During the tumultuous year of 2008--when gas prices reached $4 a gallon, Amtrak set ridership records, and a commuter train collided with a freight train in California--journalist James McCommons spent a year on America's trains, talking to the people who ride and work the rails throughout much of the Amtrak system. Organized around these rail journeys, Waiting on a Train is equal parts travel narrative, personal memoir, and investigative journalism. Readers meet the historians, railroad executives, transportation officials, politicians, government regulators, railroad lobbyists, and passenger-rail advocates who are rallying around a simple question: Why has the greatest railroad nation in the world turned its back on the very form of transportation that made modern life and mobility possible? Distrust of railroads in the nineteenth century, overregulation in the twentieth, and heavy government subsidies for airports and roads have left the country with a skeletal intercity passenger-rail system. Amtrak has endured for decades, and yet failed to prosper owing to a lack of political and financial support and an uneasy relationship with the big, remaining railroads. While riding the rails, McCommons explores how the country may move passenger rail forward in America--and what role government should play in creating and funding mass-transportation systems. Against the backdrop of the nation's stimulus program, he explores what it will take to build high-speed trains and transportation networks, and when the promise of rail will be realized in America.

This report was prepared at the request of AASHTO's Standing Committee on Rail Transportation. It provides for AASHTO's members and others committed to developing a national intercity passenger rail system a summary of the recent favorable actions by Congress and the Obama Administration, a description of the work of the states over the past decade, the views of the essential partners to the states and other commentators, and some guidelines for advancing the effort.

North America faces a transportation crisis. Gas-guzzling SUVs clog the highways and air travelers face delays, cancellations, and uncertainty in the wake of unprecedented terrorist attacks. New Departures closely examines the options for improving intercity passenger trains’ capacity to move North Americans where they want to go. While Amtrak and VIA Rail Canada face intense pressure to transform themselves into successful commercial enterprises, Anthony Perl demonstrates how public policy changes lie behind the triumphs of European and Japanese high-speed rail passenger innovations. Perl goes beyond merely describing these achievements, translating their implications into a North American institutional and political context and diagnosing the obstacles that have made renewing passenger trains so much more difficult in North America than elsewhere. New Departures links the lessons behind rail passenger revitalization abroad with the opportunity to recast the policies that constrain Amtrak and VIA Rail from providing efficient and effective intercity transportation.

This report addresses the public benefits and investment needs of intercity passenger rail transportation. AASHTO has published an investment needs report for highways and transit, and intends to publish a report on freight rail investment needs. Cost estimates for intercity passenger rail investment presented in this report were developed independently from those contained in the freight rail report. In combination, these reports provide a complete picture of the benefits of the various surface transportation modes to the U.S. and the value to be realized by both the traveling public and shippers through strategic investments.

Since Amtrak's inception the Fed. government has provided the railroad with over $23 billion in capital and operating assistance, including about $2 bill. in FY 1998 and 1999 from the Taxpayer Relief Act (TRA) to make capital improvements and maintain Amtrak's equip., as well as to make pay. on debt. This report discusses: how much Amtrak has spent in TRA funds and what types of activities it has funded; whether Amtrak has used TRA funds in accordance with the act; what the roles of the Amtrak Reform Council and the IRS have been in monitoring Amtrak's use of TRA funds; and whether Amtrak fully reports its use of TRA funds. Charts and tables.