President Biden set to Amtrak in the Northeast
Jim Sugar
President Biden logged more than 1 million miles on Amtrak during his 36 years as U.S. Senator between Wilmington and Washington every single day.
He was even given the nickname “Amtrak Joe” from his time of traveling on the railway as United States Senator and he is now helping to promote what the White House calls the “largest investment in passenger rail since the creation of Amtrak” in 1971.
He is making plans to give back to those that take one of the 800,000 daily trips on Amtrak in the Northeast with his infrastructure plans for the United States.
On November 6, Biden visited a train maintenance shop in Delaware, his home state. He made a statement about $16 billion in federal investments for rail travel dedicated to the Northeast Corridor Amtrak. The investment is to modernize 25 passenger train projects between Washington and Boston.
This plan also means repairing and replacing the infrastructure areas such as the Gateway Hudson River Tunnel and Maryland’s Frederick Douglass Tunnel that are currently heavily traveled locations on the Amtrak.
“Why, in the United States of America, do we not have the best rail system in the world?” Biden asked during his speech in Bear, Delaware. He explains that the investments in the Northeast will help ease car traffic and potentially reduce fossil fuel use, since it is the nation’s busiest rail corridor.
This comes at a time where House Republicans wish to cut Amtrak funding by 64% for the 2024 fiscal year. Amtrak CEO Stephen Gardner states that this would “radically reduce or suspend service on various routes across the nation.”
Biden addresses this in his speech, “We’re trying to make train travel easier, faster, safer, more reliable,” he said. “They’re trying to make it slower, harder and less safe.”
The reasons for not approving of funding the infrastructure varies on representative. Some Republicans believe that there needs to be improvements on infrastructure but do not believe in how Biden is doing it, while others believe that it is a “multi-trillion-dollar socialist wish list,” stated by GOP Rep. Tom Emmer.
After this comment, Emmer backtracked and sent a letter to Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg with support for the bill that would improve part of Highway 65 in his district. He states that the road was causing fatalities and traffic jams and needed to be upgraded.
“This grant also strives to serve as a social justice measure. The completion of this project means economic opportunities for ethnically underserved communities,” his letter states.
He is not the only member of the Republican party to preach against the infrastructure bill while sending letters to Buttigieg in support and asking for money from the bill. There have been letters from dozens of Republicans that have done this.
The issue of infrastructure is a highly complex one that even those not supporting improvements may be supporting behind closed doors. Without upgraded and modern infrastructure, the United States economy will not be up to par with other countries in the world.
The history of Biden’s support for Amtrak
Then Senator Joe Biden was the only member of the Senate Budget Committee to go against President Ronald Reagan in 1981 when he had proposed an $884 million cut from the budget for Amtrak.
He believed that the budget cut would kill the railway system stating, “"Those railroads will have gone."
In 1990, Amtrak revealed that it was creating a high-speed rail for the north-east and Biden expressed that he believed it was the most important transportation advancement for the United States.
Why are improvements needed?
Amtrak has needed and well overdue projects to upgrade and maintain the logistics of the trains in the Northeast corridor.
Examples of improvements needed such as a 1910 tunnel under the Hudson River that had flooded during Superstorm Sandy in 2012 has not been fixed, 1873 tunnel in Baltimore has brick crumbling and a sinking floor. The cars themselves are 40 or 50-years old and are used for coach or long distance travel.
There have been over 90 applicants from states and cities submitted to the Federal Railroad Administration for improvements along their railway.
There have already been improvements coming in the near future like new high-speed Acela trainsets arriving in 2024 and Alstom-built, 125-mph intercity trains coming in 2026.
Amtrak is currently researching what is exactly needed and how to improve the long distance travels on trains in hopes of tripling their annual infrastructure investment by fiscal year 2025.
The United States is also severely behind in infrastructure compared to other countries. Experts believe that the U.S. is dangerously behind its economic competitors in this context, especially behind China.
The delays and maintenance costs are putting the U.S. behind economically as well as structurally deficient bridges and antiquated water infrastructure create severe safety concerns and risks for the citizens of the United States.
The United States’ lack of updated infrastructure can create large costs for the U.S. economy. There is also an intense threat for safety of those using the current infrastructure when it comes to possible catastrophic failures like bridges collapsing, dam breaches, inadequate roads.
In just 2018, traffic congestion cost the U.S. economy $87 billion that year.
Aviation brings in 2.5 million U.S. jobs and international tourism brings in $180 billion dollars in annual tax revenue but in 2019 flight delays cost the United States economy $33 billion.
Investing in infrastructure will help to stimulate the economy. By investing now, it would increase the United States long term competitiveness in international issues, insulate the economy from potential shocks, and create jobs.
Where does the money for this come from?
The funding for these improvements come from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law from 2021.
The key sectors and focus is to improve the roads and bridges, railways, airports, ports and waterways, transit and school buses, electric vehicle charging, EV batteries & critical material, clean water, high-speed internet, modernizing the grid and deploying clean energy, superfunds and brownfield cleanup, and orphan wells and abandoned mine lands.
There is also a focus on making sure that no area of the United States and no group of people does not have improvements in the infrastructure.
What does Infrastructure include?
People often refer to infrastructure as the “backbone of the economy.” If a country has bad infrastructure, there is a high chance of it having a poor economy.
Infrastructure is what connects people and businesses both inside the United States and internationally to jobs, goods, services, information.
Goods travel through supply chains, workers travel to and from work or need access to the internet to work from home. Infrastructure is used on the daily by everyone: roads, public transportation, cars, internet, data, etc.
Having updated and advanced infrastructure creates more opportunities for citizens, increases productivity in businesses, and increases and supports United States competitiveness while protecting the environment.
Infrastructure has an impact on the U.S. economy and on household finances.
The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law Progress includes:
More than 21 million low-income households now have access to free or discounted high-speed internet service because of The Affordable Connectivity Program. This ensures connectivity for those who need to access work, school, healthcare and more.
135,800 miles of roads have been started to be improved and over 7,800 bridge repair projects have been started. This helps to keep the communities safe and works to reconnect communities across the country.
There has been funding for over 2,900 low-and zero-emission transit buses that are American-made. This doubles the number of transit buses on the American roadway. Approximately 2,400 school buses have also been funded.
445 port and waterway projects received funding with the intentions of strengthening supply chains, speeding up the movement of goods, lowering costs, and reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
Investments were given for over 190 airport terminal projects with the intention to expand and modernize terminals. 18 are currently under construction and 8 have already been completed.
There have been seven Regional Clean Hydrogen Hubs created that have $50 billion of public and private sector investments. This helps to expand the clean energy economy throughout the country.
Over 2,300 projects were created to help communities strengthen their resilience and strength to protect themselves from outside threats including climate change and cyber-attacks.
Money was given to over 1,200 drinking water and wastelands projects throughout the country. This includes projects aimed at replacing hundreds and thousands of service lines that have lead in them.
Hazardous fuel material was removed from 8.7 million acres of land which helps to protect communities from wildfires in the future.
Nearly 400 projects were funded for water recycling, storage, conservation, desalination, and other purposes. These will help with drought prevention in the West.
Over 100 states, tribes, and territories received funding as well as over 60 projects that improve America’s electric grid. This means cheaper and cleaner electricity in the United States. This is the largest single investment in electric transmission and distribution infrastructure ever.
Over 6,000 orphaned oil and gas wells are now plugged and inactive throughout the country.
It is important to plug oil and gas wells and not just to “orphan” them because when left unplugged they have the ability to contaminate water supplies, degrade ecosystems, and pollute the air by emitting methane and other air contaminants. Orphaned wells create risks to the climate's stability and to the human health around. These risks are reduced by plugging the wells.
There has been funding to 70 Superfunded projects that were previously unfunded. This clears an accumulation of projects that wish to clean up help with the environment with a sense of advanced environmental justice.
The infrastructure bill was passed in 2021 but the work towards it is a slow and steady one to truly help the infrastructure and economy in the United States.