Amtrak Board nominees hearing Wednesday 7/24

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Reported by RPA in Friday’s email. Senate hearing 7/24. I thought a hold was still in place. Some really horrible people nominated by Trump that are on record as wanting Amtrak disbanded.

Republicans hold 2 seat majority on committee. Interesting enough both Jerry Moran(R) and Corey Gardner(R) are on the committee. They both have had run ins with Anderson over the SWC. The list of Senators are on the RPA email. Monday is the day to make calls emails are too late at this point.
 
Reported by RPA in Friday’s email. Senate hearing 7/24. I thought a hold was still in place. Some really horrible people nominated by Trump that are on record as wanting Amtrak disbanded.

Republicans hold 2 seat majority on committee. Interesting enough both Jerry Moran(R) and Corey Gardner(R) are on the committee. They both have had run ins with Anderson over the SWC. The list of Senators are on the RPA email. Monday is the day to make calls emails are too late at this point.
Moran must finally be convinced enough by Amtrak management to drop his holds on the nominations.
 
Let’s hope not. Words are worthless, actions matter. As Jim Matthews said paraphrasing “they will say the right things to the committee but their previous actions/votes speak volumes.”
 
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Moran must finally be convinced enough by Amtrak management to drop his holds on the nominations.
Well, if Moran's primary reason for holding up the nominations was to get Amtrak to pay up the $3 Million for SWC, then once that is achieved (as it has been), he really has no reason to continue his hold. AFAIR Moran's hold was not to get the overall Amtrak funding and "for profit or not" issue at all. It was a very narrow one focused on SWC alone. OTOH, Schumer still has a reason to continue his Gateway related hold, if it is still in place. None of that of course precludes this Committee hearing.
 
https://www.bing.com/amp/s/amp.indystar.com/amp/1817409001

As expected he said all the right things or at least played dumb in spite of his previously noted hatred of Amtrak. No mention of Moran or Gardner asking about the SWC.
I semi believe him. As a representative, he had a constituency to represent. He might not have hated Amtrak per se. Versus decreased government spending in general. He doesn't seem to hate trains. I wouldn't be shocked that as a board member, suddenly that frivolous spending he was against in Congress he'd be all for now. He's not Inhofe, who would sponsor amendments that would directly target Amtrak.
 
Indeed he may be much less concerned about budget deficits now than he was back then, since afterall his party does not care about budget deficits any more either - except Rand Paul who still minds as long as it is not military spending that is. :D
 
So per the RPA, the holds are lifted and the committee will be sending their recommendations to the full Senate after the comment period is done in a couple weeks. It is my opinion that Rokita wouldn't be bad for the board. He has good executive experience and was a ranking member of the T&I committee, so he knows how the funding drill works. I certainly feel like he's a better nominee than the other one from the Heritage institute.
 
If Amtrak is to survive, it can't be thought of as a partisan issue. If you look at the LD trains, some of the areas in the states along the way have no other public transportation other than Amtrak. Some of those cities are miles away from small airports that don't offer a variety of flights to where Amtrak goes. Regardless of party affiliation; would a representative or senator vote to remove train service from their state???? ' If they did I'd call that political suicide. The problem as I see it is that Anderson and Gardner don't understand the importance of the national network. They keep calling for a focus on "corridor routes" but have no plan to implement them. As for what they are doing with food service, this goes back to Boardman agreeing with congress to a law that would make food service profitable. The only one that can change this is congress. As to who is appointed to the Amtrak board, it may make little difference in how things are handled.
 
If Amtrak is to survive, it can't be thought of as a partisan issue. If you look at the LD trains, some of the areas in the states along the way have no other public transportation other than Amtrak. Some of those cities are miles away from small airports that don't offer a variety of flights to where Amtrak goes. Regardless of party affiliation; would a representative or senator vote to remove train service from their state???? ' If they did I'd call that political suicide. The problem as I see it is that Anderson and Gardner don't understand the importance of the national network. They keep calling for a focus on "corridor routes" but have no plan to implement them. As for what they are doing with food service, this goes back to Boardman agreeing with congress to a law that would make food service profitable. The only one that can change this is congress. As to who is appointed to the Amtrak board, it may make little difference in how things are handled.

Corridor route planning, at least preliminary planning, should be rather simple.

-What areas are deficient in service, whether it be underserved or have no service. For example, the Southeast. Royally underserved. A small selection of corridor service in North Carolina and that’s it. A SE hub needs to be established (Atlanta?) and create a corridor network. This leads into the following...

-Popular city pairs. What current services have popular city pairs that could support corridor service? RPA state fact sheets are great places to start for those who don’t have access to Amtrak metrics.

-Where can corridors practically be implemented? I’m talking host railroad cooperation here along with a practical route and support from the state(s), since any new corridor much have such support.

You can worry about equipment, crews, etc later. You have to figure out the high-level stuff before you even remotely worry about the details. Without support, what’s the point?
 
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