(The following article by Bernard Harris was posted on the Lancaster New Era website on July 21.)
LANCASTER COUNTY, PA — David Gunn’s visit to Lancaster on Tuesday started out nice. It didn’t stay that way.Initially, Amtrak’s chief operations officer toured the city train station and heard of the $8.5 million in planned renovations. And Gunn spoke of his plans to improve the rail line and add faster trains.
But frustration with the vast national passenger rail service peaked at a later meeting with local officials.
When Elizabethtown Borough Manager Peter Whipple said Amtrak engineers had only recently begun reviewing plans for its town’s station renovation — after a year and a half delay — Gunn tried to turn it into a positive.
He said that showed Amtrak is emerging from a period of disorganization and is now moving forward.
Terry Kauffman, the former county commissioner and now Mount Joy Borough manager, complained about Amtrak’s fee to review and permit the borough to remove a crumbling bridge over the tracks. That cost now far exceeds the $90,000 demolition charge for the bridge, said Kauffman.
Then Alfred Testa Jr., aviation director of Harrisburg International Airport, complained that Amtrak has still not agreed to stop at a new train station the airport is building as part of it’s new $240 million terminal project. The terminal is expected to open next month.
“What do you want from me?” Gunn asked.
“A signature,” Testa answered.
Ronald Bailey, executive director of the Lancaster County Planning Commission, was diplomatic.
“There has been some frustration,” Bailey said of local dealings with Amtrak.
Representatives of Lancaster County government, local governments, and business organizations who met with Gunn were seeking cooperation, or at least hope of cooperation.
Bailey said he at least saw some hope.
“The good news is that he is chaning things,” he said of Gunn’s two-year tenure at Amtrak. “The winds of change have come.”
Kauffman did not agree. Asked if he took any hope from his meeting Gunn, Kauffman said “none.”
Mount Joy officials have sought for several years to remove the Jacobs Street bridge. Funding to do so is in place, but Amtrak has not set a price on its cooperation to review the removal plans and to monitor the project as it is done over its tracks. The railroad has asked for $135,000 to $140,000 to be placed into escrow to cover its costs, said Kauffman.
“The frustration for our community is just to get the target to sit still so we can hit it,” he said.
Kauffman said the bridge was a microcosm of what was happening with the airport.
Plans call for the new, climate-controlled train station at HIA to move airport passengers directly to the terminal on a motorized walkway. The station would replace the current Middletown train station. The new train station is slated to open late next year.
J. Glenn Ebersole Jr., owner of The Renaissance Group, a Lancaster-based marketing and management development firm, asked Gunn bluntly: “Who has the magic scissors to cut through some of the red tape to get to the right decision maker to make things happen?”
All the local officials made clear to Gunn that they were not asking Amtrak to commit money to any of the projects. Previously, Amtrak had backed out of funding commitments for improvements to the Elizabethtown station and the Lancaster City stations.
Gunn made it clear that Amtrak did not have the money to give. It was not that long ago that Amtrak was struggling to make payroll, he said.
“I think for a while there, we tried to be all things to all people … and we can’t. There is just no money,” he said.
Gunn placed the blame for the railroad’s situation with his predecessors.
“The lines of authority and responsibility got very muddy. You had 140 people involved in planning and everybody was talking to everybody and there was not a clear decision-making process,” said Gunn.
Now, he said, Amtrak is attempting to focus on rebuilding its own rail system after decades of neglect.
In Lancaster, he repeated an announcement made in Philadelphia earlier in the day that Amtrak and the state were splitting the cost of the $140 million refurbishment of the Keystone Corridor from Philadelphia through Harrisburg.
Those upgrades include replacing wooden rail ties with more stable concrete, welding rails to reduce clatter and replacing diesel locomotives with electric trains. Along with the elimination of at-grade rail crossings in the county, those improvements will cut 15 minutes from the time for express trains from Harrisburg to Philadelphia and increase their speed from 90 to 110 mph.
The changes should be in place in two years, Gunn said.
“It will be a good railroad — to get it back to where it was. To get it back to the future is what it is,” said Gunn on the Lancaster station platform.