Hotline #737

Amtrak's FRA-related preventive maintenance cycle for food service cars has permanently reduced car availability. Therefore, the Cardinal and Desert Wind will lose their dining cars on September 21. Desert Wind sleeping-car passengers will get innovative catered box dinners, to be eaten in their rooms or in the lower level of the lounge, which will be dressed up as a diner at mealtime. Public smoking will be allowed only in the lower level of one coach. For now, coach passengers will have to live with the current lounge menu, but Amtrak soon will market-test microwave meals for them. All Cardinal passengers will get standard, pre-plated meals, as in Amclub. On October 1, the Montrealer will regain the food service it lost in April.

Besides the Tri-Rail relief trains reported last week, the early opening of CSX into hurricane-ravaged Homestead, Fla., has allowed other freight movements to bypass congested highways and get where it's needed. Rail shipments of cranes, backhoes, bulldozers, refrigerated food, and tank cars of drinking water have been received, probably faster than ever could be done by truck.

ISTEA created an office of intermodalism at DOT and last week its director was sworn in. He is Robert E. Martinez, the former deputy maritime administrator. The office will conduct research and administer seed grants to states to develop model intermodal plans and projects.

Philadelphia's last all-surface streetcar route, the 15-Girard, may be abandoned this month. Routes 23-Germantown and 56-Erie were abandoned earlier in the summer. SEPTA says it will save on operating costs and that the routes may be revived later as light-rail or trolley-bus lines -- but the record for such revivals is not good. Therefore, because of budget problems, SEPTA is making a short-term decision to get rid of a transit mode that has long-term benefits. The five subway-surface routes -- 10, 11, 13, 34, and 36 -- will be spared.

SEPTA will operate two daily rush-hour trains on the R8 Fox Chase line through October 2, which has been closed all summer due to Railworks reconstruction. The trains will use a freight-only line south of Olney and terminate at 30th Street Station.

Baltimore light rail was extended 3.2 miles and three stations south from Camden Station on August 30. The new terminus is Patapsco Avenue in Baltimore County. Ridership on the line north of Camden has been about 5,000 a day.

The Delaware Railroad Administration, along with various transit agencies, inaugurated Blue Diamond Lines on September 1. It is a network of buses serving the Amtrak and SEPTA station at Wilmington. The main route is Wilmington-Dover, with direct connections from Dover to Lewes, near the Cape May ferry and the beaches. All rides this week were free.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that since 1982, the cost of public transportation has risen 48%, while the cost of gasoline has risen only 3%. Those figures back up popular notions that the cost of using transit has been increasing, while the perceived cost of driving has not.

Even so, there was troubling news today that Washington Metro General Manager David Gunn will propose several economy measures to close a budget gap. He proposes shortening midday trains, charging peak fares between rush hours, charging for bus transfers, reducing some bus frequencies, and increasing senior and disabled fares. The only result of such a program will be to chase transit users away, because, as shown by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, driving costs have not kept up with transit costs -- and people know it! We would do far better to raise the gas tax in the Washington area and give it all to Metro.

Nova Scotia has eliminated its railroad diesel fuel tax as an incentive for railroads to abandon less trackage in the province.