[Swindler Note: This is $601 million (and climbing) for how many miles of busway? Two miles or $300 million per mile? (And you won’t find any mention of cost on the MBTA’s website—I just checked it.) By contrast, light rail has been running around $20–$25 million per mile. Street trackage was about double for recent extension in Salt Lake City.] Boston Mayor Blasts New Delay In Transit Line Boston Globe05/30/2002 Mayor Thomas M. Menino yesterday blasted the MBTA’s announcement that it was delaying by several more weeks the opening of the Silver Line, which is supposed to help accelerate revitalization of the Washington Street corridor from Roxbury to Chinatown. Construction of the project has already created headaches for residents and businesses along the route. “I’m very disappointed in the delays,” said Menino, who has been pushing for redevelopment of the corridor for the past five years. “We’ve been waiting for this to happen, and for the MBTA to say there will be more delays is just unconscionable.” Menino said the delays raise questions about management of the Silver Line contract, adding that small businesses along the torn-up corridor are ailing because customers are having a hard time reaching them. “When government does a project, it should not have an effect on peoples’ ability to earn a living,” he said. MBTA spokesman Joe Pesaturo, responding to the mayor’s comments, said, “The T is just as disappointed that we couldn’t open sooner, but some circumstances were beyond our control.” Transit officials said the cause of the second Silver Line delay in the last six months includes the need to fully excavate a 2-mile stretch of Washington Street, bring in sturdier support dirt, and address shoddy workmanship on the kiosks and benches to be used at station stops. T officials said the delay will add to the project’s $601 million cost because the excavation contractor, Martin DeMatteo Construction, is paid by the amount of dirt hauled in and out of the project. The T is negotiating the final amount of that price increase with the contractor, a cost that Pesaturo said will be borne by the state Highway Department, a partner in the project. Residents and business people who live and work along the corridor are outraged by the delay, accusing the T of being an uncaring neighbor by leaving their streets and sidewalks in shambles. The Globe first reported last month that the opening would be delayed, but yesterday was the first time T officials set a new opening date. In a May 16 letter to the state Department of Environmental Protection, T General Manager Michael H. Mulhern said the line would open by Aug. 15 at the latest, though a T spokesman said the agency has told community leaders to expect the line to debut on July 20. DEP officials can fine the T for the delay, though a spokesman said that would be unlikely. Mulhern, overseeing his first major transit project as head of the agency, said in the letter that making improvements along the Washington Street corridor “has been a complicated and difficult project.” T officials in the past believed the first phase of the line, which will use dedicated bus lanes to funnel passengers between Dudley Square and the New England Medical Center in new buses running on compressed natural gas, would be ready by last December. But in November, when that deadline was unreachable, the T asked to extend the deadline. The line, which replaces subway service on the T’s demolished elevated Orange Line, is touted for its speed and efficiency, despite critics saying the dedicated lanes for the buses will become choked by regular traffic along the busy route. The first phase will run between Dudley Square and New England Medical Center. The second phase will go underground and connect with South Station. The third will use a dedicated tunnel to travel into South Boston to the waterfront and World Trade Center. The final phase will go to Logan International Airport via the Ted Williams Tunnel. Critics of the line, who want the buses replaced with light rail, blasted the delay. “It’s not surprising,” said Jodi Sugerman-Brozen with the group On the Move. “Why the MBTA continues to push forward on a project that is costing more and more money, and could just as easily be done as light rail, is a mystery.” After Long Delay, T Puts Silver Line On Track For July The Boston Herald05/30/2002 The MBTA announced yesterday that it hopes to unveil its overdue, high-profile new bus service along the Washington Street corridor on July 20. The so-called Silver Line—a rapid transit route that will feature compressed natural gas buses running along a dedicated lane from Dudley Station in Roxbury to the Massachusetts Turnpike overpass—was supposed to be running by May 1. But the T ran into construction problems along the two-mile route and had to send back shoddy station equipment, such as benches and shelters, for repair. The T formally notified the Department of Environmental Protection last week that the Silver Line would be launched by Aug. 15 at the latest. “We’re going to get (this) done as soon as possible,” said T General Manager Mike Mulhern. “All those merchants who went into the neighborhood and invested their hard-earned money in establishing storefronts, they’ve kind of reached their tolerance level with the construction activity and we’re sympathetic to that.” Mulhern said road and sidewalk construction along the route should be finished within a month, after which T officials will concentrate on finishing the stations, doing line striping and installing the high-tech info systems at each stop. While T officials praise the Silver Line as a groundbreaking transit initiative, it is disliked by some who live along Washington Street. Many there say the agency has reneged on a promise to replace the old elevated Orange Line, which was shut down in 1987, with trolley service. When completed in 2010, the $1.6 billion Silver Line will take passengers from Dudley to Logan International Airport. For now, however, the nexus will be Downtown Crossing. Go Metro! St. Clair County Metro System Exceeds Expectations In First Year Of Operations St. Louis Bi-State Transit’s WebsiteApril 29, 2002 The St. Clair County MetroLink Extension and MetroBus network turned one year old on May 7, 2002. The system opened on May 7, 2001, and has enjoyed an enthusiastic reception from the community with thousands using the Metro System every day to access major activity centers such as employment, medical, retail and educational institutions. Thanks to its patrons, MetroLink in St. Clair County has outdone ridership projections and has proven to be a safe, fast, and reliable means of transportation. Since the St. Clair County MetroLink Extension debut last year, customers have ridden the rails in greater numbers than were projected. Ridership was projected at 10,052 boardings per weekday for all St. Clair County MetroLink stations for the first year of operation. From May 2001 to February 2002, 3.6 million commuters boarded trains at Illinois stations. Average weekday ridership is approximately 12,609 representing a 25% increase in ridership over projections. “The success of this system is entirely due to the support it has received from St. Clair County taxpayers and riders,” said John Baricevic, St. Clair County Board Chairman. “In 1993, residents voted for the 1�2¢ sales tax to pay for MetroLink and are now enjoying the benefits of a 21st century light rail system and an efficient, modern connecting MetroBus network.” “MetroLink is truly a regional transportation system connecting communities from east to west in Missouri and Illinois,” said Larry E. Salci, Executive Director of the Bi-State Development Agency. “We fully expect the Cross County MetroLink Extension, opening in 2005, to enjoy the same successes as the St. Clair County MetroLink Extension.” The St. Clair County MetroLink Extension has received three awards since it opened in May 2001: the Illinois Tomorrow Award from the State of Illinois; the 2001 Outstanding Civil Engineering Achievement Award from the St. Louis Section of the American Society of Civil Engineers; and the 2002 Regional Excellence Award from St. Louis Construction News and Review. The St. Clair County Transit District and the Bi-State Development Agency have nearly completed an aggressive MetroBus replacement program in St. Clair County. Forty new buses are in service and the arrival of three new buses in May will complete the replacement program. The average age of the St. Clair County fleet is now only 3.3 years old. “We’re very happy to provide our customers with these clean, comfortable new MetroBuses,” said Delores Lysakowsi, Chairperson of the St. Clair County Transit District. “They are an essential component of the Metro System.” As riders flock to its stations, MetroLink continues to grow. In Spring 2001 construction began on the 3.5-mile extension of MetroLink from Southwestern Illinois College to the Shiloh-Scott station. The $75 million project is funded by $60 million from the Illinois FIRST (Fund for Infrastructure, Roads, Schools, and Transit) Program, and $15 million from the St. Clair County Transit District. Trackwork construction is currently underway, and the extension is scheduled to open in mid-2003. “Our plan to connect MetroLink to one of the largest employers in the region will happen next year,” said U. S. Representative Jerry Costello. “I am confident we will then complete the extension to MidAmerica Airport, providing an essential airport-to-airport connection with Lambert.” The St. Clair County MetroLink Extension opened on May 7, 2001. The alignment begins at the 5th and Missouri station in East St. Louis and extends to Southwestern Illinois College in Belleville. The extension consists of eight new passenger stations, with nearly 4,000 parking spaces for MetroLink patrons. The total project cost was $339.2 million. The Federal Transit Administration paid 72% of the cost, with the other 28% provided by the 1�2¢ sales tax passed by St. Clair County voters in November 1993. Two Groups Critical Of Bi-state Join Forces At Board Meeting St. Louis Post-Dispatch05/25/2002 Neither is happy with the transit agency’s plans to extend the MetroLink light-rail line west through Clayton and south to Shrewsbury. The urban activist group ACORN charged Friday that the Bi-State Development Agency intends to help finance a new extension of the MetroLink light-rail system at the expense of the poor, elderly and disabled who are dependent on the agency’s buses. Another activist group, the Coalition for Responsible Transit, said it now had proof that part of the extension, the route being built through Clayton, will cost $33 million more than previously stated—and that Bi-State and other officials have misled the public. The two groups joined forces Friday to create a raucous meeting for the Bi-State board of commissioners. Afterward, the agency’s executive director, Larry Salci, said the perceptions of both groups were wrong. “This is a ruse by people who still want a route underground to downtown Clayton,” Salci said of the Coalition for Responsible Transit. And because the East-West Gateway Coordinating Council approved in 1999 a general corridor for the MetroLink extension (which includes Clayton) that Bi-State must now implement, he said, any other route “is a moot point.” Bi-State is hoping that voters approve increases in sales and gasoline taxes in August that would bring the agency $22 million a year. ACORN organizer Ken McCoy wants to know what Bi-State will do if voters turn down the referendum. ACORN members submitted 3,100 signatures on petitions charging that Bi-State plans service cuts to finance the latest light-rail extension. “That’s nonsense,” Salci said. “It’s just not true.” A general distrust of Bi-State brought the two groups of activists together. McCoy told the Bi-State board that his group would not meet with Salci unless the Coalition for Responsible Transit was also invited. One member of the Coalition for Responsible Transit, Tom Currier, still is not convinced by Salci’s explanation of the Clayton cost. Salci said the coalition was comparing apples and oranges when it compared a 1999 East-West Gateway figure of $65.6 million for a general corridor with a 2000 Bi-State figure of $32.5 million that was for a shorter, specific track route. Regardless, Currier said, additional costs have pushed the Clayton segment to $85 million using a route that would run the trains at street level along Forest Park Parkway. Currier said that may be the same cost of a tunnel under Shaw Park Drive that his coalition favors. “I believe that the bored-tunnel alignment has not received proper consideration,” he told the commission. But Les Sterman, executive director of East-West Gateway, disputed that after the meeting, saying his agency, which is responsible for overall transportation planning and funding in the St. Louis region, analyzed hundreds of route alternatives, many offered by the public. “We did respond to the community,” he said. “At some point you have to make a decision, and whoever’s unhappy with the decision says we either didn’t give them enough input or time.” Expensive oversight Meanwhile, Bi-State must grapple with another issue: It needs $400,000 to $600,000 to upgrade its radio system within 10 months. Two years ago, a Bi-State staffer mistakenly did not refile with the Federal Communications Commission for the agency to maintain its frequency—so another business snapped it up. Since then, other groups have allowed Bi-State to “piggy-back” on their frequency, but that will end in April. So Bi-State needs to buy new equipment, including radio towers, that use a new frequency. Council Votes To Buy Train Service The Dominion (Wellington)05/25/2002 Wellington Regional Council is to go ahead with plans to buy a half share in the region’s commuter train services, despite a predicted 80% chance of failure. The 9-4 vote to go ahead with the proposed public-private joint-venture partnership was made yesterday after many months of discussion. Council spokesman Andrew Cutler said the rail purchase project team expected to name the joint-venture partner early next month. The contenders are Scotland-based Stagecoach (which also runs the city’s buses), and French-based Transdev and Connex. It has long been predicted that Stagecoach will be the successful partner. However, Transdev is now understood to be running a close race. The council expects to start negotiating with Tranz Metro Wellington owner Tranz Rail in August and hopes to complete due diligence in September. If a satisfactory deal can be reached, the purchase of Tranz Metro could be completed in March next year, after public consultation and a law change to allow the regional council to own infrastructure. Council chairwoman Margaret Shields said: “The joint-venture proposal is a way to break the current private monopoly situation and provide long-term certainty to commuters.” Big capital investments in rolling stock were needed in the near future, so greater transparency and control over ratepayers’ money was necessary, she said. Tranz Rail, in a written response to the decision, said it was keen to begin negotiations as soon as possible. However, managing director Michael Beard said he was surprised that the council had decided to go ahead with the joint venture, given the known risks and opposition of the region’s city councils. Wellington Chamber of Commerce president Barrie Saunders said he was disappointed with the decision but not surprised. “But just because they have decided to proceed with the joint venture doesn’t mean it will happen,” he said. “I think Tranz Rail is genuinely ambivalent about selling now, but if the price is really high, of course it will sell.” The views expressed at yesterday’s meetings, by both councillors and the public, were varied. Wellington Mayor Kerry Prendergast said regional council officers had confirmed in her presence that the joint venture had a 20% chance of success. However, economist David Butler said the 20% figure was being used in much the same way as a drunk used a lamp-post—“for support and not illumination”. Regional council chief executive Howard Stone said the 20% figure referred to the likelihood of a successful sale, not the successful running of the rail services by the joint-venture partners. Motorists Using New Bus Lanes Can Be Fined $150 The Dominion (Wellington)05/25/2002 Motorists could be fined $150 if they use new bus-only lanes in Wellington, which are expected to shave as little as 20 seconds off morning bus trips into the city. The three city-bound bus lanes open on June 10 and will be tested for a year at a cost of almost $50,000. The lanes, on Adelaide Road, Newtown, and Kaiwharawhara Road at the foot of Ngauranga Gorge, will operate from 7 am till 9 am, Monday until Friday. A third, on Chaytor Street in Karori, will operate at all times. Buses using Adelaide Road will save 20 seconds; those using the other two will save one minute. The lanes can be used by buses, cyclists, emergency vehicles and police. Motorists are allowed to enter them only if they are leaving or entering a side street or driveway. Outside of peak traffic times, the Adelaide Rd and Kaiwharawhara Road lanes can be used by motorists and for parking. Police will monitor the lanes initially, dishing out $150 fines to illegal users. Wellington City Council infrastructure committee chairman Ian Hutchings said the lanes would bring significant benefits. Bus lanes allow buses to move past other traffic to the front of the queue and to pick up and drop off passengers without disrupting traffic, he said. “The lanes are in areas where buses routinely get caught in traffic. It may take a little time for motorists to adjust to them, but the council believes the lanes will be good for our public transport system.” The lanes require new road markings and signage but no construction work. Leaflets have been sent to residents living closest to the bus lanes, and further publicity is planned for the week before they open. In the meantime, Wellington Regional Council is conducting its most comprehensive review of bus services to the Hutt Valley, Wainuiomata and Eastbourne since 1989. Public transport chairman Chris Turver said the information gathered would be used to develop proposals for improving the services and encouraging more people to use them. Survey forms are being distributed to residents and the public would be consulted before changes were introduced. Drug-crazed Man “Woke Up” Driving A Coach Birmingham Post05/25/2002 A drug crazed man who left a trail of damaged cars after he drove off in a coach from a city bus station has been jailed for 12 months at Birmingham Crown Court. In passing sentence on Mark Singal, Judge Derek Stanley said: “It was the hand of God that nobody was killed whilst you were driving this bus. “Just how that is, is explained, I suppose, only by the time of night you committed this offence. “What possessed you to take the bus nobody knows. You were in drug crazed state.” Singal, (26), of City Road, Edgbaston, who pleaded guilty to aggravated vehicle taking, was also banned from driving for two years. During the destruction spree an estimated pounds 20,000 worth of damage was caused and two of the vehicles he hit were written off. Roderick Henderson, prosecuting, said Singal , who was recovering from a heroin addiction, took the Volvo single decker coach worth £50,000 from Digbeth coach station at around 1:20 am. After going onto a main road he collided with two vehicles causing relatively minor damage. He was then spotted by a police officer on mobile patrol on the Dudley Road who followed the coach which was travelling at around 25 miles per hour. Singal, who had spotted the officer, turned off the main road and then collided with a large number of cars causing extensive damage to some of them. The pursuit only ended when Singal stopped the coach after going down a cul-de-sac and he was arrested after trying to run away. Singal later told police he had found himself driving the bus and became upset and panicky when he realised what he was doing. Christopher Morris, defending, said Singal, who was an intelligent man with a degree, had taken too much of a drug which had been prescribed to him by his GP. He said it was a ‘bizarre’ offence but anyone who had witnessed the driving would have been frightened by it. Conflict Question On WTC Transit The New York Post 05/26/2002 A consulting firm hired to help re-map downtown transit has also been working for a major developer pushing a controversial plan to link the Long Island Rail Road to lower Manhattan, The Post has learned. The link between engineering giant Parsons Brinckerhoff and real-estate firm Brookfield Properties, owner of the World Financial Center next to Ground Zero, has raised concerns about a possible conflict of interest. “It makes me nervous... There’s a real burden on Parsons Brinckerhoff to demonstrate they have an open mind,” said Straphangers Campaign head Gene Russianoff. “If you’re part of the team that’s looking at the overall plan, you want the public to have a sense that everything is on the merits, not because you have a client.” Parsons and the architectural firm Beyer Blinder Belle were awarded a $3 million contract last week by the Port Authority and the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. to produce an urban design plan for the World Trade Center area, including major transit improvements. Last fall, Parsons started working for Brookfield to devise transportation recommendations for lower Manhattan. That work includes proposals to bring the LIRR downtown, including one that would run trains to the Fulton Street subway station along the “C” line subway tracks. That plan that has drawn fire from straphanger advocates, politicians and civic groups who say the idea serves only a small number of commuters, and could draw funding away from the long-stalled Second Avenue subway plan. Brookfield Vice President Melissa Coley said Parsons continued to be paid as a consultant to Brookfield Properties. “We brought on Parsons months ago, before the LMDC was even created, to explore mass-transit options,” Coley said. “They’re basically exploring how to fix what was damaged and how to enhance it.” But a Parsons spokeswoman insisted her firm’s work with Brookfield was finished, adding, “There is no conflict.” A downtown LIRR connection is listed as an option in the LMDC’s planning blueprint. LMDC and PA officials didn’t return calls. LMDC board member Madelyn Wils said the Parsons-Brookfield relationship did not concern her, since Parsons’ task was to work out the feasibility of transit options proposed by development officials. “They’re not making the decisions about what’s the better plan. We’re making the decisions along with the Port Authority,” Wils said. Globe South 2; MBTA Releases Wish List Of Initiatives, By Public Request The Boston Globe 05/26/2002 Westwood—A handful of area transportation projects—including the expansion of the Orange Line to the Route 128 train station and the extension of the commuter rail to New Bedford and Fall River—are on a wish list of initiatives being considered in the MBTA’s 25-year planning vision, a transit authority official told regional leaders on Wednesday. The list, part of the MBTA’s 2002 Program for Mass Transit (PMT), came out of public forums held last fall and earlier this year. Residents, organizations, and municipalities in the T’s 175-community service area were asked how they thought the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority should expand, Steve Woelfel, the MBTA’s manager of long range planning, told the Neponset Valley Transportation Management Association’s board of directors. The NVTMA is a private, nonprofit group formed in 1995 that offers ridesharing, shuttles, and other transit alternatives to employees of area businesses in an effort to reduce traffic and road congestion. From the outreach sessions, the MBTA received about 400 project suggestions, Woelfel said. Transit officials are in the process of screening the list and hope to have a completed PMT by the fall to present to the MBTA Advisory Board for consideration. The Program for Mass Transit, which is done every five years, defines a long-range (25-year) vision for mass transportation in the Boston area and gives officials a way to prioritize infrastructure investments. Because the process is ongoing, Woelfel said, there’s no way of knowing when any of the projects on the PMT list might be funded—or put into action. The Neponset Valley Chamber of Commerce president, Doug Wynne, said transportation expansion projects—such as the ramp from Dedham Street in Canton to Interstate-95 southbound now underway—are vital for economic development. Initiatives such as the I-95 ramp and improvements to the University Avenue office park area in Westwood “will lead to a diminishing of traffic on what’s essentially residential streets.” But, Wynne said, the area still could use more reverse commuting options and other improvements, such as better access to the Dedham Corporate commuter station from Elm Street. A committee of municipal officials and transportation leaders guides the Program for Mass Transit process. Project ideas are divided into three categories: system expansion, service enhancements, and system preservation, Woelfel said. The list includes suggestions for all transit modes, including bicycle, water, and pedestrian transportation. “(The list is) really basically generated from what we got during the public process,” he said. Local initiatives to make the preliminary list of system expansions include: Orange Line extension from Forest Hills to Route 128 via Hyde Park, an Orange Line extension from Forest Hills to West Roxbury/Needham (which would replace the commuter rail between Forest Hills and Needham), and extending the commuter rail service from Stoughton to Fall River and from New Bedford through Stoughton, Easton, Taunton, and Freetown. Other proposed projects include expanding reverse commuting options on commuter rails by providing at least three “reverse-direction” trips during each peak period and increasing suburban commuter rail feeder bus services (such as park and ride options). Yet, the program is a wish list. It does not consider financial or political constraints, Woelfel said. After the Program for Mass Transit is complete, the list of projects moves on to the Boston Metropolitan Planning Organization and other regional planning groups, which are responsible for developing a 25-year regional transportation plan, drawing from the program, and making funding decisions using federal money. The MBTA also produces its own annual Capital Investment Program that identifies projects from the program to be funded and implemented over a five-year span. Local officials said there remains a need in the Neponset Valley area for more transportation options, both from the MBTA and the state Highway Department. A four-town regional working group, made up of town officials and business leaders from Canton, Dedham, Norwood, and Westwood, has been meeting regularly to consider the area’s regional growth, planning, and transportation needs. The group will next convene in early September, Wynne said. [Swindler Note: see following article.] Metro Atlanta Chamber Of Commerce Proposes Trolleys Atlanta Journal and Constitution 05/26/2002 Concerned about Atlanta’s intractable traffic problem, the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce is pushing a solution—a train on wheels. Called a “flex trolley” by some, “bus rapid transit” by others, the system could run on fixed guideways, dedicated lanes or mingled with cars and trucks in the spider web of traffic that tangles the Atlanta region. Like trains, the system could be operated with stations, and passengers could board on raised platforms. Doors could open horizontally, and there could be multiple doors per vehicle. Think Disney World monorail cruising down a median. It’s innovative technology, said Chamber President Sam Williams. Although not in use as a comprehensive transit system in the United States, this train on tires runs in parts of Europe and South America. “We think it’s a great solution that should be very seriously considered,” he said. “If we don’t reduce our congestion and provide people with additional alternatives, the smart, young, bright talent that has been the growth of Atlanta in the past is going to stop coming here. They’re going to go to other cities where the quality of life is better.” The flex trolley could be the basis for a regional transit system that is cost-effective, quick to put in place, pleasing to the rider and takes people where they need to go. For example, the north suburban Perimeter Center and Cumberland Mall areas serve as large employment centers but aren’t joined by transit. This technology could join the areas. GRTA study set The Georgia Regional Transportation Authority is gearing up for a yearlong study, the Regional Transit Action Plan, to work on those types of connections. When it comes to moving people around, the Atlanta region isn’t close to having the overall transit system used by older cities like Chicago and New York, which developed before the automobile became king. But with federal pressure to improve Atlanta’s air quality and unclog the roadways, economists to commuters to business leaders say something needs to be done quickly to fix the traffic problems. If there’s too much congestion, the gravy train—growth and development—that has fueled the region’s economy could stop. The chamber hopes that the trolley concept would be included in various studies that look at transit in several corridors and would be eventually included in the region’s regional transportation plan. The group paid for a study early this year and for the last two months has been promoting the idea to government officials, business leaders and transportation decision makers. The chamber hasn’t attached any funding strategy or timetable. “Transit has to offer people more convenience, more time savings and give them a pleasant passenger experience in order to attract people out of their cars,” said Carrie Thompson, the chamber vice president for transportation. Even before a trolley system could be included in the region’s 25-year transportation plan, it would need to be identified as the preferred transit system for specific projects, such as the northwest corridor proposed to link Midtown to Cobb. The chamber says this technology could be implemented quicker than light rail, which uses overhead wires instead of heavy-rail tracks like MARTA. “If metro Atlanta could get the political support, you could get something done quickly,” Thompson said. “For light rail to operate, you’ve got to have the track in place.” Capital costs for bus rapid transit are less expensive than light rail, according to a study by the federal General Accounting Office. Various types of bus rapid transit systems range from $200,000 per mile for an arterial road-based system to $55 million per mile for a dedicated bus system. Light rail ranges from $12.4 million to $119 million per mile. GRTA Executive Director Catherine Ross and Atlanta Regional Commission Director Charles Krautler said the trolley technology should be studied. “I think it’s one of a number of alternatives that could provide us greater mobility here,” Ross said. “It’s something we probably ought to do in certain corridors. I don’t think it works everywhere.” Leon Eplan, a former Atlanta planning commissioner who helped design the MARTA system, said bus rapid transit could be feasible in some areas. He likened the concept to a sewer system with main lines and feeder lines. For example, it could work well in an area such as the Perimeter, where riders could take MARTA to a station and then board a flex trolley for the ride down Hammond Drive to Roswell Road. Yet riding in congested areas, like Buckhead, would be difficult without dedicated lanes. Business leaders in the region say the technology looks promising. “It’s clearly worth considering,” said Tad Leithead, an ARC board member and vice president of the Cumberland Community Improvement District. “Typically, when something looks too good to be true, it often is.” Lane Ranger Column Atlanta Journal and Constitution 05/26/2002 There’s a cliche: If it looks like a duck, smells like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s almost certainly a duck. It can be applied to the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce’s well-meaning initiative to create regionwide mass transit. No matter how chamber officials try to spin it, the flex trolley plan they’ve been pushing around town is nothing more than a well-disguised effort to sell metro Atlanta on regional bus mass transit. The flex trolleys depicted in a presentation by Alan Hoffman of the Mission Group, a San Diego-based strategic planning organization, don’t look like buses. They look more like trains than the old trolley cars that once ran along the streets of Atlanta. But look underneath the glossy exteriors, and you see they run along the streets on rubber tires, just like buses. And even though flex trolleys can utilize existing HOV lanes and the chamber plan calls for some dedicated right of way along existing thoroughfares that are congested, they still have a bus system’s inherent weaknesses. Since they would, for the most part, share the roads with cars, they would be slow. Promoters downplay that by talking about signal priority systems to speed them along our streets. But it’s hard to visualize red lights that turn green for flex trolleys when metro Atlanta traffic engineers can’t even time often antiquated signals for efficient movement of rush hour traffic. As for dedicated right of way, motorists already grumble about HOV lanes that only buses and car poolers can use. Imagine the opposition to a wave of proposed street widenings when it’s known upfront the new pavement would be reserved exclusively for flex trolleys. And with Atlanta’s development patterns already in place, how many streets COULD be widened without staggering right-of-way acquisition costs, not to mention the loss of scores of homes, businesses, street parking and sidewalks? The chamber claims flex trolleys can offer a more extensive transportation network mimicking the region’s actual travel patterns in less time with more frequent service than bus or rail. But it’s clear that would take a vast fleet of flex trolleys, and these vehicles’ per-unit cost would dwarf that of modern natural gas-powered buses. There’s another problem not addressed by the chamber. Atlanta was not built on a grid system. Our streets are not straight and free-flowing. Think about an 18-wheeler trying to navigate a corner in downtown Atlanta. Now imagine an even longer accordionlike people carrier trying to make those turns. They just won’t fit. The chamber plan envisions breezy, modern-looking stations that, in the presentation, look almost as big as MARTA’s. Where would these be built? They talk about the strength of the system being that the trolleys would take people where they want to go. Trolley stations without connections to actual workplaces sound like a regionwide replay of one of MARTA’s biggest shortcomings. Chamber officials won’t discuss specifics of how much a flex trolley system will cost. Hoffman throws out a figure of $5 million to $30 million a mile, a fraction of the cost of heavy or light rail. But it’s fuzzy math to think a flex trolley system can be built for less than what it would cost to put a similar number of buses on the road. Chamber officials are to be praised for tackling a tough problem and offering a solution. But trying to overcome metro Atlanta’s aversion to buses by disguising them as trolleys is a ploy the region’s commuters won’t buy. Georgia politicians often use the down-home expression, “This dog won’t hunt.” Well, this duck won’t quack. [Swindler Note: Never considered wheels coming off of a bus as a potential safety problem. Apparently it is in Baltimore] Runaway Bus Wheels Imperil People On Streets; MTA Logs 16 Instances In Baltimore Since August; Cause Still Under Investigation; 15 Riders And 5 Drivers Have Claimed Injuries The Baltimore Sun 05/26/2002 Rear wheels have fallen off Maryland Transit Administration buses at least 16 times since August in a series of accidents that have baffled MTA officials, resulted in injury claims from bus drivers and passengers, and imperiled pedestrians and motorists in the path of the 200-pound wheels. These types of accidents are so unusual that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration knows of only one case of a bus losing a wheel anywhere else in the country in the past three years. But MTA officials waited until after the 10th incident in Baltimore to launch an internal investigation last month. And as the accidents continue, they still aren’t sure what is going wrong. Four weeks ago, a pair of left rear wheels from a bus heading north on Calvert Street rolled off into early-morning traffic across Lombard Street. One wheel hit a curb, bounced up “at least 14 feet,” slammed against the wall of a McDonald’s, then spun on the pavement, said bus driver Robert B. Allen. The other cruised past the Brookshire Suites Hotel and toppled over near a parking garage. “It was something like out of a movie,” said Allen, an MTA bus driver for 32 years. “The traffic light on Lombard was red, thank God. If it had been green, the tires would have probably killed someone.” Norma Powell, a passenger on one of four buses whose wheels came off last month, remembers smoke billowing into the crowded vehicle and panicked passengers racing to get out. “A great big tire was laying in the middle of Belair Road,” she said. “Oh my Lord, I couldn’t believe it.” Safety experts say even one incident of a wheel falling off a bus should receive immediate attention. “This is a problem you would want to address right away,” said Peggy Fisher, a Detroit-based consultant for bus and truck fleets. “You’re talking about a lot of weight being propelled even at 20 miles per hour. It can cause tremendous destruction.” In Baltimore, buses lost wheels at least once in August and January, three times in February and twice in March. Four more incidents were reported in April, and five so far this month, according to MTA records. Acting MTA Administrator Virginia White, the agency’s top executive, has kept the investigation a discreet internal affair, but it has been marred by infighting and an apparent conflict of interest on her part. According to interviews and documents obtained by The Sun: White failed to disclose the extent of the problem, including the number of incidents and reports of injuries, even to her bosses at the Department of Transportation. They learned the scope of the problem only a few days ago. Wheel manufacturers—typically the first to be called in during such accident investigations—were notified by the MTA about vague wheel problems two weeks ago. As of early last week, they still had not been told the number of incidents or that buses had lost wheels. White excluded the MTA’s safety department from the investigation team and blocked an independent inspection of buses arranged by the safety department. And when a safety officer reported a potential wheel maintenance problem in the MTA’s largest shop, on Bush Street, White challenged the officer’s authority. Frank White, the acting administrator’s husband, runs the shop on Bush Street—an apparent conflict of interest that some say is complicating the investigation. State Transportation Secretary John D. Porcari, who learned the magnitude of the incidents early last week, has launched an independent audit of all records on the problem and has asked an outside firm to investigate the wheel failures and MTA’s response. “We have to absolutely get to the bottom of this,” Porcari said late last week. “No one would want to be in the vicinity of a wheel coming off a bus.... Something needs to be done immediately.” An official with the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration described such incidents as “very rare.” “If it looks like a pattern—and two incidents can be a pattern—we’d want to investigate,” said NHTSA spokesman Tim Hurd. Maintenance and operations employees, including those in the Bush Street shop, say the wheel problem was evident as early as February. Virginia White said in recent interviews that even one incident is too many and deserves immediate attention. But she said she didn’t recognize a pattern of wheel failure until April 20, after three incidents occurred in four days. On that date, she said, she began an investigation. By that time, 10 buses had lost wheels. “That to me raised the flag that this was not our normal way we operated,” she said. Since then, she added, she has conducted a “proactive and very, very comprehensive investigation.” She suggested that a wheel coming off was not necessarily dangerous. A rear wheel would almost always “fall off in place, just tip over on its side,” and the bus frame would likely catch it, she said. “Rolling down the street? God, I hope not,” White said. In an incident on Jan. 18, a rolling bus wheel hit a natural gas tank at Fort Smallwood Road and Lauren Way, causing a major gas leak, according to MTA records. Other wheels that broke loose from buses rolled into vehicles and buildings. “I do know there have been no injuries.... There have been no claims,” White said during an interview two weeks ago. But three days after that interview, MTA spokeswoman Suzanne Bond verified 15 passenger claims of leg, neck, back and other injuries. She confirmed 16 incidents of lost wheels and about a dozen instances in which loose wheels were discovered on buses in the garage. Also, five bus drivers have filed injury claims, according to the Maryland Workers’ Compensation Commission records. “We’ve been lucky so far,” says Deoleous Bridges, the head of the local drivers and mechanics union. MTA officials have a couple of theories on the cause of the loose wheels. Employees using powerful air-pressure wrenches may have used too much force when putting on the nuts that secure the wheels, perhaps weakening the bolts or “studs” and causing them to fracture. But why now? The wrenches have been used for years. Managers suspect that some mechanics did not get adequate training. Lab tests showed no defects in the broken studs, said Edward M. Connelly, MTA chief of quality assurance. An incomplete investigation by independent consultants showed that lug nuts on nearly a quarter of the buses they inspected had been put on with double the recommended force. Workers are now scrambling to replace all 30,000 rear-wheel bolts on MTA’s more than 800 buses. They are using new air wrenches that are less powerful and also manual wrenches that limit torque, the amount of force it takes to rotate the nut on the stud. The job should take two more weeks, with priority to buses on high-speed and longer routes in the city and suburbs. Since April 20, the agency has spent more than $250,000 trying to fix the problem. But the accidents continue. On May 10, a bus lost its newly installed right rear wheels at North Gay and Lanvale streets. Loose wheels have also been discovered on other buses that had supposedly been fixed, according to John M. Lewis, acting assistant manager of bus operations. The latest theory: A deteriorating gasket-type piece between the wheels could be causing the bolts to loosen. “We’re testing that theory now,” Lewis said. “Time will tell.” Meanwhile, employees are unnerved. One bus driver said she was traveling down a busy city street when the steering wheel jerked to the right. One of the passengers yelled, “Your wheels are gone,” said the driver, who asked not to be identified. “We were sliding down the street. There was a van on the right, and I tried to avoid hitting it.” In a written report on another incident, a driver described losing control of a bus and hitting a guardrail. “A lot of the drivers are afraid to drive the buses,” said Kevin Wise, an attorney representing two drivers in worker compensation claims. “It’s only a matter of time before a member of the public who’s unfortunate enough to be around one of these buses will be hurt.” Passenger Norma Powell, a 61-year-old housekeeper at the University of Maryland Medical Center, was on her way home from work April 19 when the bus she was on lost its right rear wheels on Belair Road. She said the bus lurched back and smoke began to pour in. “All these people panicked, and I got scared too,” she said. As people pushed to get off the bus, Powell was shoved to the ground. She injured her right knee, and was taken by ambulance to Union Memorial Hospital. She went back to work Wednesday after being out a month. “This is my only way to and from work,” she said. “You’d like to feel a little bit safer than that.” Fisher, the fleet consultant, said that if the cause isn’t obvious after one incident, manufacturers are usually brought in. Most times, she said, they can isolate the problem quickly—whether it is in the wheel or the surrounding parts, or is due to a maintenance failure. “There’s a lot of things that can happen to cause this,” she said. “One of the things is incorrect torque, but that’s just one thing.” Often, she said, it is a combination of problems. Said one operations manager who asked not to be named for fear of losing his job: “It became obvious that we needed some type of outside help because we weren’t able to pin this thing down. It’s bigger than we are.” ‘Doesn’t Happen Often’ The two manufacturers of the wheels say the MTA told them two weeks ago there was a problem. As of early last week, the agency still hadn’t told them much, they say. Alcoa Corp. sent a representative when the MTA first called, said David Walters, the company’s supervisor of warranty and field service. “This doesn’t happen often at all,” Walters said. “I had a call from one of their people who talked about wheels coming off one bus. I’ve only heard of one.” During the Alcoa representative’s visit, MTA officials did not disclose the scope of the problem, according to the company. Bill Noll, vice president of engineering at Accuride Corp., told a similar story. The company was first told that a loose wheel had been discovered on one bus. “They said when the driver stopped the bus, he heard a sound and went out and looked. The wheel had come loose. It didn’t roll off of the bus,” Noll said. On learning from The Sun the number of buses that had lost wheels, Noll was startled. “If they’d said 16 wheels and they’d said transit buses, we wouldn’t have waited two weeks—we’d have had someone on a plane that day,” he said. Bridges, president of the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1300, said he contacted the MTA early last month after several drivers reported incidents. “They (operations officials) told me these were isolated incidents and they were on top of it,” Bridges said. He recently learned of more incidents. “I think personally this should be an emergency. They should call the manufacturers, have experts come in, but they just kept it hush-hush.” The Investigation White limited her investigation within the agency as well. The MTA’s former director of operations, White named only operations employees to the investigation team last month. It includes her husband and his counterparts at three other MTA maintenance garages. However, the MTA’s safety department, a watchdog branch that investigates bus accidents and assesses maintenance performance, was not included. Transportation Secretary Porcari said it made no sense to exclude the safety department or the manufacturers. “One of the ways you quickly take corrective action is to make sure you have all the information and that you’re sharing it,” he said. White explains the exclusion this way: “If there are serious accidents where there might be blood and guts, safety (department) is there to assist.” In this case, she said, “they’re there as advisers to us.” Of the operations group, she said: “We have a group of guys who together probably have close to 100 years’ experience in maintenance. Collectively, the experience in that room was good enough to solve our problem.” In one interview, White said she told Porcari about “service” problems, but could not recall whether she mentioned that wheels were coming off and was certain that she had not told him the number of incidents. “I wasn’t aware of the numbers,” she said. Porcari said White told him early this month that several buses had lost wheels. “And we apparently had transported some passengers to the hospital,” he said Thursday. “That I just found out in the last 24 hours.” Other actions taken by White that involve her husband smack of conflict of interest, some employees complain. Department policy prohibits employees from holding a supervisory role over a spouse. But an exception for the Whites was approved in September 2000—with provisions. Any decisions facing White, then deputy administrator, that involved her husband would be handled by the MTA administrator, according to the provision. When White took the helm in July, the policy was not changed. “If there’s even an appearance of impropriety, it’s something we have to take very seriously,” Porcari said. According to several sources and MTA records, as White’s investigation got under way late last month, a new MTA safety officer, Katherine Davis, visited the Bush Street garage. She discovered that an anti-seize product was being applied to wheel bolts against the manufacturer’s recommendations. Davis reported it to operations officials, who ordered the practice stopped. Frank White responded angrily in an e-mail, one of a series obtained by The Sun. “I understand that you had to run to John Lewis and Ed Connelly to let them know that I had someone using Never-Seize on the lug nuts,” White wrote to Davis. “File your report because I don’t care if we do everything wrong. All Safety (department) wants is to be able to control, not respectfully resolve issues and problems.” Safety Director Larry Hewitt defended Davis in a note copied to several staff members. The problems were serious enough to merit attention from more than one department, he wrote. A few days later, in an e-mail to Hewitt and Lewis, Virginia White had the final word. “Yes, the situation of loose wheels is serious... and Operations (department) is taking the appropriate measures to identify and correct the situation,” she wrote. Davis’ visit to the shop was “a good learning experience,” she continued. “It will take many years of incidents for her to become an expert in bus maintenance. She is not qualified to give advice.” White told The Sun she didn’t know whether Davis’ complaint was valid but said the safety officer nonetheless had overstepped her authority by pointing it out. “She’s not an expert yet,” White said. Independent Probe Frustrated by the continuing problems, the safety department hired an outside team of consultants two weeks ago to conduct a wheel failure analysis, as it has for other transit accidents. The consultants planned to visit the four maintenance garages and perform a series of tests, including checks of air pressure and torque. According to several sources, the two-man team had been at the Bush Street garage only a couple of hours when two senior MTA managers showed up and told them to leave. Hewitt, the MTA safety director, was there and refused to stop the inspection unless ordered to do so by Virginia White. A few minutes later, White phoned him and ended the inspection. Hewitt would not discuss the incident and referred questions to Bond, the MTA spokeswoman. White said she stopped the inspection because Hewitt had not told anyone about it in advance and because the independent inspections could have been “counterproductive.” “I said QA (quality assurance) is leading the investigation,” White said. However, Transportation Secretary Porcari said safety officers must have authority to “bring in whatever independent expertise they need. Often the issue is so specialized, you need to be able to respond with independent experts.” The consultants’ incomplete test was revealing. A lug nut should be secured with a force between 450 and 500 pounds. Of the 127 lugs tested, 51% exceeded 700 pounds, and 24% exceeded 1,000 pounds, according to a report obtained by The Sun. “That is unbelievable,” said an industry expert who reviewed the results but asked not to be named. “You rarely see studs installed at that high a torque. That is very close to immediate failure.” Virginia White said she worries that the incidents might taint the agency with an image of less-than-safe transportation. “I don’t want people to think it’s not safe to ride the MTA,” she said. “It is safe.” These concerns in no way colored the inquiry, she added. Asked if he was satisfied with White’s handling of the problem, Porcari said he wanted to wait until his investigation is done before drawing conclusions. “But I will tell you, one incident is too many and it’s very easy to lose the trust of our traveling public.... These are very troubling incidents.” Resolve The Light Rail Suit Quickly The Seattle Post-intelligencer 05/26/2002 Having failed to persuade Sound Transit to sue itself, Sane Transit has filed its long-anticipated challenge to the legal legitimacy of Sound Transit’s revised light-rail plan. Sane Transit’s suit, filed in King County Superior Court Friday, argues that the proposed 14-mile, $2.1 billion light-rail segment “deviates substantially” from the 21-mile $1.9 billion segment voters approved as part of the 1996 Sound Transit package. The proposal voters agreed to then was to build light rail from south of Sea-Tac Airport to the University District and do so by 2006. The currently proposed line would run from about a mile north of the airport to downtown Seattle and won’t be completed until at least 2009. Sane Transit argued in February that the transit agency should go to court seeking a declaratory judgment that the present plan still represents the voters’ wishes, as a way to protect its bonding ability. Not surprisingly, Sound Transit rejected the proposition, which would have included paying Sane Transit’s legal costs. Now the light-rail opponents will be the ones to seek declaratory judgment: that the voters must be asked to approve the revised proposal. While it would be unfair to deny that members of Sane Transit have legitimate concerns about whether the project now accurately represents the will of the people, it would be unwise to ignore the significance of their timing. Sound Transit officials are in the most delicate of discussions with the Federal Transit Administration. They are trying to win back the $500 million in federal funding that was suspended due to previous agency mismanagement. Sound Transit recently cleared a major hurdle with the federal government’s acceptance of the new “environmental assessment” for the project. The next step is renewal of the FTA “full-funding grant agreement.” That will put the project funding back on line for congressional approval. A lawsuit questioning the project’s legality and the potential of a court-mandated new election could politically derail the federal funding process. That would be a victory for those, including members of Sane Transit, who believe the Sound Transit light-rail project is fatally flawed. Sane Transit has filed the lawsuit. It has every right to do so. What’s needed now is swift resolution. Using the legal process to pursue truth is worthy of respect, abusing the process simply to postpone the inevitable is not. Federal Light-rail Funds Doubtful In ’03 The Seattle Times 05/26/2002 But Sound Transit Officials Are Optimistic They Can Reach A Deal For Federal Money That Has Been On Hold Washington—Sound Transit is making progress toward regaining federal support for its troubled light-rail project, but officials say its chances of securing money in next year’s federal budget are slim. Some agency officials and project supporters refuse to abandon hopes of getting a cut of the fiscal 2003 budget, but the pace of congressional action makes that unlikely. Funding for the light-rail project was placed on hold last year after skyrocketing cost estimates forced major design changes. Sound Transit officials and light-rail supporters are optimistic that this year they can renegotiate a deal for $500 million of federal money and win the release of $50 million that has been placed on hold. “Those are two things we have told the public are critical for this year,” said Sound Transit spokesman Ric Ilginfritz. “The ’03 appropriation would be icing on the cake.” In 1996, voters in King, Snohomish and Pierce counties approved spending $2.3 billion to build a 21-mile light-rail line from Seattle’s University District to SeaTac. Members of the state’s congressional delegation steered about $91 million in federal dollars to the project from fiscal 1992 to fiscal 2001, and they secured a $500 million grant agreement with the Transportation Department in the last hours of the Clinton administration. But cost estimates have risen more than 50% and the original plan has been scrapped, prompting the Bush administration to freeze the first installment of the grant agreement and Sound Transit to shorten its planned light-rail line. Sound Transit officials had hoped to restore confidence in the project in time for the fiscal 2003 budget. But the light-rail link was left out of President Bush’s budget request, and agency officials and congressional aides say that by the time it has worked through the approval process, the legislative season will be drawing to a close. Jennifer Dorn, administrator of the Federal Transit Administration, told Congress earlier this month that if Sound Transit made the necessary changes, the administration would be willing to seek funding in fiscal 2004. Dan DuBray, spokesman for Rep. Hal Rogers, R-Ky., a Sound Transit critic who chairs a key House appropriations panel, said, “It’s not on our radar screen as far as the ’03 appropriation.” Privately, some project supporters harbor hopes that Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., and Rep. Norm Dicks, D-Bremerton, can use their appropriations seats to secure funding in the fall. While they won’t completely rule out that possibility, congressional aides familiar with the project say Sound Transit first needs to concentrate on regaining its spot on the list of projects with full-funding grant agreements. “Our modus operandi this year has been to take care of business on our end,” Sound Transit’s Ilginfritz said. “We still have a few things left to do before it’s going to be appropriate to talk about appropriations.” Earlier this month, the Federal Transit Administration approved environmental studies of Sound Transit’s scaled-back proposal for a 14-mile-long light-rail line from downtown to Tukwila, setting the stage for final design approval within weeks. That would clear the way to begin formal negotiations on a new full-funding agreement by mid-June. Sound Transit hopes to persuade the federal agency to release the withheld $50 million after formal talks begin or as they yield a draft agreement. Federal Transit Administration spokesman Bruce Frame said the money could be released at the discretion of department officials. Once a draft proposal is hammered out between the federal agency and Sound Transit, Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta has 30 days to review it and seek approval from the Office of Management and Budget. That starts the clock on a 60-day congressional review. If all goes smoothly, that would probably place the proposal on Capitol Hill in the fall, when lawmakers are working out the final details of the fiscal 2003 appropriations — maximizing the leverage of Murray and Dicks. But the expectation is that Murray and Dicks and others in the state delegation will be working to secure approval of the agreement with an eye to fiscal 2004, not 2003. “Anything could happen,” said Murray spokesman Todd Webster. “But it’s not in the president’s budget. There was not an expectation that this money would be there.” Why Europeans Love To Run Our Railways Sunday Times (London) 05/26/2002 Foreign companies are coming here to learn the secrets of privatisation, writes Dominic O’Connell READERS of Swiss Railways’ corporate magazine had a rare treat last year—a feature on the travails of a British rail commuter. He related the woes of holding a season ticket on the Wessex line, which stretches from the Midlands into the southwest and Wales. The tale of delayed trains and windswept platforms was of interest to the Swiss because their state railway company was about to ride to the author’s rescue. In a joint venture with Laing, the construction and investment group, Swiss Federal Railways (SBB) had just announced a plan to take over the Wessex franchise. In the event, SBB’s foray into Britain was something of a damp squib. The bidding process became bogged down in squabbling between the government, Railtrack and the Strategic Rail Authority over the letting of new franchises and was eventually shelved. Worried that there was no end in sight to the franchise hiatus, the Swiss decided on a tactical retreat. SBB is no longer Laing’s full partner but provides technical advice for the British company. However, the franchise stalemate—and the mixed fortunes of British train operators—appear not to have dulled the appetite of continental railway companies for work in Britain. The recently announced short list for the MerseyRail franchise, which runs commuter trains around Liverpool, is dominated by foreign firms. Of the six, only two are British—Arriva, the incumbent, and Serco, the facilities management specialist. Three are French: Connex, which already has one British commuter operation; Keolis, an arm of SNCF, the French state rail authority; and a joint venture between Transdev and RATP, the group that runs Paris’s efficient public transport system. Completing the overseas list is NS Dutch Railways, Holland’s national rail champion. The bidding for Greater Anglia, the other big rail franchise up for grabs, has a similarly international flavour. As well as NS Dutch Railways, Connex and Keolis (in a joint venture with the British group Go-Ahead) have made the nine-strong short list to take over all services in and out of London’s Liverpool Street station. Rail industry executives say that while each of the foreign companies has specific, individual reasons for wanting to work in Britain, they all share a desire to operate in a privatised railway, and to find some growth outside flat domestic markets. Connex, part of Vivendi Environmental, was first through the door, winning two of London’s biggest commuter franchises at the break-up of British Rail. “We came here in 1996 because we wanted to learn about privatised railways,” says Olivier Brousse, Connex’s chief executive. “We knew that eventually privatisation would come to other markets around the world, and we knew that this was the place to gain experience. Before (the break-up of British Rail) there were no private train companies to speak of, and we knew that it was all going to happen here.” British bus companies had grown rapidly during the deregulation of their industry and they moved into the railways to seize the opportunities emerging there. The foreign players often brought in rail expertise that the bus companies lacked. Go-Ahead, which had been a bus operator in northeast England, became involved with Via GTi, a private French rail company, when it decided to try to take over the running of the Docklands Light Railway in the mid-1990s. Via Gti is now part of Keolis, which, although nominally a private company, is under SNCF management control. Chris Moyes, Go-Ahead’s deputy chief executive, says: “We thought their experience in running the Lyon metro and the Lille light-rail network would be a good selling point for the Docklands railway. We also thought that it might give us an opportunity to break into the French market.” While the Docklands bid did not happen, Go-Ahead formed a joint venture with Keolis in which the British company holds 65% of the equity. They run the Thameslink and South Central franchises. “Keolis and SNCF technically run a good railway and have the kind of skills we need,” says Moyes. The hope of breaking into the French market has, however, gone unfulfilled. “It’s pretty well stitched up,” he says. The complexities of Britain’s railways have at times baffled continental rail companies. One executive, who asked not to be named, related how, when bidding for one franchise, his company decided it would offer to clean up all trackside rubbish. But the contractual complexities of a privatised railway made this impossible. “We asked the local Railtrack managers if they could help us—we would pay for it, and they would make it happen. They said it was a great idea, but they couldn’t help because the various contractors who had worked on the line since privatisation were still squabbling over who was responsible for which bit of rubbish having been left where.” Brousse says that some of his company’s most valuable expertise has been garnered through the hard knocks of operating in Britain. Connex had a torrid introduction to Britain, becoming a lightning rod for commuter dissatisfaction, and was last year stripped of one of its franchises, South Central. “We have had to learn some pretty hard lessons,” says Brousse. “But we now have a core of managers who can make railways run better. If you have problems with driver shortages, unreliable trains and poor passenger information—all the things that we suffered from—we now know how to fix it. It’s not about shiny new trains, it’s about making an unreliable railway reliable.” Illegal Migrants And Drug Dealers Build The £5.2 Billion Channel Rail Link Sunday Mirror May 26, 2002 Exposed: Lives on the line as unskilled workers get false IDs; illegal immigrants who smuggle their way into Britain are landing jobs building the £5.2 billion Channel Tunnel rail link Asian gangs are giving them fraudulent National Insurance documents to work on the high-speed line between London and Folkestone. Phoney marriages to EU nationals are also for sale. Another gang specialises in cloning the identities of British citizens. Incredibly, the Government-backed consortium building the link has laid on an on-site English school to improve the immigrants” language skills. Investigations by the Sunday Mirror have also uncovered a rampant drug culture on the vast Stratford Box complex in East London. About 30 workers—some in safety-sensitive posts—have been sacked recently after testing positive for cannabis and amphetamines. Others who have taken cocaine and Ecstasy call in sick or quit rather than face random drug tests. Our revelations raise worrying concerns about safety on the site, which is criss-crossed by live rail lines carrying passenger and freight trains. The link is the UK’s first major new railway for over a century. It covers the 68 miles from St Pancras in North London to the Channel Tunnel. It will feature new terminals at Stratford and St Pancras. The link is owned by Network Rail, Railtrack’s successor, and London & Continental Railways. It is due to open in 2005 and will reduce the London-Paris run from three hours, 20 minutes to two hours, 15 minutes. Our investigation began after a tip-off that asylum-seekers were finding it easy to get work at the site because of the large number of vacancies due to the drug problem. We were told they were quickly being given National Insurance documents and earning £400 a week. Within minutes of arriving at the main site in Stratford, our undercover reporter—posing as a Pakistani immigrant who had entered Britain through the Channel Tunnel—had been offered forged documents offering the key to a new life. He was approached by an Indian worker, Jarnail Singh, who quickly boasted about his “one-stop” service for illegal immigrants. Singh bragged about how he smuggled people into Britain and then sorted out their National Insurance papers for an extra £850. “There is plenty of work here but you need a NI number,” he said. “We will sort something out, but it will cost you money. “But you’ll be able to earn £7 an hour and make back the money you spend on the NI number in a month.” Singh works for the site contractor VGC. Later that evening our investigator met Singh at Stratford underground station. Singh said: “You will not get the NI number in one day. It will take around a week as the number will not be a fake. It’s going to be genuine. It’s around £800 to £850.” During the meeting Singh got a call on his mobile inquiring about a similar scam. Singh was heard saying: “I need you to give me your date of birth, name and address. The job will be good.” He later bragged about other people he helped on the site in similar circumstances and offered to help our investigator smuggle a friend in from Paris. Our man was given a temporary NI number by Singh—and accepted for work at VGC by the foreman. His first job was to attend an induction course in which new recruits learn about safety. During the class, our investigator was approached by a worker who arranges phoney marriages. The man said: “I’ve got a group of Portuguese women who do it all the time. I can arrange for you to marry one. They are EU citizens—so that will make you one. You’ll be legal.” Our investigator also sat in on language classes where non-English speakers are taught the basics. Workers learn simple health and safety words such as “stop”, “go”, “sprain”, “twist” and “accident”. About 20 immigrants attend the hour-long classes every Tuesday and Thursday morning, happy to be learning English free on work time. An Iraqi man in his early 20s said: “I look forward to Tuesday mornings because I’d rather be in the classroom than on the building site where it’s usually miserable, dirty and wet. The course has been running for about six weeks now and my English has improved. “I’m very grateful. I didn’t think that I would be learning English when I got the job.” On his third day of work, our investigator was offered a cloned identity by a Pakistani fixer called Mohammed who said: “There are between 20 and 50 Pakistanis here using this method. “It’s simple. I know British-born Pakistanis who go back to Pakistan regularly. They use their own Pakistani passports to get there, so there’s no record of them leaving Britain. “With their permission, I use their documents and give them to Pakistani lads who’ve just arrived in England. It benefits both people because it looks like the man who has gone to Pakistan is paying tax in the UK.” One illegal immigrant told our investigator that many Asians do not bother to get false documents. They can work for three months until their tax files are processed – at which time they disappear. It is impossible to quantify how many of the 600 workers at Stratford, or the 3,000 across the project sites, are illegal immigrants. An administrator who works at the site office at Channel Sea House said she suspected eight foreign workers of being illegal immigrants. Another office worker said some Nigerian men had got jobs using false documents. Some men from the Ukraine and Romania were also suspected of working illegally. Meanwhile, a second Sunday Mirror investigator was discovering just how easily available hard drugs are on the site. Posing as a fence-builder, by day two he had rival dealers bidding for his custom. A worker called Hilts who is employed by the project’s main contractor, Skansa, offered to get “any drugs you want”. He sold our man 50 Ecstasy tablets for £300. Hilts, who admitted taking Ecstasy on site, offered to supply cocaine at £50 a gram and cannabis at £130 per ounce. Another dealer called Kevin Flint sold our reporter 5g of cannabis for £10. He revealed he had smoked cannabis and taken Ecstasy while working on the Channel Tunnel site. “I had two Ecstasy pills at work. An hour later, I was rushing. I was totally cabbaged.” At a second meeting, Flint admitted he was working on a “safety-critical” part of the site near Stratford train station. He said: “They stopped us tipping the tipper lorries because they were next to the power lines on the railway. “They reckon it could tip over on to the cables and the railway track. We’re about nine metres from the tracks.” Such is the scale of the problem with drug abuse that two medical-testers are employed on the site. In the last fortnight alone, seven people have tested positive and lost their jobs. But for hardened users like Flint it’s all a game. He said: “All the lads in this game are into the pills and coke. I don’t like this regime—the testing, the medicals. It’s a liberty.” A spokeswoman for Channel Tunnel Rail Link said: “These are very serious allegations and we will investigate them thoroughly. “On the drugs issue, we have stringent testing because we take health and safety very seriously.” Sean Fitzpatrick, managing director of contractors VGC, said: “I take these allegations incredibly seriously and there will be a full internal investigation.” [Swindler Note: does the word Enron come to mind?] Network Rail Hits Buffers Over £9 Billion The Sunday Times May 26, 2002 Network RaiL’s £9 billion plan to buy Railtrack has been held up by a row over whether the bid should count as part of Government spending. The wrangle is a fresh embarrassment for Stephen Byers, the transport secretary, who is already under fire for providing public money to compensate Railtrack shareholders as part of the Network Rail scheme. The squabble over the bid has been triggered by Network Rail’s continued sponsorship by the Strategic Rail Authority (SRA), a government agency. Price Waterhouse Coopers, the SRA’s auditor, is understood to be reluctant to exclude the £9 billion being raised by Network Rail from the SRA’s balance sheet. Ministers had hoped the sum could be treated as a contingent liability. If it cannot, it will blow a hole’s in the Government’s transport budget. Under the 10-year transport plan, it has set aside £34 billion for spending on the railways. Accountants at PWC and at the Office for National Statistics, which must also be convinced that Network Rail should be regarded as off the Government’s balance sheet, are understood to have been put on their mettle by the collapse of Enron, the American energy company. The true depth of Enron’s indebtedness was concealed from investors through the use of several off-balance-sheet vehicles. One railway-industry insider said: “The whole question of off-balance-sheet financing is much more sensitive than it was a year ago. If it is obvious that the Government directs and controls Network Rail, then it is difficult to conclude that the £9 billion should not be part of the public-sector borrowing requirement.” The SRA will act as the ultimate guarantor of a £9 billion bridging loan that Network Rail plans to take within the next fortnight. The company aims to replace the bank loans by issuing bonds secured against track access payments. The Office for National Statistics and PWC are unlikely to make a decision until the final version of Network Rail’s bid proposals is presented. Ministers may have to give up any hopes of retaining a veto over the appointment of senior executives or board members to the company, with Network Rail understood be considering the creation of an independent appointments panel. Richard Bowker, chairman of the SRA, said last week that the balance-sheet treatment of the Network Rail bid was still being discussed. “These are matters of commercial confidence,” he said. A source close to Network Rail conceded that talks were still taking place on how the bid could be structured so that it would not count against government spending. The board of Railtrack group, the part of the company that is not in administration, plans to make a recommendation to shareholders on Network Rail’s offer in the first week of June. The company plans to relist its shares once the recommendation has been made. Small shareholders are still hopeful of starting legal action against Byers for more compensation. Andrew Chalklen, chairman of the Railtrack Private Shareholders’ Action Group, said that last week’s claims by Pam Warren, a survivor of the Ladbroke Grove train disaster, would help the group’s case. Warren said that Byers had spoken to her about replacing Railtrack with a not-for-profit company some weeks before he put it into administration. Transportation Secretary Mineta Announces $75 Million Transit Grant For San Francisco Bay Area M2 Presswire 05/27/2002 Oakland—U.S. Secretary of Transportation Norman Y. Mineta today announced a $75 million Federal Transit Administration grant to the San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit District (BART) for the San Francisco Airport Extension Project. During the ceremony at the Millbrae transit station in Millbrae, Calif., Secretary Mineta was joined by officials from the San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit District (BART). The Secretary stressed the Administrations efforts to promote mobility and reduce congestion through the use of public transportation. President Bush has proposed $7.2 billion for the Federal Transit Program as part of the FY 2003 budget, further reinforcing this Administrations commitment to public transportation as a strategic investment, said Secretary Mineta. For hardworking Americans, the payoff is vibrant and thriving communities with safe and convenient access to employment, medical care and the many activities of daily life. The San Francisco Airport Extension Project is an 8.7-mile, four station extension of the BART rapid transit system to serve San Francisco International Airport. The project consists of a 7.5-mile mainline extension from the existing BART station at Colma to the city of Millbrae. An additional 1.2-mile spur from the main line north of Millbrae will take BART trains directly to a station adjoining the new International Terminal at the airport. The grant will be used to design and build the South San Francisco, San Bruno, and Millbrae stations and parking structures, as well as line, trackwork and systems construction. In June 1997, the Federal Transit Administration entered into a Full Funding Grant Agreement of $750 million in New Starts funding to support the $1.5 billion project. The funds awarded today bring the total federal funds obligated to date to $371 million, with the final increment of federal funding scheduled for 2007. The extension is scheduled for completion in December 2002. Ridership is expected to be 73,800 average daily passengers by 2010, including approximately 17,800 daily trips by air travelers and airport employees. RT Officials Are Changing Direction On Light-rail Seating On New Trains, Riders Won’t Share Legroom On Facing Benches Sacramento Bee 05/27/2002 Local transit officials are doing an about-face when it comes to the seating arrangement on light-rail trains. The 36 light-rail cars now in use have what is known as parlor seating. That is, the seats are set up like a booth in a diner, with passengers seated on benches that face each other. That configuration, popular in Europe, is meant to foster a sense of camaraderie among passengers. They chitchat on the way to work, talk about the Kings, the weather, how Bobby hit a home run in T-ball. A bunch of shiny, happy people on the light-rail line. Except it didn’t work out that way in Sacramento. This ain’t Prague, after all. According to Regional Transit officials, riders said they feel uncomfortable facing total strangers during their trips. They don’t like bumping knees, there have been confrontations over the shared legroom and some people use the bench opposite them as a foot rest, sullying seats for the next passenger and creating a hassle for the RT crews that have to clean them up. So when RT’s two new light-rail lines are up and running in coming years, the 40 new cars will be Americanized—they’ll have seats that face the same direction. (Actually, if you stood in the center of the car, all the seats on one end would face the same direction while the seats on the opposite end would face the other way.) Charles Berger, a professor of communications at the University of California, Davis, said he isn’t surprised that parlor seating won’t get an encore performance in Sacramento. The design, he said, creates all sorts of personal-space issues. Most travelers, he said, can tolerate the close presence of others when that presence is on their sides or behind them. It’s when a stranger is directly in front, in the line of vision, that things start getting weird, Berger said. The larger issue, he said, involves the distinctly American demand for personal freedom. Why do 81% of Sacramento-area commuters drive alone to work and only 4% take mass transit despite dreadful air quality and maddening congestion? People want their own space, and though most end up taking the same route every day, they want the option to alter that routine if the need arises, Berger said. To many, mass transit already challenges that sense of personal liberty. Knocking knees in a parlor seat with three other riders is a further affront. “We pride ourselves on individualism,” Berger said. “We don’t want to be regimented and we don’t want to structure our lives to fit with the collective.” RT spokesman Mike Wiley said the new configuration won’t take away any seating. Both the new and the old cars can carry 60 riders. However, he said, the new seats will be slightly narrower than the old ones. And this raises another facet of American culture: The seats are getting smaller while our backsides are getting decidedly larger. A recent study in the Journal of the American Medical Association shows that the percentage of obese Californians shot up over the last decade from 10.8% in 1990 to 18.6% in 2000. Probus Members Go Underground Herald Express (Torquay) 05/27/2002 THE history of the London Underground was the title of the presentation given to the Probus Club of Babbacombe and St Marychurch by David Mead. Tunnels can be either cut and cover:. opening an exceedingly large trench and building the side walls and the roof and then covering; or deep level: involving sinking shafts and digging completely underground. In 1820 a foot tunnel was constructed under the Thames by engineer Mark Brunel, the father of Isambard Kingdom Brunel. Unfortunately incursions of water incurred, some serious, delaying the completion until 1843. It was gas-lit throughout and a fee was charged to use the tunnel. However, it did obtain an unsavoury reputation because of pickpockets and ruffians and in 1860 was sold to the East London Railway Company and today it forms part of the Metropolitan line. By that year the main railway terminus had been completed and it became obvious that the quickest way to link these was by underground. Construction began using the “cut and cover” methods. The route followed that of the existing surface roads with little regard for the properties either side. On January 10, 1863, celebrated by a huge banquet, the first underground railway, between Paddington and Farringdon, was opened and forms part of today’s Circle line. Time progressed and more routes were planned and dug out. Operating Interestingly all the spoil dug consisted mainly of clay. This was hauled by road to Earls Court, where kilns were operating at the time, to convert it to bricks. These in turn were then used to build the tunnels (a first in recycling?). These first railways were steam operated which explains why sections of the original system run in the open. By the turn of the century electricity had arrived thereby making travel more pleasant both for the train crews and the passengers. With construction techniques changing the first deep level tunnel was built between Stockwell and King William Street. This was steel lined, bolting six segments together to form an 11ft diameter tunnel. This allowed one track per tunnel against two on the “cut and cover” type. On December 18, 1890, the first “tube” railway was opened. Between 1900 and 1910 a flurry of building took place creating the Northern and Piccadilly lines and as the years progressed lines were extended outwards from central London. By 1930 all the various railway companies were amalgamated to form the London Passenger Transport Board. Between 1960 and 1990 developments were still continuing resulting in the Victoria, Jubilee and the Docklands Light Railway, the latter with automatic trains. One surprising fact was that only one third of the whole system is actually below ground. Tilting Train Delay Lands Alstom With £50 Million Bill From Virgin The Independent Monday, May 27, 2002 Alstom, the Birmingham-based train manufacturer, is likely to be hit with a £50 million compensation bill because of delays to the fleet of high-speed Pendolino tilting trains it is building for Virgin’s West Coast Main Line. The £640 million fleet of 53 trains, which are designed to run at 125 mph, were due to have been in service earlier this year but are not now expected to be operating at full-speed until autumn next year. Railtrack is to blame for the delays in upgrading the line so that the trains can run at 125 mph. But Virgin could still have introduced the new fleet of Pendolinos and operated them at 110 mph without activating the tilt mechanism had they been ready on time. The hold-up has been caused by teething troubles with the Pendolino’s train management system which Alstom engineers at the company’s Washwood Heath factory in the Midlands are still trying to resolve. The fault is causing the train’s on-board computer to send spurious information to the driver. Although engineers suspect something simple like a wiring fault, they have not been able to trace the problem. The delay in the Pendolino delivery has now run into months and the first train could now be a year late. Sources said if there was a year’s delay then the compensation bill could be £50 million. The trains have been ordered by the rolling-stock leasing company Angel Trains, part of Royal Bank of Scotland, and are being leased to Virgin. The contract is one of the few big train orders in the pipeline for the UK rail industry. Angel has also placed a £400 million order with Bombardier for new rolling stock for Virgin’s CrossCountry franchise and a £644 million contract with Siemens for a fleet of 785 carriages for South West Trains. The only other major contract is an £856 million order for 700 new carriages to be built at Bombardier’s Derby factory. The order is from Govia, the new owners of the South Central commuter franchise. The order is being financed by the leasing company Portberbrook, which is now part of Abbey National. It is the biggest order for UK-built rolling stock since privatisation. The only other UK train orders in the offing are a possible £150 million contract for 150 carriages for the Trans-Penine Express and a £150 million order for 180 new cars for Connex South Eastern. The dearth of new business in the UK has prompted Angel to redouble its efforts to win new orders overseas. It has just financed an €80 million order for 30 diesel multiple units for two Danish regional commuter services operated by the UK transport group Arriva. A further three or four deals are due to be announced over the next month Spare Railtrack Land Will Be Sold To Builders The Times Monday, May 27, 2002 Millions of square feet of disused railway land will be sold to developers by the new company preparing to replace Railtrack. Network Rail, the public interest company set up by the Government, believes that Railtrack failed to take full advantage of hundreds of disused sidings, empty arches and unfilled space over stations. The news could encourage more investors in Railtrack to believe that they are not being offered sufficient compensation for their shares and to consider suing the government. Shareholders invested in the company because they believed that its huge property holdings guaranteed that they would not lose their money. With 2,500 stations and 22,000 miles of track, Railtrack is one of the company’s biggest landowners. The government has agreed to pay Railtrack shareholders £500 million, but despite the sale, more than 20,000 small investors intend to take legal action against Stephen Byers, the Transport Secretary, accusing him of misusing his public office over the way he forced Railtrack into administration. Network Rail is considering applying for a change in the strict regulations governing the sale and redevelopment of railway land. The regulations were tightened in November, after Tom Winsor, the Rail Regulator, gathered evidence that some Railtrack land sales had been against the public interest. Land that could have been used for expanding the railways, or was already being used as car parks by rail passengers, was under threat of being turned into offices or shops. Iain Coucher, Network Rail’s chief executive said that there were still many opportunities for developing railway land: “We inherit and excellent asset base for the purpose of commercial exploitation in terms of land, stations and arches. We know there is potential there. The extent to which we can outperform expectations on revenue from the property portfolio means we can spend more on the network. If there are things we have to change in order to that, then we will talk to whoever is necessary.” Engineers Found No Standards For Setting Rail Track Financial Times Monday, May 27, 2002 There were no proper standards for setting a critical part of the track that is at the centre of the inquiry into the fatal Potters Bar train crash, a leaked report from Railtrack has revealed. The report does not prove a maintenance problem led to the crash. However, it is likely to add to concerns about Railtrack’s lack of control of contractors and knowledge of the condition of the rail infrastructure it owns. The report, by three of Railtrack’s top engineers this month, confirms that the accident is thought to have been caused when a set of points failed after a bar holding them in place moved and two sets of nuts came off. Investigators are trying to find out if the bar was moved as a mistake by a maintenance worker, or by a saboteur. However, Railtrack’s memo reveals there was no previous set standard for maintenance workers on how to set the bars. It admits that having “four threads beyond the locking nut is not a problem that needs to be reported, but warns that it is “bad practice” and the bars were designed to be set “symmetrically” Railtrack is now planning to issue proper instructions to its own staff and maintenance contractors. “Maintenance standards will be amended to require symmetry in due course” said the report. Last night the network operator said that although there were not previously specific standards, it would be “obvious” to engineers what to do. An official said. “There may not have been a standard about the points, but that does mean that information is not there for contractors, it just means it’s not there as a group standard” The official denied that the special inspection notice signaled Railtrack had proved it was a maintenance problem that led to the crash. “We’d see it as a sensible measured response to the accident at Potters Bar” Railtrack believes 2000 to 3000 of the 15000 points nationally use similar equipment, They were all being checked said the official. Facing Up To Motorists: Building Vast New Motorways Is Batty The Guardian (London) 05/27/2002 The emotive language used by the transport select committee to dismiss “casual enthusiasts” like Lord Birt should not detract from the sensible suggestions contained in its report. The committee is right to criticise the government for backing away from congestion charges, for failing to tackle the rising cost of public relative to private transport and the lack of any interim reports so outsiders can judge the success of the government’s 10-year plan. The lack of serious support for alternative ways of travelling like walking and cycling is also criticised. What is needed is what Professor Begg, chairman of the commission for integrated transport, calls a “sticks and carrots” approach: improvements in public transport coupled with increasing restraint on cars. Cheaper motoring and more expensive public transport are hardly likely to reduce congestion on the roads, which is expected to increase by almost 30% during the 10-year life of the plan. Yet improvements can be made relatively inexpensively, as can be seen from the sharp rise in bus journeys in London and the (under-reported) turnaround of the Northern line on London’s underground system. If the Northern line can be improved so dramatically then, surely, anything is possible. Lord Birt’s reported suggestion that we should consider building a new system of parallel motorways was batty. All recent experience shows it would be an enormously expensive way of generating yet more traffic to fill the new space made available. But his remarks will not be in vain if they force people to face up to the need for radical measures to curb unnecessary car journeys. The government is planning some interesting work at the edges, but it is still reeling from the effects of the fuel revolt a couple of years ago. It has recoiled from imposing more restrictions on the freedom of motorists because nearly all of them have votes. The massive spending on the rail network will, eventually, have beneficial effects in shifting some freight and passengers off the roads—but that will only mop up a small part of the increase in traffic expected on the roads during the 10 years of the government’s plan. Something radical will have to be done to prevent Britain’s motorways and inner-city arteries from grinding to a halt. Whether this is compatible with winning elections remains to be seen. Union Switch & Signal Contract Part Of Effort To Rebuild Rail Transit Systems Damaged In 9/11 Attacks PR Newswire 05/28/2002 Union Switch & Signal Inc. (US&S) has been awarded a contract to provide signaling and control systems required by the Port Authority Trans Hudson Corp. (PATH) in New York. PATH rail lines link Manhattan with Newark, Hoboken and other New Jersey locations just west of the Hudson River. The systems are part of three projects that are underway to restore or repair PATH rail transit facilities and track that were damaged or destroyed during the September 11th World Trade Center attacks. These projects are the Phase I Downtown Restoration Program, the temporary World Trade Center Station, and the Exchange Place Station. The systems to be provided under the US&S contract include the US&S Microlok II wayside control system for vital wayside train interlocking control, the US&S Genisys II non-vital logic emulators for execution of non-vital control logic, vital and non-vital interface circuits, and 60-hertz track circuits. The signaling systems will be required for rail service to be restored under the World Trade Center site, and they are slated to be in service by November 1, 2003. “These projects are key to having PATH rail service restored to pre- September 11 levels,” observed US&S President & CEO Ken Burk. “We at Union Switch are honored to be able to provide equipment and engineering services that are required as part of the effort to restore complete rail transportation service on which the citizens of New York City and the surrounding areas depend every day.” The Mass-transit Project That Could Make Our Day Philadelphia Daily News May 28 2002 Regular readers know that I enjoy admitting when I’m wrong—my only regret is that it happens so rarely. Last week, a third-grader sent an e-mail pointing out two errors in my anecdote about Ed Rendell at a Penn basketball game: I had written that college games have four quarters (in fact, they have two halves) and I mixed up the Brown and Columbia games. (Thank you, Emily.) A couple of years ago, I got something else wrong. I called the Schuylkill Valley Metro a waste of money that would hurt the city. Now, I realize I didn’t see the forest for the trees. Step back and see the bigger picture, and the Valley Metro looks like a smart move worth working for. Then, I mocked Metro as a sprawl-inducing boondoggle that would drain resources from transit users in the city. Now, I think it would reinforce the importance of the central places in the region, including the city. The change of mind comes from two changes in perspective. First, the places to be linked by Metro are the center of the huge regional economy that defines our future. Philadelphia, Phoenixville and Pottstown form a neglected center of a sprawling production and distribution complex arcing from Allentown to Lancaster. While we’ve been worried about Route 202, the economy has exploded along Route 222. Our real beltway economy is moving rapidly to the FAR side of Reading. The Valley Metro is a chance to make reinvestments at the regional center to create a place for growth to concentrate—rather than sprawl. But even more important than getting the scale right is understanding the interaction between transportation investments and other things, especially land use. Transportation infrastructure is second only to defense contracting in terms of Americans’ willingness to spend public money freely. It is the big-ticket item on direct federal spending in local economies and yet attracts far too little attention. Transportation investments largely define the map for a generation: Housing and jobs and all the places that support them, from schools to parks, find their place on a map drawn by planners 30 years earlier. The Valley Metro will create the conditions necessary for the older cities and towns to reinvent themselves for the coming century. Since the 1980s, I’ve argued that a key part of that reinvention is changing older cities from good places to work into good places to live. The Metro could give Phoenixville and Norristown a chance to develop like Conshohocken and Manayunk into high-density, high-amenity places that people want to visit and live in. The Metro would then connect these places, along with Center City and Reading into a critical mass of such places, much like the Red Line has done in Washington and Montgomery County, Md., in the last 30 years. The high-quality spots along the Metro then become desirable places to live and work that are close to emerging job areas like King of Prussia and the Route 422 corridor centered in Collegeville. Those connections also create the conditions necessary for preserving farmland and scenic and recreational spaces in other parts of Montgomery, Chester and Berks counties. The Metro isn’t a magic wand, and building it is no guarantee that all these good things will follow. But it does make them easier to achieve. The efforts of regional leaders like Sam Katz to make Metro a reality should be applauded and supported. It’s the kind of tangible goal that a new governor should seize on and make his own. Row Over Congestion Seen As Threat To Rail Plans The Financial Times Tuesday, May 28, 2002 Large railway projects could be axed because of a row between the industry and the government over the “value” of road congestion, transport campaigners say. The transport department is understood to want to reduce the “value” it puts on reducing road congestion when calculating a rail scheme’s value for money. Currently, every mile of motorway journey that a project would be expected to cut is valued at 20p. The move—which contrast with higher estimates by the SRA—would make rail schemes look bad value and could also undermine the government’s 10-year transport plan, which is based on reducing congestion. English, Welsh & Scottish Railway, the main UK rail freight operator said important upgrades to lines from container ports such as Felixstowe and Southampton could be under threat, forcing trucks to stay on roads. “Clearly, if those rates were reduced, we’d have a problem” Graham Smith, EWS planning director said. Stephen Joseph, director of Transport 2000, the lobby group and a former government adviser on trunk road assessment, warned that all rail investment could be threatened if the government did not agree a higher value for reducing road use. “It sounds as if the government is trying to deny there’s any congestion outside towns” he said. “Only in this way could they possibly be downgrading the ability of rail freight to tackle road congestion. If government was to apply the approach they are taking to rail passengers, there would be no schemes at all.” There is concern that the dispute reflects wider government discontent with rail freight, Mr Joseph said. Some senior industry figures believe the government is going to drop its commitment to raising rail freight by 80%, possibly in favour of a different target. There is also suspicion that officials are eyeing the £4 billion for rail freight—promised in the 10-year plan—to pay for other projects. The transport department denied there was less commitment to rail freight but said it could not discuss the figures. “Those figures are under review and they’ll come out in the 10-year plan review in July” it said. The value of transferring journeys from road to rail, last officially calculated in 1996, includes reducing noise and environmental pollution but the single biggest contributor is congestion. Transport Secretary Stephen Byers Has Quit His Job BBC News Tuesday, May 28, 2002 Mr Byers has been under fire for months for standing by spin doctor Jo Moore after she sent an email on 11 September saying it was a good day “to bury” bad news. He has also faced criticism from the City over his decision to force Railtrack into administration. There have been a series of claims that he lied to Parliament—all of which he has denied. In a news conference at 10 Downing Street Mr Byers said his continued presence “damaged” the government. Becoming A Distraction He said resigning was “the right thing to do” for the Labour Party and for the government. Prime Minister Tony Blair said he “understood and respected” Mr Byers’ decision. Mr Byers is understood to have told Mr Blair of his decision to leave the government at a short meeting on Monday. In his statement, My Byers said he stood by the major policy decisions he had made. But he said that, with hindsight, there were things he would have done differently. “Government ministers take many decisions and I know I have made mistakes, “ Mr Byers said. But he said he had tried to “behave honourably”, adding “the people know me best know I am not a liar”. “What is clear to me is that I have become a distraction from what the government is achieving and the debate we need to have about the key policies,” he said. Mr Byers replacement as Transport Secretary will be announced on Wednesday. Downing Street insiders have told the BBC Mr Byers had “simply had enough” and he “recognised that he was becoming the story”. The Issue New Labour Can No Longer Duck: Stephen Byers May Deny It, But Ultimately The Only Solution To Traffic Chaos Is For The Government To Reduce Car Usage The Evening Standard (London) 05/28/2002 Christian Wolmar Of the various daft things that Stephen Byers has said and done over the past year, the silliest must be his statement at the weekend that “am not in the business of punishing people because they use their car. I am in the business of improving public transport”. It is typical New Labourspeak, and Byers, after a year in the job of Transport Secretary, ought to know better. First, the word “punish” is inappropriate in this context. The message Byers was trying to get across was one of reassurance to Britain’s evergrowing number of motorists. However, he knows that no one is suggesting motorists should be “punished” for wanting to drive their cars. Second, Byers is ducking the issue through using that type of emotive language. He knows, as does anyone who has ever examined the topic for more than five minutes, including the hapless Lord Birt, that there is a fundamental problem at the heart of transport policy which can only be addressed by attempting to reduce car usage. Moreover, that will never simply be achieved by trying to improve public transport. We all say we’d use public transport if it was better but for many of us that’s just an excuse. There is a need for both carrots and sticks, and for politicians to make the kind of hard choice which Tony Blair promised us in opposition but has not delivered in government. The simple fact is that life has to be made harder for some motorists some of the time if congestion is not to continue growing and London is to avoid gridlock. The reason is simple. With a few exceptions, such as the odd motorway-widening scheme and some bypasses, the amount of road space cannot be increased to meet demand. This is particularly true in London. There have been two attempts to drive motorways into the heart of London during the past 30 years, and both failed. In the early 1970s, there was the motorway box scheme, bits of which like Westway were built before Londoners voted out the Tory GLC promoting the idea. The box scheme was scrapped, saving the capital from becoming a larger version of motorway-dominated Birmingham. Indeed, the extent to which urban dwellers have turned against motorways is illustrated by Birmingham, which is now busy dismantling some of its network of 1960s roads in order to make the town centre more pedestrian-friendly. Then there were the “assessment studies” of the late 1980s promoted by Transport Secretary Cecil Parkinson, which were a disguised attempt to extend the existing motorways deeper into London at the cost of demolishing thousand of homes and destroying several attractive neighbourhoods. The consequent outcry led to the shelving of the scheme and the abandonment of any further attempt to build more major routes inside the ring of the North and South Circular roads. Therefore, with the number of cars increasing, with the number of roads virtually fixed, congestion will go on rising unless people can be coaxed out of their cars. In an ideal world, public transport would be made so attractive that no one would want to bother getting into their own vehicles. But life is not like that. As Steve Norris once famously remarked, the Tube is “full of smelly people”. The car has a number of advantages which public transport cannot match. It provides a door-to-door service, it can carry luggage and more than one person, it runs to your own timetable and it is relatively cheap. NOW the Government can do little about most of those advantages—except in the area of cost. Despite the fuel protests of autumn 2000, it is an extraordinary fact that motoring is actually cheaper today in real terms than it was 25 years ago. Sure, we pay over 80% of every gallon in tax, but improved technology, better fuel consumption and mass production of cars means that we get a better deal today than our counterparts in the 1970s. Introducing congestion charging and road-tolling specifically targeted at overused roads and bottlenecks would ultimately benefit all motorists through reducing traffic, and bring in considerable revenue to improve public transport. But Byers has been lukewarm about congestion charging and has ruled out motorway tolls. The hypocrisy of New Labour ministers over the party’s treatment of motorists is best demonstrated by the saga over Ken Livingstone’s congestion-charging scheme. Labour created the legislation to allow charging, but then got cold feet. During the 2000 mayoral election, its MPs were urged to hand out leaflets criticising Livingstone’s idea, which had its origins in the Transport Act 2000 which John Prescott, Byers’s predecessor, had steered through Parliament. The other potential way that government can influence car use is through parking. Already, that is an effective barrier to many motorists who want to come into central London. Only those with access to parking spaces can drive into central areas and such spaces could be taxed, and their number could be reduced through planning legislation. It is interesting that Westminster, the council which has opposed Ken Livingstone’s plan for congestion charging, now charges so much for its parking meters that many are often left empty during the day as people have simply abandoned the idea of bringing their cars into central London. Is this the type of punishment which Byers thinks ought not to be imposed on motorists? The policy seems sensible and effective. WHILE most of us are motorists, we are also all pedestrians. “Punishing” the motorist also benefits other road users. Take the example of Oxford Street. Britain’s premier shopping street is a stinking mess because Westminster Council and the Government have never had the courage to close it off for all traffic, which is the only sensible solution, given that 99% of its users are pedestrians. Instead, vested interests such as the taxi cab associations, London Transport and the short-sighted shopkeepers, have prevented its pedestrianisation and, not surprisingly, it is losing its pre-eminence. It is time for Byers and New Labour to come clean: do they want the present nightmarish situation on our roads to continue indefinitely or are they prepared to take sensible measures to charge motorists more in an effort to relieve congestion? They can’t have it both ways, and we should be told what they plan to do. Christian Wolmar’s book, Broken Rails, How Privatisation Wrecked Britain’s Railways, is published by Aurum, £9.99. Passenger Transportation In Latvia Unchanged In Q1 Baltic News Service 05/28/2002 Amount of passengers carried by public transport in Latvia in the first quarter of this year in general remained unchanged from 2001, reported the Latvian national statistics Office. “Most passengers were carried by city electric transport,” said the statistics office. In the first three months of 2002, city electric transport was used by 44.8 million people, the same number as the year before. Passenger transportation by motor transport this year continued to fall in Latvia as compared to 2001. In the first quarter of 2002 buses running on regular routes carried 42.1 million passengers, down by 0.4 million passengers or 1% year-on-year. Of these passengers, 73.4% took regular-route buses within city limits. Latvian railway this year was able to stop the decline in passenger transportation, carrying 4.7 million passengers in the first three months, up 0.5 million or 10.8% from 2001. Total number of railway passengers over the period includes 4.6 million people travelling on domestic routes, up 11.8% from the first quarter of 2001, and 26.4% of people taking international railway routes, a fall by 26.4%. Riga airport in the Latvian capital served less passengers in first three months of this year—121,200 arriving or departing people, down 1.8% year-on-year. Also, less passengers used services of Latvian airlines in the first quarter of 2002 when 57,400 passengers took incoming and outgoing flights by Latvian airlines, down 7.2% from 2001. At the same time, number of passengers using services of foreign airlines grew 3.7% to 63,800 year-on-year. Riga passenger port served 1,100 passengers in the first quarter of this year, an improvement from last year when no passenger ships entered the port over the given period. Tax a way to reverse decline in public transport: expert The Canberra Times 05/28/2002 Tax changes were necessary to reverse a 3% national decline in the use of public transport, executive director of the International Association of Public Transport Australia and New Zealand Peter Moore said yesterday. He said the goods-and-services tax had added about 10% to fares and the fringe-benefits tax favoured people who used private vehicles. Other factors making private transport more attractive had included last year’s Federal Government decision to remove indexation of petrol excise. Mr Moore said employer-provided public transport should be excluded from fringe-benefits tax and GST collected from fares should be directed to public transport. “People are more accepting of taxation if it goes to some worthwhile purpose.” The Australian Greenhouse Office is undertaking a study into the impacts of fringe-benefits tax arrangements on passenger transport usage and fuel consumption. Mr Moore said he expected the study to show the removal of the tax from public transport would have a net community benefit. This type of change was one of the few opportunities to give something back to public transport without providing new infrastructure. ACTION chief executive Guy Thurston said that since the introduction of the GST, ACTION’s patronage by adults had fallen by about 3%. Overall there had been a slight patronage increase because of the free school transport scheme introduced by the previous government. Almost all of the student increase had been retained since the scheme was abolished. Despite this, Mr Thurston said he did not favour offering free public transport. “People have to value a service.” Though ACTION had not received any of the GST revenue collected from an 8% fare increase, the Government directly paid about 75% of ACTION’s costs. The aim was to reduce this to about 70%. Mr Thurs