Railway Track & Structures - October 2008 - (Page 18)

NRCChairman’s Column What we’re hearing from Obama, McCain Manny Ramirez Chairman Boston, Chicago, Washington D.C., and San Francisco, and also include a new generation of growing systems such as Seattle, Dallas, Phoenix, Denver, Salt Lake City, and Houston. These systems, and a whole raft of future proposed systems, are in urgent need of a dramatic increase in funding. For example, the Federal Transit Administration’s current annual New Starts budget is approximately $1.6 billion, but the amount of requests currently in the pipeline for Full Funding Grant Agreements is closer to $15 or $16 billion. We urge the Democratic Party to expand their focus on the passenger rail industry much beyond Amtrak. This industry is poised to take off with the proper federal leadership. And I’d like to address the labor issue for a brief moment. Debates on Amtrak are frequently simplified into a pro-labor vs. anti-labor debate. This is completely off base. The vast majority of companies in the rail industry, including Amtrak, commuter railroads, rail transit and the contracting industry are all unionized. Rail contractor employees are active members of many of the country’s biggest and most important labor unions, including LIUNA, IUOE, IBEW and the Carpenters Union. At the Republican Convention in Saint Paul, we heard a tremendous amount about the need to break our dependence on foreign oil. We at the NRC firmly agree with that goal, but we were disappointed to hear such a singular focus on drilling for more oil. The single most-effective policy shift the federal government could make right now to reduce our dependence on foreign oil would be to increase federal investment in freight and passenger railroad infrastructure to get trucks and cars off of our roads and highways. On the freight railroad side, the NRC supports the enactment of tax credits to incentivize the rehabilitation of the shortline railroad network and the expansion of the Class 1 railroad network. These tax credits would get dozens of infrastructure projects off of the drawing board and into action. These projects would result very quickly in improved rail infrastructure, and thus a more efficient use of oil in our country. In addition, Congress should direct more federal funding into key PublicPrivate Partnerships that can make dramatic improvements to critical rail infrastructure such as the CREATE Project, Alameda Corridor East, the Orlando Commuter Rail project, Norfolk Southern’s Heartland Corridor and CSXT’s National Gateway. It is imperative that for whichever party is in place in the administration and Congress, transportation infrastructure investment must be a top priority. Investing into rebuilding and expanding America’s infrastructure is the smartest economic decision we can make. Effective infrastructure investment is pretty much the definition of ‘money well spent.’ It’s good for the economy, for mobility, and the environment. It’s crucial to business, and a huge improvement to individual quality of life. It is both good politics and good policy. And finally I’d like to note that the NRC strongly agrees with what both campaigns have been saying about earmarks. They must be strictly limited going forward and pork-barrel transportation spending should be totally eliminated. Earmarks waste money and destroy the public’s confidence that precious tax dollars are being well spent. We believe that in a strictly merit-based competition, rail infrastructure projects will come out very well. The above topics, and much more, will be discussed and analyzed in detail at the upcoming 2009 Annual Conference. The Conference/Exhibition begins on Wednesday, January 7 at 4 p.m. and will go through Saturday night, January 10. Now is the time to make your arrangements to attend. The exhibition, the golf tournament and the hotel room block will all eventually sell out. The conference will be held at The Sanibel Harbour Resort & Spa in Fort Myers, Florida. To register for the conference and/or arrange an Exhibit Booth for your company, go to www.nrcma.org. To book a room at the discounted group rate of $210/night, call the Sanibel Harbour Resort at 800-767-7777. As always, I conclude by asking you all to keep the men and women in uniform, as well as their families, in your hearts and prayers. www.rtands.com The National Railroad Construction & Maintenance Association, Inc. 500 New Jersey Ave., N. W. Suite 400 Washington D. C. 20009 Tel: 202-715-2920 Fax: 202-318-0867 www.nrcma.org info@nrcma.org One of the primary goals of the NRC, in fact the core reason for our existence, is to influence the federal government’s policy towards the rail industry. With that in mind, we have been listening very intently to what the two presidential campaigns have been saying and promising with regards to infrastructure and energy policy. At the Democratic Convention in Denver, Senator Joe Biden of Delaware was introduced to the world as Barack Obama’s choice for vice president. Senator Biden, as most of you know, literally rides an Amtrak train to and from work every day. He has been doing that for 30 years. Biden is a very strong supporter of the Amtrak system, and we at the NRC also support aggressive funding of passenger rail. However, Amtrak is not the full story of the rail industry. In fact, Amtrak could be dramatically improved by some legislative reforms that would encourage increased contracting out of both maintenance and operations. Private entities should be invited into the system, and states should also be invited to increase their financing of the system through the use of a large federal matching grant program, similar to the highway funding system. In addition, the vast majority of passenger rail service in the country is provided by local rail transit systems spread throughout the country. These include the old-line heavy rail systems such as New York, 18 Railway Track & Structures October 2008 http://www.nrcma.org http://www.nrcma.org http://www.nrcma.org http://www.nrcma.org http://www.rtands.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Railway Track & Structures - October 2008

Railway Track & Structures - October 2008 Contents On Track Industry Today Supplier News AREMA News NRC News TTCI R&D Railroads Building Solid Foundation for More Capacity with Crossties Safety in High Density Areas M/W Challenges: CN Places New Bridge in Only Six Hours Products and Literature People Calendar Website Directory Advertisers Index Sales Representatives Professional Directory Classified Advertising Chicago Perspective

Railway Track & Structures - October 2008

For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.