Well, the President of the United States has finally done it. That is he signed the Railroad Safety Act of 2008 as well as the Amtrak Funding Bill of 2008. What more could anyone want? Well, it took long enough for both of those to happen and now we should all feel safer and happy that Amtrak now has money in their future!
Yea, fight! Remember now, this authorization for Amtrak is still dependent on the Congress doing it's part by funding the annual amounts. Remember we talked about this a while back. It all gets the freat YES botes by Congress and the President as a package and then both of those bodies need to take that 5 year bill and re-vote the money to actually be spent each year.
Bottom line, both the Congress and the President have one more chance each to change their mind and reject the actual funding that has been designated. Let's hope for everyone's sake that there is no shift in thinking opposed to this picture.
And the safety bill. There are a lot of rule changes that need to be made effective and here again there is more money available to teh railroads for safety upgrades, the main one being Positive Train Control (PTC). As of this week four of the Class I railroads have agreed on the technology to use for this. Agreement between railroads? What comes next?
The two Class I's that have rail in the greater Los Angeles ares where Metrolink runs its' passenger service, have agreed to be fully PTC functional before the 2015 deadline in this operational area.
So, the sky is blue, Amtrak has money (?) and the railroads are on their way to operating more safely in the future. I guess Santa really is coming!?
I think I better get my 'wish list' updated to reflect all these good things.
Breathe easier!
EngineerRichard
Friday, October 17
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