House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman Rep. Bill Shuster (R-Pa.) said Thursday the United States should take “baby steps” toward privatization of rail service in Amtrak’s northeast corridor.

Shuster said he will not push for complete Amtrak privatization, like his predecessor, Rep. John Mica (R-Pa.).

But the new Transportation Committee chairman said Thursday that he would look for opportunities to introduce private companies to the northeast, which is Amtrak’s most profitable corridor.

“We’re not at the point where we’re going to have two competing companies on the line on the northeast corridor,” Shuster said. “[There are] baby steps we have to take to bring the private sector into the operations of it, whether it’s operating the equipment, whether it’s operating the personnel on the train that sell the tickets ... there’s lot different ways to do it to bring the private sector in.” 

House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman Rep. Bill Shuster (R-Pa.) said Thursday that the lower chamber would unveil its version of a bill to boost waterways by late spring or early summer.

The Senate version of a new Water Resources Development Act (WRDA) has already cleared a committee vote.

Shuster said Thursday that the House would dip its toes in the WRDA waters soon too.

“Late spring, summer, we’ll start to move something through committee,” he said. 

Your morning transportation speed-read:

The head of a powerful oil industry lobbying group met with top White House officials and senior lawmakers Wednesday about stripping a federal biofuel rule.

“We’re talking about the renewable fuel standard (RFS). It’s a hot topic,” American Petroleum Institute (API) chief executive Jack Gerard told reporters at the Capitol. “We’re just making some visits, making people understand the importance of repealing the RFS.”

API wants to repeal the biofuel rule, which requires refiners to blend 36 billion gallons of biofuel into conventional petroleum by 2022.

A list of Gerard’s meetings obtained by The Hill showed the lobbyist met with a power group of Washington, D.C., figures, underscoring the intensifying lobbying and political battle surrounding the biofuel mandate.

Aviation industry groups are calling for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to put the brakes on plans to establish a a pre-clearance facility in the United Arab Emirates.

The DHS is considering establishing a facility at the airport in the UAE's capital city, Abu Dhabi, where travelers flying to the U.S. from pre-cleared airports could then be treated as domestic passengers when they reached customs checkpoints after landing.

But a coalition of airline and travel groups said it "would set a dangerous and unauthorized precedent" to establish a pre-clearance facility in Abu Dhabi.

Pre-clearance facilities have been established in airports in countries such as Canada, Ireland and parts of the Caribbean. The aviation groups said Abu Dhabi is different because its airport is not served by U.S. airlines. 

Actions by the Obama administration and oil-and-gas companies have improved offshore drilling safety since the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill, but congressional gridlock still poses a threat, according to ex-members of a federal panel that investigated the incident.

Congress’ failure to adopt budgets and offset automatic spending cuts known as sequestration has dinted funding for offshore drilling programs, a report card released Wednesday by Oil Spill Commission Action (OSCA) said.

“This could well be expensive to both the companies, which may well have to wait longer to obtain needed permits, and to the nation if reduced resources diminish the quality and care of the government’s oversight activities,” the seven-member group said.

A letter from the widow of a flight attendant who was killed in the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks is being used by airline unions to protest the Transportation Security Administration’s (TSA) decision to allow knives onto airplanes.

The letter to TSA Administrator John Pistole was written by the wife of a flight attendant who was working on United Flight 175, which crashed into the World Trade Center’s South Tower on Sept. 11 after being hijacked by terrorists who were reportedly using knives and box cutters.  

The letter was released this week by the Flight Attendants’ Union Coalition, which includes the Association of Flight Attendants – Communications Workers of America (AFA-CWA) and Association of Professional Flight Attendants (APFA).

“In the wake of (Monday's) unsolved terror attacks in Boston, I am writing to beg you to maintain the current TSA prohibited-items list and not allow knives on U.S. airline flights,” Rebecca Marchand wrote to Pistole. Read more...

The bill would allow for the interstate sale of firearms and for the interstate transportation of firearms.

Carnival Cruise Lines announced Wednesday that it was spending $300 million to improve the reliability of its ships after a spate of recent incidents.

The announcement follows a pair of high-profile insistence of Carnival’s Triumph cruise ship ending up adrift without power. The vessel was stranded in the Gulf of Mexico for four days during a cruise in February and it also broke loose from a port in Mobile, Ala., where it is being repaired, earlier this month.

The Doral, Fla.-based company said on Wednesday the money it is spending will be used for fleetwide improvements.