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In this Newsletter:

• Urgent Action Alert: Save and Improve Amtrak
• Clarification - Third Regional Bay Area Meeting

Urgent Action Alert: Save and Improve Amtrak

Anita Laurin and Central Ohio Relocalization Effort (CORE) ask for your help in saving and improving Amtrak, the United States' national railway system. The following is an excerpt from www.narprail.org:

Amtrak has been without authorization legislation since 2002. Senators Trent Lott (R-MS) and Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) introduced the “Passenger Rail Investment and Improvement Act of 2005” (PRIIA) on July 27, 2005.

The bill, approved as S. 1516 by the committee July 28, 2005 on an 17-4 vote provides for “Amtrak reform and operational improvements,” authorizes Amtrak for the six years Fiscal 2006-2011, provides for capital assistance for states, and development of state rail plans, and includes Amtrak and passenger rail security and tunnel life/safety provisions from the Rail Security Act of 2004, which the Senate passed last year.

Debate and a vote in the full Senate on S.1516 is very likely to occur within the next couple of weeks (between now and the end of September). The bill is excellent, but your Senators need to be told to vote “no” for three bad amendments:

1. One by John Sununu (R-NH) would kill the long-distance network by requiring Amtrak to discontinue trains that lose more than a certain amount of money per passenger.
2. Another Sununu amendment would allow an entity other than Amtrak or the host railroad to petition FRA to replace Amtrak as the operator of a route. This is unlikely to have a substantive impact because freight railroads have no incentive to (or benefit from) giving such access rights to such an entity. However, the amendment could create problems by antagonizing both the freight railroads and rail labor.
3. Finally, an amendment by Jeff Sessions (R-AL) would strike language aimed at facilitating reduction of Amtrak’s debt. In May, 2005, then Department of Transportation Inspector General Kenneth Mead testified told a Senate appropriations panel that Amtrak was paying interest rates as high as 9.5% on some debt, and that Congress should consider discharging portions of Amtrak’s debt where that was financially advantageous. S. 1516 tries to make that happen, but Sessions apparently doesn’t want it to.

For more information about what you can do, please visit http://www.relocalize.net/groups/columbus/rail.

To learn more about alternative transportation systems, visit our transportation resource page on www.relocalize.net.

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Clarification - Third Regional Bay Area Post Carbon and Affiliate Network Meeting