It’s Gonna Take Money to Fix Up the Fixer-Uppers

Congressman James Oberstar (D-Minn.), chair of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, is one of Amtrak’s biggest friends in Congress. He was the moving force behind the recently passed bill that authorizes a five-year funding commitment to Amtrak by the federal government.

William Crosbie of Amtrak appeared before Oberstar’s committee yesterday and there were a couple of nuggets in his testimony that illustrate one of the big problems facing the railroad – lack of equipment.

Crosbie cited the need to replace a lot of the so-called Heritage fleet, best described as the classic rail cars that were generally in service when Amtrak was created in 1971. At issue are baggage cars and diners like the one shown here. Crosbie said that the average car of this type is – ready for this? – 57 years old!

Despite increasing ridership, Amtrak has almost 100 serviceable Amfleet rail cars (see above) in storage at the moment … cars that cannot be put into service because Amtrak hasn’t had the money to perform required maintenance or minor repairs. According to Crosbie, it will take almost $80 million to get all of those cars back into the active fleet.

But thanks to Oberstar and his committee, it looks like the money will be there to do it … providing we have a new Congress and president who recognize the need for more and better passenger rail service and who will see that the money is actually appropriated. (See below!)