This is the home of the Friday Hotline, policy and data blogs, musings from the “Midwest HQ”, viewpoints from guest contributors, and more. All under the Association branding you have come to trust over the last 59 years.

And don’t worry if you have the old Substack address bookmarked; it will automatically redirect you to the new one.

You can still head to our main page for all your donation, membership, train status, and volunteer leadership needs (you can find links to much of that on this page as well). That page is very much not going anywhere.

Thanks for stopping by, and we will see you on board.

(Still working on that podcast idea… right ?)

Recapping the week with blogs on Amtrak and CN kissing and making up after a 13-year squabble, and construction of the North Portal Bridge in New Jersey entering its final phase - plus the latest and greatest from around the states.

See you on board! High ball!

Hotline 1455

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Starting October 11th, Northeast Corridor (NEC) passengers will see five weeks of schedule adjustments beginning in October as Amtrak and NJ TRANSIT complete the final “cutover” from the century-old Portal Bridge to the new Portal North Bridge over the Hackensack River.

Passengers can find the adjusted schedules, as well as links to alternate public transportation options by rail line, at njtransit.com/portalcutover.

Work is scheduled to start on October 9th, when workers will begin transferring tracks, catenary, and electrical systems to the new high-level, fixed span bridge. This will allow a full operational shift off of the 116-year-old movable span, a move that will save Amtrak (and taxpayers) millions of dollars a year in annual maintenance costs. During the construction period, both agencies will operate modified schedules while maintaining service on all rail lines.

This temporary service change—while undeniably a headache for commuters—will be a significant step toward a more reliable NEC. The new fixed-span bridge will eliminate many of the mechanical failures and maritime openings that have long caused delays across the entire span of the NEC. It will also support higher train speeds, increased capacity, and improved on-time performance for both intercity and commuter passengers.

Amtrak will also take advantage of the reduced traffic period to complete eight additional maintenance projects across the corridor. Regular schedules are expected to resume in mid-November following safety testing. The bridge project remains on schedule and on budget, marking a major milestone in the broader Gateway Program and the effort to modernize one of the nation’s busiest passenger rail corridors.

“As we enter this second and final Cutover for Portal North Bridge, we’re building on the success of the first one, to deliver tangible results and benefits to New Jersey visitors and residents,” said Amtrak Interim President Byl Herrmann. “After the success of the first Cutover, we followed that up with outstanding service during the World Cup, and we are going to conclude the third major event for us this year on a high note with the second Cutover the same way by proving what this joint team can accomplish when we work together.”

“Five weeks of adjusted schedules will deliver a modern, high-level bridge that ends a century of swing-bridge delays for customers traveling the Northeast Corridor to and from New York,” added NJ TRANSIT President & CEO Kris Kolluri. “We worked closely with Amtrak on a service plan that maximizes capacity and keeps every rail line running, and we thank our customers for their patience as we complete the final step of this long-awaited project.”

For those interested in learning more about the project, the briefing Amtrak and NJ TRANSIT delivered to the press is available for review.

Now, after 13 years of sometimes bitter fighting, it looks as if Amtrak and Canadian National have come to terms on a new eight-year operating agreement, part of which explicitly creates an official pathway out of the Superliner absurdity on the Illini/Saluki trains running on CN territory.

CN has long been concerned that shorter, lighter Amtrak trains might not reliably “shunt” track circuits — the electrical system railroads use to detect trains and activate signals and grade-crossing protection. The old operational workaround was essentially: if the single-level train might not reliably shunt the track circuit, make the train electrically “bigger” by adding axles/heavier equipment, or slow it way down and impose additional operating restrictions.

(Image credit: Guo Rui Pei / Chicago, Ill.)

So the answer was simple but, let’s face it, kind of dumb: bi-level Superliners running around Illinois doing work that perfectly ordinary single-level equipment ought to be doing…and not doing the work the long-distance network really needed them to do. Scarce Superliners wound up doing work in Illinois that absolutely did not require Superliners. A real safety problem, for sure, but a slightly absurd solution.

Now, finally, there is a better answer.

Under a new eight-year operating agreement announced this week, Amtrak and CN will work together to deploy onboard shunt-enhancement technology on Amtrak equipment operating over CN. Those devices are designed to improve the electrical connection between train and rail so that crossing and signal systems can reliably detect the train without requiring Amtrak to solve the problem by hauling around extra cars.

This isn’t just a laboratory experiment. In October 2024, Amtrak announced that it had received up to $58.8 million in Federal funding to buy and install onboard shunt-enhancement devices on hundreds of locomotives and cab cars nationwide, following years of testing with CN, the Federal Railroad Administration, state partners, and equipment suppliers.

In other words: there’s now a credible, funded technological path toward putting the right equipment on the right trains again.

What we don’t have yet is a timetable. Neither Amtrak nor CN has said when the new equipment will be fully fielded, when specific CN operating restrictions will be lifted, or when passengers will actually see the result in day-to-day service. So this is not a declaration that the Superliners disappear from Illinois tomorrow. But I think it’s something more important: a real pathway to making that possible.

That’s only one piece of a much larger settlement. The agreement also establishes new performance incentives tied more closely to Federal on-time-performance standards, provides for regular schedule reviews, and creates a process for resolving future operational disputes. Definitely something passengers can cheer about.

And, perhaps most importantly, it ends a proceeding that has been grinding along at the STB since 2013. Amtrak and CN both this week asked the STB to dismiss their proceeding, citing their settlement. Thirteen years of lawyers, filings, technical conferences, mediation, staff time and management attention, on both sides, before the parties finally reached an agreement that lets everyone move forward.

There will be more to say about all of this. The shunt problem itself raises some larger questions about how passenger rail uses scarce equipment, and why technical problems sometimes wind up being “solved” operationally for years instead of engineered out of existence. But those are stories for another day. For today, this is just good news and not a bad way to end our week.

In honor of the “everyone’s a winner” approach, we here at the Midwest HQ thought about changing it up a little for this week’s trivia.

The world is too chaotic these days to take everything seriously all the time, so we are going to take a quiz! Eight multiple-choice questions covering both the past and present of passenger rail - plus a bonus tiebreaker question. Good luck and no cheating!

TO THE QUIZ!

Let us know how you did in the comments below - but no giving away answers!

We’ve streamlined our Amtrak & VIA Rail timetables page - hosting the schedules here on our new Substack hub with direct links to our Association's Google Drive (you don't need to sign in for anything). That means fewer broken links, quicker turnaround on schedule changes, easier navigation on your phone, and access to connecting transit details.

And, once again, a huge thank you to former Rail Passengers NYS Council Member Nathanael Nerode & our volunteer Timetables Manager Christopher Juckins for creating and maintaining these forms.

Click below to see the new page and be sure to bookmark it!

Recapping the week with blogs from Jim on the very real issue of passenger-rail liability insurance and the Association’s filing with the STB opposing the UPNS merger application, as well as passenger rail and transportation news from around the country.

See you on board! High ball!

Hotline 1454

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There are few phrases more effective at clearing a room than “passenger-rail liability insurance and indemnification.” I get it, really. I understand. You came here for trains, not insurance towers, contractual risk allocation, and Federal liability statutes. But please, stay with me, because this stuff can decide whether the train ever leaves the station. And your voice could be crucial to helping us solve this problem.

Here’s the simplest way I know to explain it. There are three different questions that tend to get mashed together. Liability asks how much injured passengers can recover. Indemnification asks which party — the host railroad, passenger operator, public agency or somebody else — ultimately has to bear the financial responsibility. Insurance asks where that party gets the money.

These are not the same things.

Federal law currently limits the aggregate awards to all rail passengers, against all defendants, arising from a single accident or incident. As of last Friday -- six days ago, September 4, 2026 -- that inflation-adjusted number jumped to $401.9 million. The law also expressly allows passenger-rail providers to make contracts allocating financial responsibility for claims.

That second part is especially important. That’s because, as we all know, passenger trains mostly operate over track owned by freight railroads. The freight host, understandably, wants to know what happens if something awful occurs while somebody else’s passengers are riding over its railroad. Over time, the industry developed a kind of “grand bargain” that often relies heavily on indemnification rather than waiting until after an accident to spend years fighting about fault.

GAO looked at 33 commuter-rail/freight-rail agreements in 2009. Twenty-one were no-fault arrangements, ten mixed no-fault and fault-based provisions, and only two were fundamentally fault-based. In a typical no-fault structure, the passenger side might agree to take responsibility for its passengers, employees or equipment even if ordinary negligence by the freight host contributed to the accident; the host takes responsibility for specified freight-side risks.

There are perfectly sensible reasons for doing that. It can make claims easier to resolve, reduce litigation among the railroads after an accident, and give everybody a clearer idea of the risk they are accepting before the first train operates.

But there is an obvious next question: if I have promised to indemnify you, how do you know I can actually pay?

Enter insurance.

The host may require the passenger operator or public agency to demonstrate financial security through insurance, self-insurance, collateral or some combination. In the conventional commercial market, very large limits are assembled as a “tower”: one insurer takes a layer, another takes the next layer, another sits above that, and so on until the required limit has been reached.

And here is where the system has started to eat itself. For many commuter agencies, a tower can include 20 or more layers. Imagine what it would be like if you needed to carry 20 insurance policies for your house or your car?

The $401.9 million figure is a liability ceiling for passenger claims. It is not, by itself, a universal Federal command that every passenger operator go buy a $401.9 million commercial insurance policy. In fact, the statute separately specifies a minimum insurance-and-self-insurance requirement for Amtrak. But access agreements and indemnity provisions can turn that passenger cap into a practical benchmark for how much financial security a host wants to see.

So, a law that was intended to make passenger-rail risk finite and insurable can, through the contracts built around it, become the number used to size an increasingly difficult insurance placement. Why do I say “difficult”? Because the international insurance market is losing its appetite to chip in a layer to these towers. From London to Bermuda and everywhere in-between, some insurers are just looking at this and saying, “No thanks.”

That would be less troubling if the number tracked actual rail risk. But it just doesn’t. The FAST Act requires the passenger cap to be adjusted every five years using the Consumer Price Index. CPI can tell us a lot of useful things. It cannot tell us whether Positive Train Control reduced catastrophic-accident risk, whether an operator has an excellent claims record, whether a route has fewer grade crossings, or whether the global excess-liability market has decided it wants less railroad exposure this year.

Meanwhile, the insurance market has hardened. Carriers have reduced participation, agencies rely on multiple layers and international markets, premiums have climbed, and some operators have found it increasingly difficult to assemble complete towers. My view on this comes from my perch on the Surface Transportation Board’s Passenger Rail Advisory Committee, where one of my committee assignments is our liability committee. Our group’s liability work has been documenting exactly that disconnect: the statutory number keeps climbing while underwriting capacity does not necessarily climb with it.

There is another wrinkle. The passenger cap is not the entire universe of risk from a railroad accident. Federal law expressly leaves Federal Employers Liability Act (FELA) and workers’ compensation damages untouched, and contracts may address third-party injuries, property damage, environmental exposure, defense costs and other claims. So, when somebody says, “the cap is $401.9 million, therefore we need $401.9 million of insurance,” the right response is: insurance for which obligation, exactly?

This is why the problem hits new and smaller passenger-rail projects especially hard. A big established operator or well-funded agency can spread risk across a large system, maintain substantial self-insurance and buy into the market at scale. A new state or regional service may be trying to insure one corridor with no operating history and a much smaller balance sheet. The railroad may be ready. The stations may be ready. The funding may be ready. And the project can still run aground on the question of who stands behind a catastrophic loss.

And by the way, let’s be clear here: that’s a market-design problem, and not a reason to compensate injured passengers less. Nobody, most of all me, is arguing that we should shirk our obligations to anyone who’s hurt or worse in an incident.

The interesting alternatives therefore are not about making liability disappear. They’re instead about financing it differently. Public agencies can retain sensible lower layers themselves. Multiple operators can pool risks. Captive insurance companies or protected-cell structures can allow participating agencies to retain and share selected layers. Commercial insurers and reinsurers can then be used where their capacity adds the most value rather than assuming that every dollar of the tower has to be purchased the same way from the same shrinking market.

None of those ideas is magic. A captive needs capital. A pool needs governance and actuarial discipline. Catastrophic risk still has to be financed. Freight hosts still need confidence that an indemnity is worth more than the paper it is printed on. And every proposed solution has to preserve the central public-policy objective: if passengers are seriously injured or killed, money must be there to compensate them and their families.

But that’s exactly why just saying “insurance is expensive” is no longer a satisfactory answer...at least to me, anyway.

We have spent years diagnosing the problem. Operators say the towers are becoming untenable. Insurers explain, quite accurately, that capacity is constrained and this is what the market costs. Host railroads want financially secure indemnification. Public agencies want to run trains without putting an absurd share of their operating budgets into premiums. Everybody can be completely rational from inside their own box and still produce a system that prevents new service from happening.

For passenger-rail advocates, that’s the reason to care about this spectacularly unglamorous (some might even say narcoleptic) subject. Sometimes the thing standing between a community and a new train is not a missing locomotive, a bridge that needs rebuilding, or a track that needs upgrading. Sometimes it’s a spreadsheet with $401.9 million at the bottom, and not enough willing insurers above it. And six days ago, that problem got nearly $80 million worse.

This week’s trivia: In the entire history of Amtrak, route names have honored rivers, mountain ranges, cities, and historic figures long passed. But only one regularly scheduled Amtrak service was ever officially named after a living person.

What was the name of the train, and who was it named after?

Leave a comment with your answer.

Leave a comment

There’s a legal phrase for this: prima facie. In plain English, before you ask the government to approve a merger of this size, you have to put enough facts and evidence on the table for regulators to determine whether the deal serves the public interest.

We don’t think UP and NS have done that.

This is especially important because the proposed combination would put an extraordinary share of America’s existing and planned passenger-rail network in the hands of one railroad. Our analysis found that 43 of the 69 projects selected for the Federal Railroad Administration’s Corridor Identification and Development Program potentially use UP or NS infrastructure. Twenty-two of those 43 overlap at least one segment where the Applicants themselves project additional freight traffic.

And on the passenger routes operating today, the numbers deserve answers. We examined 53 route-and-segment pairings for which the Applicants quantified traffic changes. Forty-two would see additional freight traffic. UP and NS nevertheless label capacity “sufficient” for 31 of those affected pairings — without showing, in operational terms, how the additional trains will actually fit.

And that’s really the heart of our objection.

In May, the Board specifically asked the Applicants to explain in a supplemental filing how passenger trains would actually be affected by the merger. Yet we still don’t have a timetable-based operating model showing when these additional freight trains will run. We don’t have a passenger-specific dispatching plan showing where freight and passenger trains will meet, pass, or compete for terminal capacity. Much of the underlying capacity analysis remains confidential. And the Applicants’ statistical analysis looks backward at historical monthly averages rather than showing how their proposed post-merger railroad will actually operate.

That’s pretty important, because as we all know today’s baseline isn’t exactly something to celebrate. Both railroads already host passenger services suffering substantial freight-related delay. Just hand-waving away the required passenger-rail showing by promising that passengers won’t be worse off after the merger is not the same thing as demonstrating that passenger transportation will be adequate.

We’re also troubled by the Applicants’ treatment of future passenger service. Congress created and funded the Corridor ID program specifically to develop new routes and expand existing ones. Yet the merger analysis effectively assumes that today’s passenger timetable will remain frozen in place. A railroad can’t project years of future freight growth when describing the benefits of its merger, then pretend future passenger growth is too uncertain to consider.

So, we’ve joined the Joint Shipper Associations in asking the Board to summarily deny the application. Our passenger analysis provides an independent reason to do so: the Applicants have not supplied the transaction-specific evidence the Board needs, both in the law and in the regulations, to evaluate the effect of this merger on passenger transportation.

That isn’t our only argument. Now that the case is moving forward, we’ve also explained why we believe the passenger record weighs against the merger on the merits. And if the Board ultimately approves the transaction, we’re asking for enforceable protections covering capacity, performance, transparency, future passenger development, and the preservation of existing passenger-service rights and remedies.

But those are the next questions. The first one is simpler: If UP and Norfolk Southern want permission to create the nation’s largest railroad, they need to show the Board how their plan will actually work for the passengers sharing those tracks.

So far, they haven’t.

Rail Passengers Urges STB to Summarily Deny UP–Norfolk Southern Merger Application

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Rail Passengers Association today filed comments with the Surface Transportation Board arguing that Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern have failed to make the passenger-rail showing necessary to establish a prima facie case for their proposed merger.

The Association also joined the Joint Shipper Associations in supporting their pending Motion for Summary Denial.

“Before the Board can decide whether a merger this consequential is in the public interest, the Applicants have to provide enough evidence for the Board to make that decision,” said Jim Mathews, President & CEO of the Rail Passengers Association. “On passenger rail, they still haven’t done that. They tell us there is enough capacity. They tell us existing agreements will continue. What they still haven’t shown is how the additional freight trains they project will actually operate alongside scheduled passenger trains.”

RPA’s filing argues that the proposed transaction would give the combined railroad an unusually large role in both existing and planned passenger service. RPA found that 43 of 69 federally selected Corridor ID projects—62.3 percent—potentially use UP or NS infrastructure, and 22 of those projects overlap at least one segment where the Applicants project additional freight traffic.

For existing Amtrak service, RPA reviewed 53 passenger-service/route-segment pairings for which UP and NS quantified projected traffic changes. Forty-two of the 53 would receive additional freight traffic, generally two to ten trains per day. The Applicants nevertheless characterize existing capacity as “sufficient” for 31 of those affected pairings without providing a timetable-based operating demonstration.

The filing argues that the Applicants have not provided several forms of passenger-specific evidence needed for the Board to assess the transaction, including a timetable-based operating model, a passenger-specific dispatching plan, publicly testable capacity evidence, and a serious assessment of federally selected future passenger projects. RPA also argues that the Applicants’ statistical analysis cannot substitute for an operating demonstration and that existing poor passenger performance makes “no worse than today” an inadequate standard.

“The Applicants want the Board to credit projected new freight traffic when calculating the benefits of the merger, but then treat those same trains as almost operationally irrelevant when passenger service is considered,” Mathews said. “You can’t have it both ways. If the traffic projections are real, the Applicants need to show how those trains will fit. If they aren’t, then the benefits attributed to that traffic are overstated.”

RPA’s filing separately addresses the merits of the proposed transaction. It argues that Applicants have not demonstrated protection of existing passenger service, have inadequately analyzed terminal and network effects, and have failed to consider reasonably foreseeable passenger growth through the federal Corridor ID program.

If the Board does not deny the transaction, RPA asks for specific, enforceable passenger protections. Those include route-level performance standards; passenger operating demonstrations before material merger-related train-plan changes; public performance and capacity reporting; objective intervention triggers; capacity-investment commitments; protection for Corridor ID projects; independent validation of capacity models; and continuing Board oversight.

RPA also asks the Board to ensure that the merger itself does not extinguish or diminish existing passenger-service agreements, settlements, legal rights, remedies, or other protections applicable to either railroad.

“The burden belongs to the railroads proposing the merger,” Mathews said. “With this much of the country’s current and future passenger network potentially affected, passengers should not have to take adequate capacity on faith.”

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About Rail Passengers Association: with 127,000 members, donors, and supporters, the non-profit Rail Passengers Association is the oldest and largest national organization serving as a voice for the more than 40 million rail passengers in the U.S. Our mission is to improve and expand conventional intercity and regional passenger train services, support higher speed rail initiatives, increase connectivity among all forms of transportation, and ensure safety for our country’s trains and passengers. All of this makes communities safer, more accessible, and more productive, improving the lives of everyone who lives, works, and plays in towns all across America.

A new era for VIA Rail, no government shutdown (for now), new options for travelers at DC Union Station, and Trump vs Gateway Part 843. See you on board! High ball!

Hotline 1453

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President Trump signed the bill into law on September 2.

Critically, as with the Senate-passed measure, the extension does not continue the advance appropriations for passenger rail and public transit programs authorized under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA)—something Rail Passengers Association has been fighting for with other rail industry stakeholders.

However, we are encouraged by a bipartisan effort led by members of the House Problem Solvers Caucus urging congressional leadership to restore federal surface transportation funding to FY 2026 enacted levels.

“The current House and Senate versions of a continuing resolution would cut $36 billion in transportation funding, including cutting highway funds by nearly $10 billion, airport construction by $5 billion, transit programs by $4 billion, and rail programs by $13 billion, for example,” stated the letter. “…Restoring investment levels in an FY2027 transportation appropriations bill will allow these important projects to continue without interruption. Ending federal support threatens to delay projects and create downstream impacts across the economy.”

While highways will continue to receive formula funding, regardless, these advanced appropriations are critical to continuing to advance the pipeline of transit and passenger rail projects created by the IIJA.

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The proposed Union Pacific-Norfolk Southern merger drew yet more scrutiny from Congress this week, with more than 100 Members of Congress signing onto a letter urging the Surface Transportation Board (STB) to thoroughly assess the merger’s potential impacts on employment, safety, service quality, competition, and accountability before any approval is granted.

The letter outlined the far-reaching scope of the proposed mega-merger, before drilling down into the details of how it could impact rail workers:

The combined railroad would operate roughly 50,000 miles of track across 43 states, giving one company enormous influence over where railroad jobs are, how many workers are employed, and how rail service is provided across the country. Those decisions would shape the livelihoods of tens of thousands of railroad workers and affect small businesses, short-line railroads, passenger rail providers, shippers, and communities throughout the nation. UP and NS must explain where they expect to find savings and how they will pay off the debt incurred to finance the merger, how those plans would affect workers and communities, and what consequences would follow if they break their promises on jobs, service, and safety.

The STB’s review should pay particular attention to what the merger would mean for railroad workers’ jobs, seniority, wages, benefits, and rights under their collective bargaining agreements. Federal law and long-standing “New York Dock Protections” protect workers affected by rail mergers, and railroads should not be allowed to skirt those protections by selling off lines, transferring work to Class II or Class III carriers, or using binding arbitration indefinitely to force through changes to collective bargaining agreements outside the Railway Labor Act over unions’ objections. Workers should also not be forced to relocate hundreds or even thousands of miles at the risk of forfeiting the protections that are supposed to protect them from the consequences of a merger. The STB should hold the companies to a simple principle: workers’ rights and benefits must endure through every transaction that follows this potential merger.

The STB’s review will be critical in determining whether the nation’s largest-ever rail merger would strengthen or weaken the rail network’s overall performance. In our own filing (currently under development), Rail Passengers is looking at the potential impacts on the passenger network, which we believe is an under-investigated facet of the proposed merger.

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In yet another head-scratching move, the Trump administration has resumed its war on one of the nation’s most important passenger rail projects. The Justice Department appealed a federal court ruling that prohibited the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) from withholding funding for the Hudson Tunnel Project. If successful, the appeal could renege on a grant agreement between the Gateway Development Corporation and the USDOT, halt work on the desperately needed tunnels, and put thousands of construction workers out of a job.

The appeal, filed August 28, should not affect ongoing federal reimbursements or construction work while the case moves through the courts. It is estimated that the last halt in USDOT disbursements triggered hundreds of millions of dollars in delays and contract overages.

The original freeze in payments by the USDOT was nominally about the implementation of the implementation of the Disadvantaged Business Enterprise Program. However, as we reported at the time, the decision came in the first days of last year’s government shutdown and was most likely political in nature. Our reporting was vindicated by a February 2026 revelation that President Donald Trump told Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) he would release the funds if Penn Station and Dulles Airport were renamed after him.

In June of this year, a U.S. District Court judge found that the funding freeze violated federal law. It is unclear on what legal basis the DOJ is appealing this decision. Project officials report that federal reimbursements have continued on schedule since funding was restored by court order.

The news of the appeal by the Trump administration drew sharp rebukes from leaders in New Jersey and New York.

“Thousands of workers and 200,000 daily riders are relying on the Gateway Tunnel project, and Governor Sherrill will keep fighting Trump’s illegal attempts to stop it,” said a spokesman for New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill.

“Every time this administration has tried to stop Gateway, they’ve lost,” said a spokesman for New York Gov. Kathy Hochul. “If they try again, they will lose again.”

The USDOT has not issued a statement explaining the decision to appeal.

Yesterday, Prime Minister Mark Carney announced the largest investment in VIA Rail’s history: C$4.7 billion for 313 new Alstom passenger cars to replace the astonishingly elderly equipment still serving VIA’s long-distance, regional and remote routes.

And these aren’t generic coaches. Canada is buying nine different kinds of cars: coaches, sleepers, accessible sleepers, berth sleepers, Prestige sleepers, baggage cars, dining cars, panorama cars and — yes — 25 dome cars.

Image: Alstom (not a contractual image, just a concept)

The first are supposed to enter service in 2031, with the entire fleet in service by 2035.

That is wonderful news. Full stop. I know quite a few of those folks involved in this procurement, and I know they worked very hard to get here. My congratulations to all of them.

The VIA Rail order preserves something important about long-distance passenger rail that we have talked about a lot here: a train making a four-day journey across a continent isn’t just transportation. The equipment is part of the experience. VIA isn’t just replacing worn-out machinery. It is preserving full-service dining, social spaces, different sleeping accommodations, and the spectacular views that are part of the reason people ride The Canadian in the first place.

Image: Alstom (not a contractual image, just a concept)

This isn’t about some kind of luxury land-cruise, either. There’s a physical difference between riding a vehicle for a couple of hours and living in a space for two days or more.

And at the risk of sounding a little envious, there is something almost surreal about watching Canada buy, in concrete form, several of the things American passengers have repeatedly been told are too complicated, too specialized, or too difficult to procure. Nine car types. Dome cars. Full-service dining. First deliveries in 2031. Apparently, some of the laws of procurement work differently north of the border.

Amtrak’s original Superliner-replacement effort ran into trouble in part because manufacturers pushed back on complexity. Amtrak eventually changed course, moving to a universal single-level fleet and a new strategy built explicitly around standardization, broader competition and reduced program risk. There are sensible reasons for that decision, and I have defended it.

Still.

Nine car types. Dome cars. First delivery in 2031. Canada apparently didn’t get the memo.

There is another part of yesterday’s announcement that leaves me considerably less cheerful.

This is intentionally a Made-in-Canada procurement. Design and engineering will happen in Québec. Carbody manufacturing will happen in La Pocatière. Manufacturing and final assembly will happen in Thunder Bay. Carney went farther in his remarks, saying Canada is building the capacity to manufacture every component of these trains at home. Manufacture, not just assemble. The government says Alstom will draw on more than 900 Canadian suppliers and maximize the use of Canadian steel.

Given the increasingly ugly U.S.-Canada tariff fight, I understand exactly why Canada is doing it. Canadian taxpayers are paying for these cars, and Ottawa has made a deliberate policy choice to use that spending to build Canadian industrial capacity and reduce dependence on the United States. If I’m in their shoes, I absolutely do the exact same thing.

But this part hits especially close to home for me. I was at the ceremony last year when Alstom opened its new Plant 4 in Hornell, New York, about an hour and 20 minutes from my house. The mood that day was genuinely exciting: Hornell wasn’t just getting another factory expansion. Upstate New York was positioning itself to become a real hub of North American passenger-rail manufacturing, with the skills, tooling, and industrial base to build the next generation of trains for both sides of the border.

Alstom spent $75 million on that plant specifically to bring stainless-steel passenger-car shell production back to the United States. It’s one of only a few American facilities capable of doing that work, and it is far and away the most sophisticated…at least for now. In other words, we had the beginnings of exactly the kind of continental rail-manufacturing ecosystem that both countries ought to want.

That’s why the VIA announcement feels a little bittersweet. Canada has every right to respond to Washington’s tariff policy by protecting Canadian jobs and Canadian manufacturing. But one result is that an emerging cross-border rail-manufacturing ecosystem is suddenly being divided by an increasingly high economic fence. Hornell was supposed to be part of that North American story. Now we have to wonder how much of that opportunity survives.

That may well matter when Amtrak chooses the builder for its own 800-plus-car long-distance fleet, which it currently expects to do by the end of 2027. Amtrak can’t just buy Canadian-built VIA cars; U.S. domestic-content rules would prevent that. But an Alstom win on both sides of the border could still have created a genuine North American platform — common engineering, common systems and common intellectual property, with Canadian cars built in Canada and American cars built in places like Hornell.

Instead, trade barriers and retaliatory industrial policies are pushing the two countries toward increasingly separate supply chains. That may be rational politics in the short term. But I’m sure not convinced it’s rational industrial policy over the long term.

So, yes, congratulations to VIA Rail, to Alstom and particularly to Canadian passengers. These trains look terrific, and I am genuinely excited to ride them.

I’m also going to be watching very closely when Amtrak opens those bids. Because this is now one more very visible example (among so many!) of Canada getting something Americans have been assured is impractical: a varied, purpose-built long-distance fleet that treats the onboard experience as an essential part of the service rather than an inconvenience to be standardized away.

If Canada can have nine different kinds of long-distance cars, real dining cars, panorama cars and dome cars, arriving beginning in 2031, American passengers are entitled to ask a perfectly reasonable question: Why can’t we?

There is, of course, an answer to that very obvious question: money.

The Canadian order is breathtakingly expensive. Alstom values the 313 cars themselves at roughly C$4 billion, with another C$700 million for 15 years of technical support and spare parts. Spread across the fleet, the equipment portion alone works out to roughly US$9 million per car at current exchange rates. Include the support agreement and you are getting awfully close to US$11 million per car.

That’s sticker shock by almost any standard.

And it helps explain why Amtrak has spent so much effort trying to simplify its own procurement. Complexity costs money. Nine car types cost money. Dome cars cost money. Maintaining specialized equipment for decades costs money.

But there is, for sure, another way to look at it: Canada has apparently decided that preserving the character and capability of long-distance passenger rail, and creating a robust domestic car-builder industrial base that can afford to keep innovating, is worth paying for.

That is a policy choice, too.

Here I think Carney deserves the last word. Explaining just how ancient VIA’s present fleet is, Carney (an Oilers fan from way back) noted that the cars date from an era when the NHL had six teams, goalies didn’t wear masks — and “the Leafs would win the Cup.”

Ouch. Elbows up, indeed. Watch the full remarks here.

Answer to the Aug 19th question: That would be Switzerland’s “clock-face” scheduling

This week’s trivia: Lots of talk as of late about rail service at airports, and it has inspired this week’s question: which US transit agency made international history in 1968 (beating London's Heathrow Piccadilly line extension by nearly a decade) by opening a rail extension directly into its city's major airport terminal, becoming the first rapid transit system in the Western Hemisphere to do so?

Leave a comment with your answer.

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First of all, if you are among the over 160 people who have already registered, we thank you! If you haven’t reserved your seat yet for what is sure to be an outstanding event, you still have time!

Also, if you haven’t already, be sure to book your stay at our host hotel - the Hilton Garden Inn Toledo Downtown. There are still discounted rooms available. As our President and CEO, Jim Mathews, has said in the past, one of the best ways you can support the Association during this event is to use the hotel block we have secured for you.

Next, if you haven’t been to our event page in a while, we have updated our Friday “science fair” schedule as well as confirmed new speakers such as the City of Toledo’s Chief of Growth Brandon Sehlhorst, Scioto Analysis’s Rob Moore, and Midwest Interstate Passenger Rail Commission Director Laura Kliewer.

AleNation Update:

REMINDER OF IMPORTANT DATES

• Hotel registration ends this coming Wednesday, Sept 2nd

• Event registration ends on Friday, September 18th at Midnight Eastern

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Please let us know if you have any questions, and we can't wait to see you in Toledo!

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Jim gives his thoughts on the proposed express train to O’Hare in Chicago, and Sean travels to the Big Sky to speak at a rail summit in Helena. Plus all the latest and greatest from around the country.

See you on board! High ball!

Hotline 1452

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This week, I was fortunate enough to take part in the Greater Northwest Rail Summit and the Big Sky Passenger Rail Authority Annual Conference in Helena, Montana, where leaders from across the rail, government, manufacturing, tourism, and community development sectors gathered to discuss the future of rail transportation in Montana and the Greater Mountain West and Pacific Northwest regions.

I participated in the Federal Policy Briefing on Surface Transportation Reauthorization alongside Dan Bucks—former Montana state budget director and current chairman of BSPRA’s Development & Strategic Engagement Committee—and Rebecca Higgins, Vice President for Policy at the Eno Center for Transportation. The session examined the future of federal rail policy as Congress considers a transportation reauthorization package ahead of the September expiration of the 2021 Investment in Infrastructure and Jobs Act (IIJA). Discussions focused on the implications of shifting federal priorities for passenger and freight rail, the legacy of the IIJA’s historic investment in rail, and the opportunities and challenges facing rail funding and policy in the years ahead.

The panel highlighted the need to include guaranteed funding for passenger rail programs as part of any reauthorization—an element currently missing in the House proposal. While our association has been delivering that message consistently for years now, the necessity of predictable, dedicated funding for rail was particularly stark in that room. I was able to hear from representatives of small towns, states, tribal governments, the freight rail industry, and economic development organizations, all of whom are willing to invest their finite fiscal resources and time in developing these passenger train services. However, they were all looking to the folks who work in the world of federal policy for assurances that Congress will stay the course on rail policy in the next transportation bill. It’s unrealistic—and frankly, unfair—to expect these stakeholders to spend years of their time developing these corridors if Congress is going to radically shift federal transportation policy depending on which party happens to be in control when a bill is being drafted.

The good news: there’s still plenty of time to ensure that guaranteed funding is part of the next transportation bill.

The Senate has taken steps to extend current law through December, with the House likely to follow suit in September. That gives us almost four months to continue to deliver the message that meaningful investment in passenger rail is a critical part of preserving American mobility and economic growth. I asked attendees at the conference to help communicate this to their Congressional delegations.

And with our online advocacy tool, anyone can take part in this campaign—even you!

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There is, of course, the CTA Blue Line. It works. I use it. A lot. But as I told Crain’s Chicago Business, it is also something of a milk run — more than a dozen stops and roughly 45 minutes between the airport and downtown, assuming everything goes according to plan. Add luggage in the narrow aisles and a tired traveler or two, and the romance of urban transit can wear thin pretty quickly.

Image courtesy O’Hare Flyer

Enter the O’Hare Flyer.

Unveiled publicly this week, the proposal would connect O’Hare’s Terminal 2 with Chicago’s Old Main Post Office in about 15 minutes, with trains leaving every 15 minutes for most of the day. The project team expects fares to come in at a premium to CTA, but below the typical cost of a taxi or rideshare.

And no, the plan does not involve drilling a futuristic tunnel beneath Chicago. That may be the cleverest thing about it.

Image: CBS Chicago, circa 2018. ‘nuff said.

The team behind the Flyer — including former Amtrak planner Mark Walbrun, transportation executive Kristi Lafleur and Chicago public-affairs veteran Dave Lundy — noticed that years of changes in freight-rail operations had left pieces of existing railroad right-of-way available between downtown and O’Hare. Combine those corridors with some new track, flyovers, and about 1.5 miles of elevated construction at the airport, add modern battery-electric trains, and suddenly the seemingly impossible starts looking surprisingly practical.

The estimated price tag is $2.25 billion, which the project’s sponsors intend to finance privately. If they can pull it off, service could begin in about five years.

Now yes, that is a BIG if, of course. Railroad agreements still have to be completed. The city has to be onboard. Federal regulators will have a say. And private investors still have to write some very large checks.

But at the same time, this isn’t a cocktail-napkin transportation scheme or a railfan fever dream. Lord knows we have enough of those already. This team has spent three years doing engineering and ridership work, talking with railroads, regulators and investors and trying to solve the details before stepping into the spotlight.

And the potential payoff is enormous.

Hong Kong has its Airport Express. London has Heathrow Express. Tokyo, Stockholm and other major world cities have made fast airport-to-city-center rail part of their basic transportation infrastructure. No American city yet offers quite the same thing. Chicago could be first.

That matters for more than travelers trying to make dinner after landing at O’Hare. A fast, dependable connection between one of the world’s great airports and the heart of one of America’s great cities is economic infrastructure: useful for conventions, tourism, business investment and the thousands of ordinary trips Chicagoans and visitors make every day.

I had the opportunity to learn about the O’Hare Flyer before the project became public, and I came away genuinely excited by what the team had put together. As I told Crain’s, this is about as close to a slam-dunk as rail infrastructure projects tend to get.

Now comes the hard part: keeping everybody onboard long enough to build it.

But after decades of proposals, studies, abandoned stations and assorted visions of tunneling beneath Chicago, it looks like the answer was sitting there all along. Sometimes the smartest new railroad is the railroad somebody finally noticed.

Trust us, it will all make sense when you dive into this week’s #FridayHotline.

See you on board! High ball!

Hotline 1451

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