Can Bob Hagan get us a train ride to Cleveland-Pittsburgh?

[jay]

Bob Hagan was just named chairman of the Ohio House of Representatives' Transportation & Infrastructure Committee.

With the stimulus package and other rail favorable happenings, now would be the time to get train service back in Youngstown.

[irishbobcat]

City a missing link for passenger trains
Thursday, February 12, 2009
By Brian O'Neill, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Think about this railroad map.

A couple of hundred miles to our east, there already are fast, frequent and reliable passenger trains between Harrisburg and Philadelphia, a "Keystone Corridor" to the very good service between New York and Washington, D.C.

About 130 miles to our northwest, folks in Cleveland have high hopes that the federal stimulus bill will kick-start an ambitious plan for passenger trains than run the length of Ohio from Cleveland through Columbus to Cincinnati, the "3C Corridor."

Throw in the several daily trains from Chicago to Milwaukee and St. Louis, and who does that leave conspicuously out of a blossoming East Coast-Midwest passenger rail system?

That would be Pittsburgh, the largest metro area in the northeast without good rail options to nearby cities. Amtrak's stretch from Harrisburg through Pittsburgh to Cleveland remains a missing link.

Though last year's Amtrak bill authorized an environmental review of high-speed passenger rail for the Pittsburgh-Clevelan d corridor, Ohio's first priority is the 3C Corridor. If Ohio gets any rail money from the stimulus bill, which seems likely, that's where it's going.

Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland is asking the legislature there for money for engineering planning for the Cleveland-Pittsburg h piece. We need to meet them less than halfway. But the Pittsburgh-Clevelan d piece won't get any additional money from a stimulus bill because it is not "shovel ready," a spokesman for Democratic Congressman Jason Altmire of the North Hills said this week.

That's OK. We can wait. We just can't wait forever. Because as airlines continue to dump short flights, rail travel in the sub-500-mile range is going to be crucial here, there and everywhere.

This 3C Corridor will have three daily diesel trains in each direction, and Mr. Strickland wants them running by the end of next year (not coincidentally an election year for this Democrat). These won't be high-speed trains, at least not at first, and will use the rails of freight carriers CSX north of Columbus and Norfolk Southern south of that city. Some new track will be needed.

"You're moving into somebody's house, basically," said Ken Prendergast, a spokesman for All Aboard Ohio, a nonprofit rail advocacy group. "You want to be a good tenant.''

More work will be in building signal systems, stations and maintenance facilities. Some also are noticing that some idled auto plants in Ohio might be just right for building rail cars. There are no longer any domestically owned rail car manufacturers in the U.S., Mr. Prendergast noted.

He also pointed to Western Pennsylvania' s rail-related industries, GE Transportation, LB Foster and Wabtec among them.

Bob Hagan, an Ohio state representative from Youngstown, is in a unique position to view the proceedings. He not only chairs the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, he still works semi-regularly as an engineer on CSX freight trains. He last worked Friday hauling scrap from the General Motors plant in Lordstown.

Youngstown hasn't had Amtrak service since 2005, and Mr. Hagan has been frustrated in attempts to route a Pittsburgh train through Youngstown to Cleveland. He's not focused on high-speed; any train would be welcome. "We've got to walk before we run."
Indeed, a fast train from Pittsburgh to Cleveland would be nice, but so would one more slow train that leaves at a more convenient time than the midnight train that arrives in Cleveland between 2 and 3 a.m. before heading on to Chicago.
California, long seen as our most car-crazy state, has had a rail renaissance in recent years and they've discovered something out there. Travelers have a "hierarchy of need," Mr. Prendergast said, that goes like this:

The first question is cost, the second is frequency of service and the third is reliability -- "will it be there?" Speed is fourth on the list.

Getting from Pittsburgh to Cleveland in two and a half to three hours would be fine if riders knew they could arrive and get back at a decent hour, and have a second or third option if they missed the first train. This isn't rocket science. We once moved this way in this country.
As the federal government takes us still deeper into debt to get Americans working again, we'd better come out the other end with a more viable transportation system. Because the system we enjoy now is based almost entirely on the assumption that gasoline will remain cheap, and that not only won't cut it forever, it will enrich a lot of people who hate us.

The country is moving toward rail again, and Western Pennsylvania needs to find a way to climb aboard.