See How Your Politicians Voted
Title: Amtrak Reauthorization
Vote Smart's Synopsis:
Vote to concur with House amendments and pass a bill that authorizes $16.71 billion in appropriations for Amtrak and railroad safety measures.
Highlights:
- Authorizes appropriations for Amtrak for the next five years, including $5.32 billion for capital grants, $2.95 billion for operation grants, and $1.9 billion for intercity passenger rail services (Div. B).
- Authorizes $1.5 billion over the next ten years for capital and preventive maintenance projects for the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (Div. B, Sec. 601).
- Provides $1.63 billion for rail safety programs (Div. A).
- Allocates $18 million for 2009-2013 to design, develop, and construct the Facility for Underground Rail Station and Tunnel in Colorado to test and evaluate above-ground and underground rail tunnels to prevent accidents, mitigate and remediate the consequences of any such accidents, and to provide a realistic scenario for training emergency responders (Div. A, Sec 3).
- Limits the consecutive workday of train employees to twelve hours and requires ten hours off before resuming duty (Div. A, Sec. 108).
- Requires providers of intercity commuter rail passenger transportation to develop a plan to implement a positive train control system, which is a system designed to prevent various types of train accidents, by December 31, 2015 (Div. A, Sec. 104).