Senate Committee Recommends STB Nominee, 5 Amtrak Board Nominees for Confirmation

The Senate Commerce Committee has recommended confirmation for one Biden administration appointee to the U.S. Surface Transportation Board and five nominees to the Amtrak Board of directors.

However, Railway Age magazine reported it is uncertain if the nominees will receive a floor vote due to limited floor time and the tradition of pairing Democratic nominees with Republican nominees for the purpose of confirmation.

All six of the nominees are Democrats, including incumbent STB member Robert M. Primus, who was nominated for a second term.

Nominated for the Amtrak board were Anthony R. Coscia, David M. Capozzi, Christopher Koos, the Rev. Samuel E. Lathem and Robin L. Wiessmann.

Railway Age said none of the six nominees appears to be in danger of being rejected if the Senate is able to vote on their confirmation.

President Joseph R. Biden is expected to renominate all six if they do not receive a vote this month.

Of the five Amtrak board nominees, Coscia, is the current board chairman, a post he has held since 2013. Three of the other nominees would replace members whose terms have expired but federal law allows them to continue serving until they or a successor is confirmed by the Senate.

The fifth Amtrak board nominee would fill a long-vacant position.

There are two Republican hold over members of the Amtrak board and another vacancy that must be filled by a Republican nominee.

As for the STB position, the term of nominee Primus expires at the end of this year but federal law enables him to remain in the position for up to year.

Railroads Continue to Prepare for Work Stoppage, Senators Introduce Bill to Impose Contract Terms

As railroads begin to embargo traffic ahead of a possible national railroad strike and/or lockout that could begin as early as Friday, legislation has been introduced in the Senate to settle the dispute.

Amtrak said it would suspend service on four long-distance routes in advance of a possible railroad work stoppage.

The Senate resolution would force railroad labor unions and railroads to accept the recommendations made last month by a presidential emergency board.

It was introduced by Sens. Richard Burr (R-North Carolina) and Roger Wicker (R-Mississippi).

Negotiations for a new contract have been ongoing for more than two years with unions representing locomotive engineers and train conductors at loggerheads with management over wages, benefits and work rules.

To date, eight of the 12 railroad labor unions have reached tentative contract agreements with the National Carriers Conference Committee, which represents railroad management in the negotiations.

Those agreements have been described in statements issued by the two sides as generally following the recommendations of the PEB.

The PEB issued its recommendations on Aug. 16 and under federal law strikes and/or lockouts are prohibited for 30 days following that. The 30-day cooling off period will expire at 12:01 a.m. on Friday.

Amtrak said it will suspend service today on the routes of the Southwest Chief, Empire Builder, California Zephyr and portions of the route of the Texas Eagle.

The latter involves the Los Angeles to San Antonio segment of the Texas Eagle route, which overlaps with the route of the Sunset Limited.

The passenger carrier said suspensions could expand to all routes outside the Northeast Corridor by the end of the week.

The Amtrak statement said suspensions being imposed today will ensure that the affected trains can reach their endpoint terminals before a strike and/or lockout begins.

Although neither Amtrak or its workers are parties to the railroad labor negotiations, the passenger carrier uses track owned by freight railroads where a strike and/or lockout may occur.

In the event of a strike and/or lockout, Amtrak said it would continue operating trains that wholly use track that it owns or is owned by public agencies.

This includes the Northeast Corridor between Boston and Washington; the line between New Haven, Connecticut, and Springfield, Massachusetts; the Empire Corridor between New York and Albany-Rensselaer, New York; and the Keystone Corridor between Philadelphia and Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

An Amtrak statement said passengers affected by service suspensions due to the labor dispute will be contacted and offered the opportunity to change their travel dates or offered a full refund of their fare without any cancellation fees.

In a related developments, Class 1 railroads have begun embargoing certain types of shipments starting today.

Norfolk Southern told its shippers that it will stop accepting intermodal and automotive traffic.

The NS notice said it will close the gates for loaded or empty intermodal units at its terminals as of noon Tuesday and would also stop accepting traffic at on-dock port facilities and privately owned intermodal terminals.

The notice said the gates would remain open for intermodal pickup until further notice. Customers using railroad-operated EMP and TMX containers will be unable to make reservations after 12:01 a.m. on Tuesday. They will be able to return empty containers to NS terminals as normal until further notice.

Automotive traffic gates will close at 5 p.m. on Tuesday, with an embargo on auto traffic beginning at 12:01 a.m. on Wednesday.

The railroad also said it is planning “for the orderly lay down of trains in the bulk network” and will contact customers moving bulk commodities in unit trains with specific details.

CSX has also began on Monday an embargo of “high hazardous, toxic by inhalation and poisonous by inhalation” cargo.

DOT Building May be Named for 2 Leaders

The U.S. Department of Transportation headquarters building in Washington may be named for two former transportation secretaries.

The U.S. Senate on April 6 passed a bill calling for the naming of the DOT building the “William T. Coleman, Jr. and Norman Y. Mineta Federal Building.”

The legislation has been sent to President Joesph Biden for his consideration. The DOT headquarters is located at 1200 New Jersey Ave., SE

Coleman served as secretary of transportation between 1975 and 19877 and was the first African American to hold the position.

Mineta was transportation secretary between 2001 and 2006 and was first Asian American to serve in the post.

The bill had bipartisan support from the chairs and ranking members of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation; and the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works.

Coleman, who died on March 31, 2017, at one time served as legal counsel for the cities of Cincinnati and Philadelphia, and as a special counsel for Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority.

Mineta, a Democrat from California who served in the U.S. House from 1975 to 1995, was the longest-serving leader in USDOT history and the first cabinet member to switch directly from a Democratic Cabinet (as Secretary of Commerce under President Bill Clinton) to a Republican Cabinet (as Secretary of Transportation under President George W. Bush).

Hedlund Confirmed for STB Seat

The U.S. Senate this week confirmed Karen J. Hedlund to a seat on the five-member U.S. Surface Transportation Board.

Hedlund, a Democrat, will replace Republican Ann D. Begeman, who was serving on the Board in holdover status after her term expired.

Nominated by President Joseph Biden last April, Hedlund’s nomination had stalled due to the objection of Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah). 

There had been speculation Lee wanted to keep Hudlund off the Board until it acted on a petition to create the 85-mile Uinta Basin Railway, which was to carry crude oil from the Uinta Basin to a connection with Union Pacific.

The STB approved the Unita Basin project this week and the Senate subsequently approved Hedlund’s nomination for unanimous consent.

Railway Age columnit Frank Wilner reported that Lee may have worried that Hedlund would, like STB Chairman Martin J. Oberman, have concerns about the Unita Basin project and might vote against it.

In other Senate action, Senator Rick Scott (R-Florida) objected to confirmation of Amitabha Bose to be Federal Railroad Administrator.

Bose is currently serving as Deputy Administrator and will continue in that role indefinitely.

Public Transit, High Speed Rail Funding May be Vulnerable to being Slashed from Budget Bill

Some congressional observers say that funding for public transit and high speed rail may be vulnerable to being cut as congressional Democrats reduce a $3.5 trillion budget bill to a lesser figure that can win approval of moderate members in the House and Senate.

The publication Rollcall reported that the House budget reconciliation bill allocated $57.3 billion to the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, including $10 billion for transit and $10 billion for high-speed rail.

If that funding is cut, some members of Congress will argue that rail passenger service and public transit already are getting new funding as part of a Senate-approved infrastructure bill that included $550 billion in new spending for transportation and infrastructure.

Certainly the argument that it had some funding in the bipartisan infrastructure bill will make it harder for there to be robust funding,” said Sen. Chris Coons (D-Delaware) when asked about transit and high-speed rail funding.

The infrastructure bill contains $39 billion in new spending for public transit and $66 billion for passenger rail.

The reconciliation bill contains an additional $10 billion each for public transit and high-speed rail. It also has $4 billion for a greenhouse gas reduction program for highways.

Democrats hold slim majorities in both chambers of Congress and have been fighting over the size of the budget bill.

They are using the reconciliation process to be able to pass a budget bill in the Senate by a simple majority to avoid a likely Republican filibuster.

Complicating matter is that some House Democrats have vowed to oppose the infrastructure bill until the House approves the larger reconciliation bill.

Advocates for public transit had pushed for the additional $10 billion in the reconciliation bill to restore what they see as a “cut” in the infrastructure bill of the originally proposed $48.5 billion for transit.

Paul Skoutelas, CEO of the American Public Transportation Association, said the $10 billion for transit in the reconciliation bill is for a new program aimed at linking transit to affordable housing through a new grant program. “It really is unique and different,” he said.

However, Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Chairman Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and Sen. Patrick J. Toomey (R-Pennsylvania), the committee’s ranking minority member, said the transit allocation in the reconciliation bill violated an agreement not to “double-dip” or spend money on programs that already benefited from the bipartisan infrastructure agreement.

“The transit money is overwhelmingly coming from the bipartisan bill,” Brown said. “No matter what we do on that, that’s not a major hit compared to the tens of billions we put in infrastructure.”

Even if the $10 billion for high speed rail now in the reconciliation bill survives, Jim Mathews, CEO of the Rail Passengers Association, said that isn’t enough to launch a comprehensive high-speed rail program.

“That money is desperately needed to jump-start those kinds of efforts,” he said. “But from a more 50,000-foot level, it was a policy endorsement of an approach we really have to embrace in this country.”

Mathews fears that money for high-speed rail is vulnerable to any effort to trim the size of the budget reconciliation bill.

Adie Tomer, head of the Metropolitan Infrastructure Initiative at the Brookings Institution, said the need to cut money from the reconciliation measure means “everything could be on the table.”

Tomer said in the scheme of things, the transportation items are relatively small so reducing them will make little progress toward reaching the level of cuts needed to satisfy some senators.

“There are hundreds of billions of dollars in infrastructure spending across well over 100 different authorized programs,” he said. “That’s not the place to come up with easy cuts.”

STB Nomination Continues to Languish in Senate

The nomination of Karen J. Hedlund to the U.S. Surface Transportation Board continues to languish in the U.S. Senate.

Hedlund, a Democrat, was nominated by President Joseph Biden to fill the seat now held by Republican Ann D. Begeman whose term has expired and who by law must leave the Board by Dec. 31. Begeman continues to be a voting STB member with holdover status.

The nomination of Hedlund was sidetracked on Oct. 6 when Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah) objected to Hedlund on the Senate floor.

Lee responded after presiding officer Senate Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisconsin) asked if Hedlund could be confirmed by unanimous consent of the senators present without a recorded vote.

Last August, Lee was the lone senator to vote against Hedlund when her nomination was considered by the Senate Commerce Committee.

Lee apparently has placed a “hold” on the Hedlund nomination, using a parliamentary procedure to prevent a motion from reaching a vote on the Senate floor.

Railway Age columnist Frank Wilner has reported that Hedlund has become a political pawn in an effort by the Utah congressional delegation to pressure the STB into supporting the efforts of a private-public partnership to build an 85-mile intrastate railroad in Utah.

The railroad, known as the Unita Basin Railway, would haul crude oil extracted from fracking operations to a connection with Union Pacific at Kyune, Utah.

Because it will connect with the national rail system, the UBR needs an STB certificate of public convenience and necessity.

STB Chairman Martin Oberman has expressed concern as to the financial viability of the project and the effects on the environment that it might create.

Wilner has written that some in Utah hold against Hedlund her prior professional associations with Oberman when she was practicing law in Chicago and Oberman was chairman of commuter operator Metra.

Hedlund is a former deputy administrator and chief counsel at the Federal Railroad Administration, a former chief counsel at the Federal Highway Administration, and most recently vice president and national strategy adviser at WSP USA.

Some in Utah fear that Hedlund will view the UBR project in the same way that Oberman does, although he also has said he does not currently oppose the project, but rather wants the STB to seek additional information about it.

The UBR project has already been before the STB already. In January 2021 the Board voted 2-1 that it meets the statutory standard for fast-track approval.

Oberman was the dissenting voter and dissented again on Sept. 30 when the Board voted 3-1 to deny a motion for reconsideration of its January decision. It is unclear when the STB plans to hold a final vote on awarding a certificate of public convenience and necessity to the UBR project.

Senate Approves Infrastructure Plan

The Senate on Tuesday approved the bi-partisan infrastructure plan that would boost funding for Amtrak and public transit.

The Senate vote was 69-30 to approve the $1.2 trillion plan, which includes $66 billion for rail projects including $58 billion for Amtrak. It also contains $106.9 billion for public transit.

Known as the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the bill includes $550 billion in new funding and the Senate’s five-year surface transportation reauthorization measure.

The bill proposes nearly $845 million per year for grade crossing safety and improvement projects and an average of $5.5 billion per year for discretionary infrastructure grant programs, including $1 billion annually for the Consolidated Rail Infrastructure and Safety Improvement grant program.

It also would enhance the Railroad Rehabilitation and Improvement Financing program, and provide significant funding for intercity passenger-rail needs as well as research, development and demonstration projects addressing greenhouse-gas emissions and climate change.

The bill’s prospects in the House remain uncertain. Congressional observers note the House is in recess and the legislation could sit there for several months.

Senate Begins Debating Infrastructure Bill

The Senate this week voted to begin debate on a $550 billion bi-partisan infrastructure bill that includes $39 billion for public transit and $66 billion for passenger and freight rail.

The bill would provide $550 billion over five years for new federal investment in infrastructure, Biden administration officials said.

The bill would authorize $110 billion for roads, bridges and other major projects.

The public transit funds are focused on modernizing  transit and improving accessibility for the elderly and those with disabilities.

The rail funding would provide $22 billion to Amtrak. That would be broken down to $24 billion in federal-state partnership grants for Northeast Corridor modernization; $12 billion for partnership grants for intercity rail service, including high speed rail; $5 billion for rail improvement and safety grants; and $3 billion for grade crossing safety improvements.

Port infrastructure would receive $17 billion while airports would receive $25 billion.

The White House fact sheet said the money for the bill is expected to come through a combination of redirecting unspent emergency relief funds, targeted corporate user fees, strengthening tax enforcement when it comes to crypto currencies, and other bipartisan measures, in addition to the revenue generated from higher economic growth as a result of the investments.

Moving to debate does not guarantee passage of the bill or even that it will receive support from Republican senators even if several of them were part of the talks that led to the legislation.

The complete text of the bill has yet to be finished.

If the bill is approved by the Senate, it would go to the House where its fate is uncertain.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has pledged to held the bill until her chamber until Congress approves a $3.5 trillion budget plan being pushed by Democrats that includes spending on programs devoted to climate change, health care, education and child care.

Some moderate House Democrats, though, are pushing for an immediate vote on the infrastructure package once it comes over from the Senate.

Manchin Wants Study of Daily Cardinal

Senator Joe Manchin (D-West Virginia) is pushing for a study of making Amtrak’s Cardinal a daily train.

Nos. 50 and 51 currently operate tri-weekly, departing Chicago on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday; and New York on Sunday, Wednesday and Friday.

Manchin said in a news release that he was able to win approval of a measure to fund the study in the Surface Transportation Investment Act that is being considered by the Senate.

“The language I secured in the Surface Transportation Investment Act will require a study on potential options to restore the Cardinal line daily service, which provides access to and from much of West Virginia, Manchin said in statement.

“This is an important first step towards restoring the Cardinal line and I look forward to reviewing the results of this important study to determine how we can best move forward.”

Hedlund Intended to Replace Begeman on STB

The nomination of Democrat Karen J. Hedlund to the Surface Transportation Board is intended to be a replacement for Republican Ann Begeman.

Although Begeman’s term expired Dec. 31, 2020, by law she is eligible to remain on the board in holdover status for up to 12 months or until replaced.

Begeman has served two five-year terms on the STB and was acting chair until replaced in that position by Democrat Martin Oberman last January. STB members are limited to two five-year terms by statute. 

Hedlund will need to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate before replacing Begeman on the board.

Congressional observers told Railway Age magazine that Hedlund’s nomination is not expected to get a Senate floor vote until June or July.

A former counsel and deputy administrator at the Federal Railroad Administration, Hedlund since January 2015 has worked at WSP USA (then Parsons Brinckerhoff).

Previously she worked with federal, state and local transportation agencies as well as private companies to facilitate financing and development of transportation projects.

Those included Amtrak’s Gateway Program, Chicago O’Hare Airport Express Rail and the California High-Speed Rail Program.

Hedlund received a law degree from Georgetown University Law Center and a bachelor’s degree from Harvard University.