Railroads

Your morning transportation speed-read:

The Department of Transportation is giving Hawaii $1.5 billion to build a rail line.

Security guards at New York John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK) have called off a proposed holiday strike.

An Ohio man has been arrested six times for stealing bags from Port Columbus International Airport.

Japanese automaker Acura’s TL model has been named the safest affordable car on the U.S. market.

Your morning transportation speed-read: Read more...

Lawmakers in the Senate will hold a hearing this week to discuss rebuilding infrastructure that was damaged by Hurricane Sandy.

The Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee's Housing, Transportation and Community Development subcommittee will meet Thursday to hear from transportation officials in New York and New Jersey about the cost of rebuilding parts of their systems that were damaged during the storm.

The hearing is latest in a series of Capitol Hill inquires into the massive storm, which badly damaged roads and railways along the East Coast with flooding.

On a day when Republicans in the House were pushing to privatize its routes in the northeast U.S., Amtrak said Thursday that it was buying new equipment for its Acela service in the region.

The national passenger rail service said it was buying an entirely new set of high-speed rail cars, replacing a plan to add 40 of the existing Acela cars to the company’s high-speed fleet.

Republicans on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee have criticized the speed Amtrak’s Acela service, arguing that trains on the routes do not achieve "true" high speeds.  Acela trains are capable of running up to 150 miles per hour, but because the trains share tracks with Amtrak's regular service in the Northeast, some routes can run as slow as 80 miles per hour in some places.

Democrats on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee sharply criticized outgoing Committee Chairman John Mica (R-Fla.) Thursday for dedicating his final meeting to privatizing Amtrak service.

Mica has long pushed to privatize rail service in the Northeast, which has traditionally been Amtrak's most profitable area of service in the country.

But Democrats lamented Mica's focus on eliminating federal subsidies for the company in his final hearing as chairman of the Transportation Committee, saying there were other issues would have been more worthy topics. 

"I'm happy that we're having this hearing today, but I really kind of wish it was on [the] Water Resources Act, which is something that we have not dealt with," Rep. Corrine Brown (R-Fla.) said. 

Your morning transportation speed-read:

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has ruled that a June Amtrak crash in Nevada was caused by brake failure and driver error.

New Jersey Transit officials are coming under fire for leaving rail cars in yards that flooded during Hurricane Sandy.

Minnesota has a new transportation commissioner.

The European Parliament has endorsed a proposal to let airlines trade flight slots within the European Union.

As House Republicans press to privatize Amtrak service in the Northeast US, the company said Monday that it set a new ridership record over the Thanksgiving holiday. 

Amtrak said it carried 737,537 passengers from Nov. 20-26, which encompassed the Thanksgiving holiday. The total was a 1.9 percent increase from the Thanksgiving 2011 ridership, which Amtrak said was the previous record for holiday travel on its railways.

The record ridership brought in $56.1 million to Amtrak, the company said, an 8.4 percent increase over 2011. 

Republicans on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee will renew their push to privatize rail service in Amtrak's most profitable region this week. 

The hearing comes as President Obama and congressional leaders continue negotiations for a potential deficit deal that will mostly likely include numerous spending cuts.

The GOP has long argued that Amtrak's federal funding is a waste of taxpayers' money. To press that point, the House Transportation Committee will hold a hearing Thursday titled "Northeast Corridor Future: Options for High-Speed Rail Development and Opportunities for Private Sector Participation." 

Officials from Amtrak and other northeast U.S. public transportation agencies briefed a Senate committee Thursday on the damage that was sustained by transit systems last month during Hurricane Sandy.

"When we look at what we really lost in terms of revenue, we're at about $30 million just in terms of the few days that we were out of business. And then direct cost to get things fixed was another $20 million," Amtrak CEO Joe Boardman told members of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee's subcommittee on Surface Transportation and Merchant Marine Infrastructure, Safety and Security.

Amtrak shut down routes in the northeast in anticipation of Sandy, as did intra-city mass transit systems in cities like Washington, D.C., Boston, Philadelphia and New York City.

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood took a break from celebrating his birthday Thursday to press lawmakers to release funding for the centerpiece of President Obama's high-speed rail plans.

LaHood turned 67 on Thursday, and celebrated the occasion by testifying at a House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee hearing on high-speed rail.

LaHood used the appearance to try to convince Republicans on the panel to drop a ban on federal transportation dollars going to a proposed high-speed railway in California that supporters say would link San Francisco, Los Angeles and other major cities.