(The Associated Press circulated the following article on June 21.)
WASHINGTON — Electrical problems are piling up for Amtrak along its showcase Northeast Corridor routes, the latest delaying thousands of New York and New Jersey commuters on Wednesday.
The troubles come about a year after warnings about the perils of delaying billions of dollars worth of repairs.
Wednesday’s ”power fluctuation,” as Amtrak put it, stopped trains in the New York-New Jersey area. The Northeast Corridor, with the railroad’s busiest and most profitable lines, runs from Washington to Boston and is fully electrified.
In April 2005, Kenneth Mead, the Transportation Department’s inspector general at the time, told a Senate committee that Amtrak had a $5 billion backlog of capital projects. Mead said deferred capital investments had led to several system failures, including the failure of a key electric cable during the August 2003 power blackout in the Northeast.
”No one knows where or when a critical failure will occur, but continued deferral of needed investment increases the risk that it may not be too far away,” Mead said then.
Amtrak has yet to explain what is behind the power disruptions, bringing on the wrath of its passengers and riders on other trains on the Northeast Corridor. Wednesday’s outage and one earlier in June were minor compared with the May 25 power problem that shut down the entire corridor for several hours.
”When the power goes out the first or second time, it can be considered a fluke, but when it goes out for the third time in a month, it sets off alarm bells that scream something is terribly wrong,” said Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y. ”We need outside experts to step in and fix what’s broken.”
Amtrak has asked for $1.59 billion in federal funds for capital improvements and other costs. Amtrak spokesman Cliff Black said the railroad has set aside $325 million for infrastructure projects in the corridor for the last three budget years.
Black said the cause of the May 25 outage is under investigation and that Amtrak has asked the National Electrical Reliability Council for help.
President Bush, who last year wanted no subsidy for Amtrak, has proposed giving the railroad $900 million. Last week, Amtrak’s House supporters voted to give Amtrak $1.1 billion in the budget year starting Oct. 1.
Wednesday’s outage lasted for about 30 minutes at the height of morning rush hour. There were reports of low voltage between Newark, N.J., and New York, said NJ Transit spokesman Dan Stessel. Seventeen NJ Transit trains were stopped en route, and about 50 NJ Transit trains incurred delays of between 15 minutes to one hour, he said.
”We’ve been in touch with Amtrak about the low voltage and we expect them to focus all of their resources to address the ongoing power issues to prevent them from happening again,” Stessel said.
The May 25 outage affected not only the nation’s passenger railroad but also commuter lines in New Jersey, Maryland and Pennsylvania. A power failure on June 2 outside of Philadelphia lasted 45 minutes when a transmission line took itself off line during a thunderstorm. That caused a frequency converter to shut down.
Black said the common thread in Wednesday’s power problem and the June 2 incident appears to be trees coming into contact with transmission lines.