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December 2015
Compiled by Julie Sneider, Senior Associate Editor
As part of its annual "Outlook" coverage, Progressive Railroading invited several passenger-rail and transit agency executives to share their thoughts on what might be in store for their organizations and the industry in 2016. We asked: What will be the major issues on their agenda? What are the obstacles they anticipate facing? And with 2016 being a presidential election year, what do they hope to hear from the major parties' leading candidates?
On the following pages are the responses from six execs. They were provided to the magazine prior to Congress passing, and President Obama signing, the new five-year, $305 billion surface transportation funding bill known as the FAST Act. As a result, some of their answers refer to the then-uncertain outcome of the long-term federal bill.
The executives who provided their insight are Doug Allen, chief executive officer of Virginia Railway Express (VRE); Joseph Boardman, president and CEO of Amtrak; Joe Calabrese, CEO and general manager of Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority (GCRTA); Dow Constantine, chairman of Sound Transit and county executive of King County, Wash.; Don Orseno, CEO and executive director of Metra; and Phillip Washington, CEO of Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (LACMTA).
What will be an important issue for VRE in 2016?
Allen: An important issue to VRE in 2016 is how we continue to meet growing demand for more service and fund our capital and operational needs in an environment of uncertain state and federal funding. VRE has completed its long-term system plan to grow service, and is finalizing its financial plan to identify our needs and resource requirements to implement the plan. Like many commuter-rail services, we are experiencing expenses that are rising faster than revenues and must take action to secure new revenues without increasing fares too much and risking reduced ridership.
What are the potential obstacles to meeting VRE's goals next year?
Allen: VRE is a well-used, quality and reliable service that operates in a highly congested area. VRE can document a compelling business case of being able to quickly and efficiently add capacity and provide needed congestion relief in the critical I-95 and I-66 corridors. Despite this, potential obstacles to achieve our goals include the difficulty of identifying additional funding sources that are reasonable to local jurisdictions, and the competition for limited, available discretionary funding between modes and agencies. VRE has a very good case for increased funding and we will work to educate elected officials about the positive return on investment VRE can make. We also believe our service provides the best use of scarce federal transportation funding.
What issues would you like to hear the U.S. presidential candidates address during the 2016 campaign?
Allen: I think it would be good for the candidates to address one issue: How would they plan to secure the future of our nation's transportation infrastructure?
Like any major enterprise, America's aging transportation infrastructure needs a sustainable, predictable funding plan, not a series of one-time, stopgap fixes. I believe this nation needs to rebuild much of its infrastructure as well as expand its capacity to help grow our economy. Yet too many people oppose increasing user fees, such as gas taxes, to secure the funds necessary to invest in our future and remain competitive in the global marketplace. What is the sustainable, long-term vision they have for our country’s transportation systems and how are they proposing to achieve this vision?
What will be an important issue for your GCRTA in 2016?
Calabrese: The most pressing issue for Greater Cleveland is likely the most pressing issue for every rail system in the nation. Our need for state-of-good repair infrastructure funding far exceeds the projected investment supply. While we significantly increased our infrastructure budget for 2015-16, we still have many important projects where no funding has been identified.
What issues would you like the U.S. presidential candidates to address?
Calabrese: If there is no appetite in Washington for increasing the gas tax, what other dedicated long-term and sufficient funding sources will they support to improve our nation’s roadways and transit systems?
What will be an important issue for Sound Transit in 2016?
Constantine: 2016 will be an epic year for Sound Transit and our region's commuters. Our long-awaited light-rail extension to Seattle's Capitol Hill and University of Washington will open in the first quarter, more than six months ahead of schedule and $150 million under budget. Later in the year we’ll also open an extension in the opposite direction reaching one stop beyond SeaTac Airport, and we'll kick off construction of our East Link light-rail project from Seattle across Lake Washington to Bellevue and Redmond. The two Northgate Link tunnel boring machines now grinding their way toward the 2021 opening of three new stations north of the University of Washington will complete their work in 2016.
That progress will provide the backdrop for a regional Sound Transit 3 ballot measure that our board of directors is creating to send to voters in November 2016. The board is working to shape a major measure that meets rising demand for extending light rail further to reach regional centers in Tacoma, Everett, downtown Redmond and Seattle's Ballard and West Seattle areas, as well as other rail and bus investments.
What are the potential obstacles to Sound Transit meeting its goals next year?
Constantine: Our region’s traffic consistently ranks among the nation's worst. Population growth will keep increasing the benefits of building out our light-rail system. People get that and want more. Our opportunity is to continue demonstrating the progress and accountability that will maintain the trust needed to earn support for more major projects. The level of investment the region needs to stay mobile and economically healthy will require vision, and the willingness to pay.
Fortunately, we will have strong leadership in the person of former Federal Transit Administrator Peter Rogoff, who will become our new CEO in January. Peter's experience will help our region continue to coalesce around the right mix of investments to include in a draft package for public review in the spring.
Constantine: Reinvesting in transportation infrastructure is vitally important for our nation. The candidates can't discuss this enough. More infrastructure, and the right kinds, will help us protect our planet at the same time we stay economically competitive. Infrastructure is among the best things we can do to keep creating jobs and stimulating a healthy economy. Sound Transit will have created more than 100,000 direct and indirect jobs when we are through with the more than 30 additional miles of light rail funded by the agency’s last ballot measure.
What will be an important issue for Amtrak in 2016?
Boardman: One of our biggest challenges is going to be on-time performance. More than 70 percent of Amtrak’s route-miles (and more than 90 percent of our train-miles) are run on other railroads. This creates a major vulnerability for us, since ridership and revenues are closely tied to on-time performance. After Congress passed the Passenger Rail Investment and Improvement Act in 2008, handling of Amtrak trains on freight railroads rose to record heights, but performances have fallen dramatically since 2013, with only a modest recovery. On-time performance is a critical component of customer satisfaction for all of our services, and if it does not improve, it could potentially reverse the record of rising ridership, revenues, cost recovery, and financial performance that Amtrak has worked so hard to build over the past decade.
What are the potential obstacles to Amtrak meeting its goals?
Boardman: One issue we intend to highlight is the value of Amtrak's national network. On about 70 percent of the Amtrak system, a single daily or tri-weekly national network (or long distance) train is the only Amtrak service. These trains are, on average, as full as our Northeast Corridor services, and they provide vital connectivity between major urban centers and smaller communities. On our Empire Builder service, for example, 81 percent of the passengers are going to or from a "midpoint" station, and 67 percent of them are going from one of the midpoints to an endpoint. We reach about 40 percent of America’s rural population, and we offer scheduled service to more destinations than the airline industry, so these trains deliver tremendous value to the people who use them, to the communities they serve and to the nation.
Boardman: I would like to see the candidates address the issues of infrastructure condition and capacity, and the need for a transportation policy that targets federal investment to produce the results we will need for economic growth. Our economy is losing billions of dollars to freight- and passenger-rail congestion in places like Chicago, and there is a serious need for the investment that will provide us with the safety, reliability and mobility we will need to support growth in the coming century. Amtrak has identified major opportunities for investment in Chicago's rail network and in our Gateway Program in New York that would provide the resilience and capacity we need to protect our economy. But these projects remain unfunded, in spite of a near-universal recognition of the value they would bring.
What will be an important issue for Metra in 2016?
Orseno: Metra is extremely grateful to Washington — especially Congressmen Dan Lipinski, Mike Quigley and Bob Dold of Illinois, Jeff Denham of California and Sen. John Thune of South Dakota — for extending the deadline for the installation of positive train control from 2015 to 2018. But meeting the new deadline will still require a very aggressive effort and will continue to be a challenge in 2016. In addition, the costs of installing this unfunded mandate — we estimate our bill will total at least $350 million when it’s all said and done, plus about $20 million a year in new operating costs — will continue to be a drain on our already depleted capital resources.
What are the potential obstacles to meeting Metra's goals next year?
Orseno: The main obstacle to meeting our goals is funding. In 2014, Metra leadership laid out an aggressive $2.4 billion modernization plan to rehab or replace virtually our entire fleet of cars and locomotives over the next decade. That plan anticipated that existing federal and state funding would remain constant but also counted on additional monies from those and other sources. To date, that extra funding has not come through, and some of the state funding that we were anticipating has been put on hold. That modernization plan only addresses the highest priorities on a list of our capital needs that totals $11.7 billion over the next 10 years.
Orseno: We simply have to start investing in our infrastructure again — not only at Metra, and not only on railroads. Across the country, there is a huge need to rebuild our aging highways, bridges, railroads, mass transit, etc. I would like to see the campaign address this very critical issue.
What will be an important issue for LACMTA in 2016?
Washington: In Los Angeles County, we know 2016 is going to be an exciting year. We're poised to open two new rail lines, and at the same time we have three more under construction along with massive highway upgrades. It's the largest modern public works project in the country. We're proud to be creating a transportation system that serves all of Los Angeles County and operates in the most efficient, cost effective and customer-responsive manner possible.
But we need additional investment in our transportation infrastructure to finish the buildout and keep what we already have in good repair. That's why the Metro Board of Directors is considering a potential ballot measure for November 2016. As it has in the past, a successful tax initiative would work as a leveraging tool, at the same time it provides financing for projects and repairs. A board decision is expected in early summer of 2016.
What are the potential obstacles to LACMTA meeting its goals next year?
Washington: We have the ability to become the transportation infrastructure capital of the world. But like other transportation agencies across the country, we are challenged by an uncertain financial future. L.A. County residents have demonstrated a will to rebuild our infrastructure and expand on it by taxing themselves to support transit. But we must also have a long-term surface transportation bill that we can depend on so that we can plan for the future and work toward the goals that will create the balanced transportation system our region needs.
Washington: There has been almost no talk of our national infrastructure deficit and this must be addressed.
As a nation we are not taking care of the assets gifted to us by previous generations. Countless studies have shown that a lack of investment in public infrastructure costs billions of dollars a year in lost productivity, as people sit in traffic or wait for delayed shipments. Of even greater importance: Lack of good repair can be a threat to public safety.
At Metro, safety and security is our No. 1 priority. We agree that fiscal discipline must be the norm. But for us, the bottom line is the safety and security of our patrons, our employees and the public. This is not only a humanitarian way of thinking, it’s good business.
And if we are successful, at some point in the future they may name this time the “period of infrastructure investment.” That would be something amazing to be proud of, and I know our grandchildren would be grateful.
Email questions or comments to julie.sneider@tradepress.com.
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