(The following story by Glenn Maffei of States News Service appeared on the Boston Globe website on June 20.)
WASHINGTON, D.C. — A portion of the Northeast rail corridor that carries thousands of passengers a day between Boston and New York is in danger of being severed, Amtrak says, because of the uncertain state of three New England bridges.
If any of the bridges, all within 20 miles of New London, Conn., became impassable, rail transit along the corridor would be cut off, prompting the rail carrier to consider busing travelers to a waiting train on the other side of the waterway. Two regional Amtrak engineers said last week the threat is real.
Amtrak engineers said there is no immediate safety risk for passengers passing over the century-old bridges, but Amtrak officials are saying the ailing infrastructure is the result of inadequate funding from Congress, drawing rebukes from some lawmakers.
Representative Michael E. Capuano, who serves on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, criticized Amtrak for poor communication of its problems, saying he’s never heard the possibility that these three bridges could cause the breakup of the corridor.
“If you’re telling me that those bridges could fail tomorrow, why haven’t they been up there [in Congress] pounding the tables?” the Somerville Democrat said. “Do they want these bridges to fail, somehow thinking that’s going to get our attention? That’s a hell of a way to do politics.”
Two bridges at risk, spanning the Thames and Niantic rivers, open regularly for water traffic and the third bridge, over the Miamicock River, is a fixed structure spanning 80 feet that has shifted over decades of use.
Amtrak estimates the cost for repairing all three to be more than $31 million, and no plan exists to deal with the impact of permanent bridge failure. The highest uncertainty lies with the future of the 1,375-foot-long Thames River Bridge, which Amtrak officials say could take a year or longer to replace in an emergency.
“This bridge has the potential to seize up,” George Fitter, an assistant division engineer for Amtrak, said as he stood on the drawbridge Tuesday describing the mechanical issues involved in repairing it.
“I don’t know what we would do if it fetched up and seized,” said Andy Pedro, an assistant division engineer for structures at Amtrak. “I don’t know how we would get it open.”
Those questions leave Amtrak with a dilemma if operation of one of the movable bridges ceased: Find a way to force the bridge open and keep it there, preventing rail traffic from passing, or find a way to force the bridge closed, disrupting water traffic. The Coast Guard could require the Thames River Bridge, which last year carried 1.8 million Amtrak passengers, to remain open permanently for water traffic.
The warnings are part of a new Amtrak strategy to draw attention to what it says are impediments to improving the nation’s rail service.
Amtrak president David L. Gunn was coaxed out of retirement in 2002 to bring the rail service, which had plunged into economic crisis, back on track. Since then, Amtrak has changed the way it communicates with the public. Press releases describing bright days ahead have become scarcer, replaced with a more aggressive campaign to reverse what it insists is insufficient funding from Congress.
Amtrak is highlighting the bridge problems as its case in point about the impact of at least a decade of deferred maintenance. Amtrak spokesman Dan Stessel, based in Washington, traveled by train last Tuesday with a reporter to underline the poor state of the three bridges. He said Amtrak is using the bridges as “the biggest, the best example” that tells “the story of why this is important to people.”
The bridges join a problematic capital program that includes the replacement of 1920s-era cables feeding the electrified system. Backup cables have failed, leaving one functioning cable system.
“The penalty for not doing it varies,” Gunn said. “The Thames Bridge — we can roll the dice and say it’s good for another two years. We can patch it for another two years. And maybe we’ll win. If we lose the bridge, the corridor’s broken. If we lose the cables in Penn Station, the entire Northeast Corridor is crippled.”
The national rail carrier has requested $1.8 billion, including $100 million for repayment of a Transportation Department loan in 2002, for the fiscal year that begins in October. The Bush administration has suggested Congress allocate half as much, $900 million, a figure Stessel said would require Amtrak to shut down. Last year, Amtrak and the White House floated the same numbers, with Congress meeting the rail service at a sustainable $1.2 billion.
Beginning in 1997, maintenance was deferred for five years, after the federal government put Amtrak on a path toward self-sufficiency. Federal subsidies gradually declined through 2002, when Amtrak was supposed to be profitable, forcing the rail carrier to borrow more from private sources. In 2002, New York’s Penn Station was mortgaged for $300 million to make payroll.
Amtrak says it needs these amounts to come up to speed: — $3.8 billion for infrastructure, $1.1 billion for fleet maintenance, and $900 million for stations and facilities. Amtrak’s inspector general estimates the rail carrier will need as much as $1.8 billion over the next five years to stabilize the system and upgrade tracks, bridges, and tunnels in the Northeast Corridor.
“You can’t nickel-and-dime them to death,” said Representative James P. McGovern, Democrat of Worcester. “We really can’t be having this fight every single year.”