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Yesterday, the Passenger Rail Working Group of the National Surface Transportation Policy and Revenue Study Commission unveiled a plan to improve intercity passenger-rail service during the next four decades.

“Vision for the Future: U.S. Intercity Passenger Rail Network Through 2050” outlines $357.2 billion in investments needed to expand and enhance the existing national passenger-rail system. The plan calls for maintaining the entire existing intercity passenger-rail system, reintroducing service to several cities, upgrading existing lines to offer higher speeds and greater frequencies in fast-growing corridors, strengthening service links in the Northeast Corridor, adding new routes in areas where the population is expected to grow significantly, and developing the federally designated high-speed rail corridors.

Some of the proposed new routes would require building new tracks while others would operate over existing freight tracks. The plan notes the need for additional freight-rail capacity.

However, Association of American Railroads (AAR) officials believe the passenger-rail proposals rely too much on the freight-rail network, and that the report doesn’t adequately emphasize freight railroads’ capacity needs.

“Piggy-backing on privately owned and operated freight railroad assets will give America a third-rate passenger-rail system — one that is not attractive to passengers or competitive with automobile and air travel,” said AAR President and Chief Executive Officer Edward Hamberger in a prepared statement. “It will place limits on the capacity of freight-rail operations, creating delays for freight customers, forcing more freight onto our already overcrowded highways, and harming our economic and global competitiveness.”

The working group will submit the plan to the surface transportation commission, a 12-member bipartisan committee appointed last year by the president and congressional leaders to examine the nation’s surface transportation needs and ways to fund them. The working group has recommended that an intercity passenger-rail program be included in the next federal transportation authorization bill to address the needs, which could be funded through an 80/20 federal/state matching program.