If you want to submit your thoughts about Washington’s strategy to develop high-speed passenger trains, you better act fast.
That’s because the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) has decided it’s in too much of a hurry to listen to a traditional period of public comment about its National Rail Plan, a document aimed at formulating a strategy to modernize America’s rail passenger and freight service.
When the FRA completed its Preliminary National Rail Plan last October, it emphasized that involvement by the public was essential. “The FRA’s National Rail Plan will involve a vigorous outreach strategy….To ensure that we capture nationwide input, FRA will place a notice in the Federal Register for the opening of a docket for anyone who may wish to submit written input,” the report concluded.
Last week, the FRA announced in the Register a 60-day period for public comment on the rail plan. But in a curious aside, the notice stated, “For comments to be considered during the critical stages of plan development, they should be received no later than May 3, 2010” – or four weeks before the June 4 deadline.
An agency official said yesterday that the FRA had decided to place public comments on “an aggressive timeline” so that the agency could complete its rail plan by the September 15 date requested by Congress.
Not only is the effective comment period limited, but the questions for which the agency seeks public input are quite circumscribed.
For example, whether passenger rail should be built on new, dedicated lines or existing freight train corridors — a matter that has provoked much public debate — is sidestepped in the comment notice.
Instead, the notice asks the public to address how to blend passenger service into freight corridors, including how improved passenger rail can be “balanced with freight railroad service requirements to assure that freight service will not be impeded.”
The 34-page Preliminary National Rail Plan was notable for its vagueness and lack of vision, which led critic Yonah Freeman to dub it a “rail plan with virtually no planning included.”
The final plan promises to be lengthier but no more specific in terms of proposing which high-speed corridors should be prioritized, what baseline train speeds should be placed into practice and what design criteria should be established for state plans.
According to FRA’s comment notice, the plan will consist of three main components:
In contrast to overseas competitors such as China, Washington’s rail planners appear determined to peddle platitudes and process, while avoiding concrete goals and specific timetables to establish a world-class rail program.
Photo credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/thomas-merton/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
