at Rockville at 11:40am and Union Station at 12:40pm. But it's always late—2 hours late on my first trip and 4 hours late on my second.

The Amtrak trip to Harpers Ferry is generally on time, because the Capitol Limited route is beginning its Union Station to Chicago journey. Coming back to DC, though, it can have been delayed by Norfolk Southern (between Chicago and Pittsburgh) or CSX (between Pittsburgh and Washington). Fortunately, Amtrak has a great mobile site and iPhone app which provide real-time status updates so you can enjoy downtown while waiting for the train.

If you're returning on a weekday and are willing to leave early, MARC is also an option. Trains leave at 5:51am and 6:56am.

Know any other car-free family trip destinations? Mention them in the comments.

Correction: The original version of this article spelled the name of the town incorrectly as "Harper's Ferry" in some places. The correct name has no apostrophe.

Update: The article mentions the lack of breakfast options downtown. The owner of the Town's Inn contacted us with the good news that a shuttered downtown restaurant, the Town's Pub and Eatery, has reopened with service from breakfast through dinner. I haven't tried it, but initial online reviews are positive.

Besides, if Amtrak is selling almost every seat at its current fare points, there's little economic incentive to lower the fare. Lowering the fare wouldn't sell any more seats since they're selling out already. And it would bring in less revenue.

Capacity: Amtrak simply does not have enough coaches in its fleet to handle the amount of passengers who would want to ride the train if Amtrak fares were comparable to those of curbside buses. Furthermore, there is very little room on the existing railroad to add new trains, particularly at peak hours when tracks leading into New York Penn Station (from New Jersey) are already at capacity with both Amtrak and commuter train traffic.

Giving Amtrak the ability to handle the passenger volume that it could if it were price-competitive with buses would require sustained higher levels of capital investment from the federal government, or from private sector partners, which are absent a strong federal commitment. Unlike highways and aviation, Amtrak lacks a dedicated source of reliable annual funding.

An Amtrak cafe car. Photo by MoDOT on Flickr.

Unlike buses, which operate over highways built and maintained by federal gas tax dollars (along with some general federal and state tax revenue), Amtrak owns its own tracks in the Northeast Corridor and has to bear the full cost of maintaining them, with limited federal assistance. If the bus companies had to pay their full share of highway maintenance, they could not get away with charging the fares they do.

Railroading, by nature, is characterized by high fixed costs. Fixed costs are those that do not vary based on how many people use a good or service (in this case, buy an Amtrak ticket). It will cost Amtrak roughly the same to maintain the tracks, signals and stations on the Northeast Corridor regardless of how many trains run and how many riders use them. Railroad labor costs are also largely fixed. Remarkably, Amtrak nevertheless covers over 80% of its total costs through revenue from passengers, whereas most of the world's passenger train operators fall in the 50% to 60% range.

Despite this, Amtrak trains in the Northeast Corridor actually make an "above-the-rail" profit. Fares bring in enough revenue to pay for operating costs on the Northeast Corridor, though not enough to pay for the maintenance backlog of the corridor.

The need to promote energy efficient travel, lessen highway congestion, and spur the development of walkable, livable communities around train stations are good reasons to encourage greater numbers to use the train instead of flying, driving or taking a bus. Increased federal investment in Amtrak infrastructure and equipment—in the Northeast Corridor and elsewhere—would allow the railroad to increase the frequency, speed and capacity of its trains. This would allow more riders to be carried over the line, thus spreading the fixed costs over more paying passengers, leading to lower fares.

Some form of ongoing public capital investment will be needed to keep the infrastructure and equipment in good shape. Federal funding should come from a dedicated "trust fund" with its own revenue source rather than from a Congressional appropriation, which would make the amount of funding reliable year after year.

If you support higher and more reliable funding for passenger trains as a viable leading choice for intercity travel, join us in the National Association of Railroad Passengers in calling on Congress to fully fund Amtrak and the High-Speed and Intercity Passenger Rail grant program.

All of this, I know, is obvious. But when it comes to rail transportation, this formula has been avoided, especially in the U.S. The owner of railroad tracks usually is also the operator of trains along them. When other operators want to move their own trains in, conflicts typically erupt.

The frequent disagreements about acceptable service levels between national rail operator Amtrak and freight railroads on tracks that the latter owns (and which it isn't very happy to share) are indicative of this problem. But these disagreements are not irreconcilable.

Indeed, an infrastructure owner that is able to arbitrate between competing operators could be more effective in producing efficient service for everyone than might be an owner-operator, which discriminates against other operators.

In this context, last week's revealing of House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman John Mica's (R-FL) plan for the Northeast Corridor raises a number of interesting questions. Convinced of the value of private sector competition and promoting a pull-out of the federal government from every public service imaginable, Mr. Mica has submitted a proposal that attempts to re-imagine the Northeast Corridor, Amtrak's flagship route and the nation's most-traveled intercity rail line, as a place where, fundamentally, the rules of the road—but not the railroad—could apply.

The bill (draft text) would force Amtrak to abandon its control of (much of) the Northeast Corridor between Washington and Boston, handing it over to the Department of Transportation, which in turn would lease it to an "Executive Committee."

Amtrak would have to give up all of its assets and it would lose federal funding. The Committee, in charge of infrastructure and setting pricing policies, would then engage a public-private partnership (PPP) with a private group, which would commit to upgrading the line and then operating trains to offer two-hour trips between New York and Washington and 2h30 between New York and Boston—within ten years, twenty years more quickly than Amtrak has said it would be able to make roughly the same improvements.

Mr. Mica also claims that this could be done at a cheaper price than Amtrak's $117 billion proposal.

Outside of the Northeast, states would have to offer their rail corridors to competitive bidding; current subsidies to Amtrak would simply be redistributed to the winners of those operations bids.

Despite the wide-ranging proposed effects of the bill as summarized, the manner in which any of this would be implemented remains incredibly unclear. How would intercity rail operators interact with the freight and commuter railroads that also use the tracks, in the Northeast and elsewhere? If a PPP were implemented, how much would the government agree to commit to pay for improvements?

Unfortunately, the bill would not provide a realistic way to promote true operational competition. Nor does it would it offer a promise of actual federal support to fund an upgrade of the corridor, which seems unlikely to be sponsored by private entities alone. Most problematic would be the transfer of authority over the line's management to the currently non-existant Executive Committee, whose ability to make decisions about rail properties has yet to be tested, let alone proven.

Fortunately, the proposal is unlikely to make it through the Senate, where Democrats and other Republican supporters of Amtrak are likely to prevent the bill from passing even if it makes it through the House. The American intercity rail system and the governance bodies that oversee it at the federal and state levels are too underdeveloped to be able to guarantee that this semi-privatization wouldn't be a disaster.

But Mr. Mica's bill does articulate a number of policy changes that could play an important role in shoring up passenger service in the Northeast. The status quo, in which Amtrak operates relatively infrequent and slow passenger trains within the nation's most important megaregion, certainly is not ideal. If managed appropriately, the separation of track ownership and line operations could allow for a situation in which multiple operators offer competing services along the same routes, just as Megabus and Bolt Bus compete for the most customers on I-95.

In mainland Europe, E.U. regulations have mandated that national rail companies like France's SNCF or Germany's DB allow other operators (in many cases, SNCF and DB affiliates) to run trains between similar destinations. Though I am not convinced that this will produce universally positive results, it will at least likely result in lower fares for customers on the most heavily trafficked rail corridors.

And focusing on the most-used lines is clearly Mr. Mica's goal; according to the bill, the second-highest stated priority for potential investors are "activities that benefit the greatest number of passengers" (just after safety). Amtrak's current policies do not exactly fit that bill since they are designed to push lower-income individuals (like myself) onto slower and less comfortable intercity buses.

Yet the Mica proposal would not produce true competition in rail operations. It would encourage competition in rail operations contracts. Rather than invest in the infrastructure and then open up the rights to use tracks, the PPP structure as proposed would be a build-operate-maintain system in which one private group would invest in improvements and then have control over operations, which it would perform itself.

Mr. Mica has repeatedly referred to Amtrak as a "Soviet-Style" system because it has a monopoly over its services, but it is hard to see how a PPP extended over a long contract would be any different, except that it would charge even higher prices to make up for the initial cost of capital improvements and—even worse—it would be literally banned from cross-subsidizing other services with the profits, according to the proposed bill. Is this in the public interest?

The biggest question of all, though, is whether Mr. Mica is in complete denial about the extent of either the private sector's ingenuity or their collective willingness to invest in public infrastructure. While it may sound nice, asserting that corporations can rebuild the Northeast Corridor in 10 years at a far lower cost to the taxpayers than Amtrak has proposed could is a stretch. And even a $50 billion upgrade would be larger than any single private investment in infrastructure ever in the U.S. What evidence does Mr. Mica have that a plan like this could move forward?

Cross-posted on The Transport Politic.

As expected, the big winners are the Northeast Corridor and the California high-speed rail project, each of which were given hundreds of millions of dollars. In a little bit of surprise, the Midwest Chicago-hub was also a big winner, with major improvements funded on several corridors.

The Washington region didn't receive any funds directly, although we will benefit from some of the projects to the north and south. The District applied for but did not receive money. Maryland applied for $415 million and received $22 million that will go to planning for a new Susquehanna River bridge.

Ironically, Virginia didn't apply for any money but received some anyway, as part of a North Carolina-led application to perform environmental planning work on proposed upgrades to the Richmond-Raleigh corridor.

The Northeast Corridor will benefit from the $450 million devoted to catenary and signal improvements in central New Jersey. This funding will pay for installation of constant-tension catenary over a 24-mile section of track, raising the top speed from 135 to 160 miles per hour. Other Corridor improvements will result in minor trip time improvements and reduction in bottlenecks.

The complete breakdown of grant recipients is shown in the table below. The acronym "NEPA", which appears a number of times, refers to the National Environmental Policy Act requirement for environmental planning approval of federally-funded projects.

Cross-posted at BeyondDC.

This year is especially symbolic, since Amtrak turned 40 last Sunday. As a part of this celebration, Amtrak has released a video, called "Amtrak: The First 40 Years." I hope you enjoyed the trailer.