First federal rail bill since 1997 heads to White House

Congress has passed a new federal railroad  law (H.R. 2095).

Secretary of Transportation Mary Peters has indicated that President Bush will sign it.







The bill addresses many critical topics facing the U.S. railroad system. Our own Senator Tom Coburn had been holding up the bill. However concerns about rail safety because of last month's train collision in Los Angeles caused Senate leadership to schedule a cloture vote to circumvent his hold.







For the first time competitive grants are authorized to allow the states to match their own funds with federal dollars for track projects.







This will help facilitate passenger rail expansion in Oklahoma.







Up until now, a state could count on getting as much as 4 federal dollars for each state dollar for approved highway projects while getting zero for intercity rail.







The bill addresses in a number of ways Amtrak's on-time performance problem.







The bill also directs the Federal Railroad Administration to develop a "Request for Proposals" to encourage private sector development of rail corridors.







If Amtrak fails to improve the performance of its national system trains, the federal government could ask the owning private railroad to assume the operation of individual trains and be given the funding and equipment otherwise used by Amtrak.

All funding is still subject to the annual approprations process.  There has been an effort to authorize tax credit bonds to better guarantee capital funds for corridors.