WHERE ARE YOU, BENITO,NOW THAT WE NEED YOU?
Beene, Graham
WHERE ARE YOU,BENITO, NOW THAT WE NEEDYOU? by Graham Beene It was sunny as my train left Washington’s Union Station last September. I was traveling to Boston to visit some old college friends,...
...My seat was comfortable, the interior of the car was modern, the woman sitting next to me was minding her own business...
...All that had stopped was my train...
...In 1978 progress improved somewhat-to 57 percent completed at 83 percent of budget...
...If they don’t, and we don’t fix these bridges up under the improvement program, we are going to have troubles...
...we regret any inconvenience...
...Guess what is not being built...
...It seems that after the 4R Act was passed, FRA had $1.75 billion and five years to spend it, but no plan for how to turn that money and time into a better rail system...
...For after a decade of trundling over a decaying roadbed at sub-automotive speeds, trying to meet fairy-tale timetables, Amtrak was finally bringing its trains into the Twentieth Century...
...This was the third element of the “project redirection,” the quiet lowering of expectations...
...Only a small fraction of the proposed work has actually been completed...
...Running the project would have been difficult enough even if each organization had a history of close cooperation with the others...
...The plans to actually short-cut severe bends were scotched because they would have required the track to leave Amtrak’s right-of-way, necessitating expensive purchases of land...
...A call to the FBI field office in Philadelphia will find the Bureau still untangling...
...During the 1978 work season approximately 1,700 people were managing the project (800 in DCP alone) while only about 1,300 people were out on the tracks doing construction work...
...And, in fairness to the guilty, the 4R Act’s original budget figure of $1.75 billion was probably selected more because it was agreeable to both Congress and the Ford administration than because it bore a relationship to any specific package of improvements to be carried out on the Corridor...
...That’s what they repeated, on the scripted announcements over the train loudspeaker, and that’s what you heard when you dialed the handy phone number printed on the timetable to hear an apologetic recorded voice estimate the various delays along the route and thank you for your patience...
...The lawmakers may have been thinking of Japan’s national railroad, which has been running trains at over 135 m.p.h...
...But what about the commuter’s bottom line, namely how long it will take to get there...
...When first planned in 1977, the project was to replace or rehabilitate over 400 bridges along the corridor...
...And, although the DCP-FRA contract gave DCP “responsibility” for NECIP “implementation,” even if the contractors saw Amtrak workers installing the ties upside down they could not direct them to do the job right...
...Amtrak was to be the FRA’s chief contractor, with responsibility for performing the vital track work...
...Forget it...
...by Graham Beene It was sunny as my train left Washington’s Union Station last September...
...The price was too high...
...Since the trains regularly were taking four and five hours, respectively, to cover those same distances, it would be a pretty dramatic improvement- enough, the lawmakers anticipated, to attract 26.4 million energy-saving passengers a year instead of the 9.7 million riding in 1976...
...At hearings before the House Government Activities and Transportation subcommittee, James A. Caywood, DCP‘s Northeast Corridor Project director, put the bridge problem in more abstract, but barely reassuring, terms: “We have it down to a pretty low level...
...however, no illusion of precision should be inferred...
...That’s one big reason why Amtrak‘s Metroliners, which have a top speed capability of around 115 m.p.h...
...The problem, NECIP officials would later testify, was “unclear lines of authority,” “a cross-confusion over roles and responsibilities...
...it will be all right, it will be safe, as long as Amtrak has the money to maintain their property...
...Except for one place: the Northeast Corridor...
...Of course, all the future maintenance that will be needed to patch up the bridges that aren’t being replaced, and the curves that must bear higher loads, means that even the economy of the project’s truncation may be questioned-to say nothing of the future passengers who will sit in idle trains while Amtrak crews do repair work...
...A Strange Electricity But if the system can’t expand its capacity for speed, surely it will expand its capacity for people...
...It uses electricity of a peculiar voltage that is produced by the railroad’s own power plants...
...Once the curves were straightened and the roadbed improved, trains would be capable of reaching speeds of 120 miles per hourfast enough!-and the trip times would be lowered to a reliable two hours and 40 minutes from Washington to New York, three hours and 40 minutes between New York and Boston...
...Modern trains would pick up passengers at newly remodeled stations, whisking them to their destinations at speeds of 150 miles per hour...
...Well, forget it...
...All Aboard...
...It summoned both DCP and Amtrak to the negotiating table to hammer out a “Memorandum of Understanding,” allocating once and for all responsibility for the Northeast Corridor...
...Projects of this size always have surprises, usually unpleasant...
...No major expansion of system capacity is planned at any point on the Corridor...
...The legislation provided for an entirely new transportation system...
...Rather than delay construction, Amtrak continued to accept and install the ties...
...The original budget has been frittered away, and Congress isn’t about to authorize any more than it can get away with...
...To cure this defect, the FRA had planned a new electrification system that could handle more power, higher speeds, and would be more reliable because it would draw current from nearby commercial grids...
...But mainly it means that we should forget the vision of dramatically improved, high-speed rail service along the Northeast Corridor...
...that we should have at least a minimum number of schedules in the timetable, particularly in the -business hours, let’s say morning, noon, and evening, that would meet the 2 hour and 40 minute, 3 hour and 40 minute goals...
...There is no such thing as job continuity on the Northeast Corridor,” one Amtrak official stated...
...Under NECIP, its drainage and lighting will be improved...
...Still, it wasn’t until August of that year that FRA produced the first listing of the specific bridges, curves, and sections of track that were to be improved...
...As long as the damn thing gets built, and I can get to New York in less than three hours, what’s a little overrun...
...I don’t mean paring down from the $3.6-billion “luxury” budget killed by the Ford administration, but from the $1.75-billion project finally authorized...
...they will only smooth out some of the curves with high stomach-turning potential (high “jerk rates...
...To him, that summed up the plight of the whole area...
...For its part, FRA took the next logical step: it hired three contractors to oversee the work of the first contractor, DCP (whose job it was, remember, to oversee Amtrak...
...State officials along the corridor had other reasons for endorsing the wonderful vision of the 4R Act...
...Planning” is one of those words that managerial types use so often that the rest of us begin to think it is meaningless-but in this case it isn’t...
...As these annoying little tales began to spread, the three principal actors began to snipe at each other...
...The cost of performing the deferred maintenance alone has probably exceeded a billion dollars...
...Modern railroads are different, and between the DCP officials who negotiated with the FRA officials, who in turn directed the Amtrak officials, NECIP had established a new labor/ management ratio...
...As Reistrup testified: “I would hope, personally...
...Or, as a DCP engineer told me, “$750 million isjust not going to be enough...
...But Amtrak’s responsibility couldn’t be nailed down so simply...
...When NECIP was signed into being by Gerald Ford in 1976, overall responsibility for the project was given to the Federal Railroad Administration, a branch of the Department of Transportation created in 1968 to develop a national policy on rail transportation...
...An “amended MOU” is on the way...
...The consulting firm of Arthur Andersen, for example, was retained to develop “management systems” for NECIP...
...Of course, cost overruns-particularly with inflation climbing through the teens-are about as surprising these days as a courtroom confession in the closing minutes of Perry Mason...
...But when its money began to disappear, FRA axed $188 million from the budgetand 151 bridges in need of repairs were allowed to stay the way they were...
...Curves are a big reason why Amtrak‘s trains, which can do 115 m.p.h., average less than half‘ that...
...trains...
...improvements in a manner compatible with accomplishments in the future of additional service levels...
...Pieces of its superstructure are missing, and what remains is seriously rusted...
...A DCP engineer with whom I spoke apologized for not being able to provide more details, but his own visit to the bridge had been cut short when a rotted tie almost dropped him into the river...
...But the truth is more subtle...
...With trip times slashed, it would be faster to ride than to fly (counting time to and from the terminals), relieving saturated airports and making them safer and more efficient...
...Amtrak had experience with railroads, all right-and those experiences were one of the reasons the FRA wanted to keep tight control over NECIP...
...As the FRA cheerfully explained: “The estimates generated under the redirection effort reflect the best and most accurate now available...
...There, even the critics agreed, the trains made sense...
...On the Northeast Corridor, this sort of scheduling can cut an hour from a Washington-N.Y...
...NECIP was going to relieve the sadness...
...That’s why the heart of the NECIP fiasco is not just how much money it’s costing, but what we’re getting for our money-which, in short, is nothing like what we were told we were getting...
...That, after all, is the point of the whole exercise: attracting an expected 26.4 million riders by 1990...
...The speed limit in the tunnel was recently lowered to 10 m.p.h...
...In 1978, a congressional committee asked DCP’s Caywood about this statutory goal of future improvements...
...In March 1977 the new Transportation secretary, Brock Adams, publicly expressed displeasure with FRA’s progress and pledged to get the project underway if he had to do “pick and shovel work” on it himself...
...The congressional dreams of a fuel-efficient, modern rail system-the same dreams that console the Amtrak passengers listening to explanations of the latest delay-will remain just that...
...Electricity of this type isn’t generated commercially anywhere else on earth...
...Before you build a railroad, it helps to know how you are going to do it...
...And you had a population that was used to riding trains-had ridden trains, in fact, for decades, even in the face of declining service...
...including stops...
...FRA and Amtrak were unable to agree on the value of Andersen’s advice, however, and it was ignored-after $3 million had been spent...
...The project was to be completed quickly, by 1981...
...So FRA looked at Amtrak, and Amtrak looked at FRAwarily, at arm’s length-and they both came to the conclusion that neither knew how to repair the Northeast Corridor...
...In fact, they probably won’t be, at least not on any steady basis...
...A GAO report, issued in early 1979, concluded tersely that “the contractorsexcept DCP-hired to provide technical expertise for FRA should be terminated...
...in a straight line, average only around 64 m.p.h...
...Then there are those curves that were supposed to be straightened...
...The “realignments” that are left will not save time...
...But the speed and the service this money would buy still sounded pretty mouthwatering to the average Amtrak passenger...
...Even though the Northeast Corridor had been the object of sporadic study for 15 years and intense study for two, these questions struck FRA like Socratic revelations, and a full work season was consumed amassing designs, materials, and staff...
...Finally, the higher the speed and the sharper the curve, the greater the forces applied to the track and the more maintenance it needs...
...But by now a promise from the Iranian government to finish the job would have as much credibility on Capitol Hill...
...So you should know that the reliability standards for the improved Northeast Corridor service have been steadily reduced, from “95-percent-withinfive- minutes” when NECIP started, to the current hope that 85 percent of the trains will be no more than ten minutes late...
...As the FRA cheerfully explained: "Projects of this size always have surprises...
...I was going to be late, but that came as no surprise...
...For FRA’s part, it saw Amtrak as unaccountable, independent of federal control except when it was asking for public money to cover its soaring deficit...
...One New Jersey transportation official likes to recall the wreathed funeral train of Robert Kennedy moving slowly down the corridor, past the crumbling, dilapidated stations of Trenton, Wilmington, and Baltimore...
...In fact, over the years they had come to regard each other with a measure of suspicion, if not outright distrust...
...What about Amtrak, the National Railroad Passenger Corporation that actually operates trains on the corridor...
...Finally, Congress wasn’t about to give up on its 150-m.p.h...
...But the truth was exactly the opposite, and the arrangement came to be known as the “three-headed monster...
...Most of all, that’s what they had said back in 1976 when Congress passed the Railroad Revitalization and Regulatory Reform Act-commonly called the “4R Act...
...DCP would provide the project’s overall design, as well as inspect Amtrak’s construction work to make sure it was done right...
...Amtrak’s own internal audit turned up inaccurate payroll records and erroneous production reports, including a $16-million discrepancy between the equipment and spare parts shown on the books and what was in the warehouses...
...But this wasn’t like the old days, when all it seemed to take to build a railroad was several hundred indigent laborers, an engineer, and a foreman with a shotgun...
...I was traveling to Boston to visit some old college friends, and I was in a good mood...
...Redirect Your Expectations Such efforts came too late, however...
...Moreover, whatever experience Amtrak had running railroads, it had little experience in building them, particularly not in a project of NECIP‘s magnitude, undertaken on a “live” track used by both freight and passenger trains...
...What kind of experience do the rest of the FRA officials have...
...Finally, there is what happens beyond 1985...
...The arrangement did not get off to a propitious start...
...Unfortunately, a budget-conscious administration was not as smitten with this vision as Congress was, and President Ford openly stated he would veto the 4R Act if it ever reached his desk...
...The process in itself has meant wasted money, since FRA has eliminated proposed improvements that it had already paid DCP to design (a GAO sampling found that 40 percent of NECIP‘s design dollars went for projects that will not be completed...
...A glance at my watch confirmed my suspicions...
...trip...
...But there’s a big difference between having a few special trains meeting a tight schedule- in the process delaying all the other trains by making them step aside-and building a system where all trains can consistently meet that same timetable...
...FRA has taken this factor into account, however-and reduced the number of maintenance bases along the corridor by 60 percent, against the advice of Amtrak‘s Japanese high-speed rail experts...
...Bolts are loose or gone entirely, and the main pier is severely damaged, having been rammed by an occasional barge...
...The trains would be quiet, smooth and reliable, and an entirely new track structure, with softened curves and a new electrification grid, would eliminate the maintenance headaches that have plagued Amtrak since its inception...
...Of the bridges that will still get NECIP‘s attention, half of the ones that were to be replaced are only going to be repaired...
...The problem was finally resolved-by lowering the specifications...
...Of course the critics charged that people wouldn’t ride them, that they loved their cars, that the trains restricted their mobility...
...since the midsixties...
...Trip times,” however, are a more flexible concept than they might at first seem...
...So forget, for example, the idea of soaring new bridges that avoid the need for Amtrak’s trains to slow down as they speed to their destinations...
...They called it the most beneficial public works effort in their region...
...They are very good at building highways...
...The two agencies were not an ideal match, however...
...NECIP has the smell of a boondoggle about it, offering little assurance that money spent on the project will be translated into better rail service rather than more embarrassment...
...Amtrak tended to see FRA as a short-sighted group of budget-cutters who regarded trains as a “luxury...
...Transportation Secretary William Coleman called the proposed system a “luxury” the nation couldn’t afford...
...Remember the vision of soaring bridges, straightened curves, and 150 m.p.h...
...What FRA planned turned out to be different from what DCP designed, which in turn bore little resemblance to what Amtrak actually built...
...It’s a difference Amtrak is counting on...
...trains and the provisions in the 4R Act calling for “the accomplishment of...
...If there is a curve you have to decide whether or not to straighten it...
...It had been close to an hour, I discovered, since my train-“The Minuteman”- had wrenched, jostled, lurched and swayed to a halt just south of Wilmington, Delaware...
...Or the French-when their new Paris-Lyons line goes into service next year it will operate at speeds of 160 m.p.h...
...Even so, they’re not signing anything in blood...
...Congress was concerned about that future-remember those visions of 150- m.p.h...
...Someone has to decide where the track is going to go...
...That, at any rate, was what they told us on the cover of our schedules, which carried the prominent warning “Amtrak is undertaking major track rehabilitation on the Northeast Corridor...
...Ask any rider what great service that is...
...The route was originally constructed in the nineteenth century, and has been neglected for decades by the failing railroads that operated along the corridor before the federal government stepped in in the early ’70s...
...As a result, at any given moment a large percentage of NECIP employees are either new, inexperienced, or making arrangements to leave...
...In fact, in order to make sure the compromise 4R Act accomplished its purpose, Congress outlined in the statute itself what it had in mind...
...You must design the bridges and curves, and arrange for the right materials to be in the right place at the right time...
...A DCP review of Amtrak’s purchases found almost $3 million in ties, rails, and other materials in excess of project requirements...
...At that rate, the Union Pacific would have nailed the Golden Spike about the same day Greyhound opened its San Francisco bus terminal...
...In this case the contractor was DeLeuw, Cather, Parsons Associates (DCP), a large architectural/ engineering consortium...
...An agreement between the Federal Highway Administration and the FRA allows the two agencies to borrow staff from each other should one be caught shorthanded, as FRA was when the Northeast Corridor Project started...
...The agency has only eight people within its staff of 75 who have any railroad background, and only four of those are in the 40-person NECIP project office...
...The confusion was probably only the result of shoddy bookkeeping, but Amtrak, unable to untangle its own records, called in the FBI...
...Other curves will allow trains to run at high rates of speed, but only by taking a high toll on the passengers’ insides...
...Of the bridges cut from the project, some desperately need fixing...
...SO although this arrangement currently means that our railroads are being built by highway experts, it theoretically would allow us, at some point in the future, to enjoy highways planned by railroad experts...
...For one thing, they reorganized...
...Caywood would say, having troubles...
...Now it is tempting to assume that an agency named the Federal Railroad Administration will have a lot of people on its staff who know about railroads...
...But none of the curves scheduled to be straightened will be...
...DCP had no authority over Amtrak crews...
...This isn’t what lawyers would call an ironclad guarantee...
...wait a minute...
...We regret any delays which may occur while this work progresses...
...And some major Amtrak bottleneckslike the bend on the approach to the Bay View Bridge near Baltimore, where trains must slow to 30 miles per hour-will hardly be touched at all...
...The Japanese, after all, are spending as much for a single tunnel in their high-speed systeni as we’re spending on the entire Northeast Corridor...
...And it was only when track work finally got started, in 1977, that everyone involved with the project began to realize it was in trouble...
...More important, it is becoming increasingly clear that many of the improvements envisioned by Congress will never be completed...
...There was none of the wrenching and jostling, lurching and swaying I had grown accustomed to during my past few years as an Amtrak patron, and as reverie stole up on me the memories became more vivid...
...A line from the “MOU,” as it is called, captures its flavor: “As contractor to FRA, DCP acts as an extension of FRA, but has no authority to act for FRA in FRA relationships with Amtrak except through specific delegations of authority made by FRA to DCP with the consent of Amtrak...
...But those are abstract statistics...
...Instead of preventing deficient work, DCP could only report it to FRA, which could then direct Amtrak to correct any construction inadequacies...
...So in 1979, the Department of Transportation completed a “Project Redirection Study” that confronted this reality, and the FRA translated the most important parts of the study into legislation now before Congress...
...The biggest bottleneck on the whole corridor, the Baltimore Tunnel-built in 1873 and too narrow to handle a freight and a passenger train at the same time-was never even scheduled by FRA for replacement...
...The goals they came up with weren’t all that tough-2 hours and 40 minutes from Washington to New York averages out to around 85 m.p.h...
...Given the fudge factor built into “trip times,” the best gauge of how fast Amtrak’s service will be is probably its “reliability standards,” the measure of how many trains will actually meet the advertised schedules...
...His response: “My interpretation of that is that there was an initial objective of hoping that we could design toward 150-miles-an-hour speed...
...In 1977, the first year of actual construction, Amtrak completed only 54.5 percent of the track work planned for that year, at 130 percent of the budgeted cost...
...If a curve is too sharp, a train can’t go around it very fast without, as Mr...
...A railroad can make any given train meet a tight schedule through a number of tricks-cutting out station stops (as in 1969), shunting all the other freight and passenger traffic onto sidetracks until the priority train rolls through...
...You had a string of cities close together-Boston, New Haven, New York, Philadelphia, Wilmington, Baltimore, Washington-not much question where most of the interstate travelers in that part of the country were going...
...These things have long gone by the board...
...Then they did the only logical thing: they hired a contractor to do it for them...
...Without the new system, those 26.4 million people won’t be able to ride the trains in 1990 even if they want to...
...One of these crosses the Hackensack River in the New Jersey Meadowlands...
...As the railroads opened up the West a century ago, the corridor project would redeem the Northeast...
...In fact, during the first full year of the five-year project no construction work was completed...
...For these reasons, the August 1977 plan included 212 curves that were to be “realigned”- either straightened, allowing higher speeds, or banked to reduce the rollercoaster effect on the passengers...
...It also redirects an additional $750 million into the project, although there seems to be little pretense within the project’s management that this will see it through to completion...
...When the track comes to a river you ha<e to decide if the existing bridge will be strong enough to keep the train from falling into the river...
...But they did more than squabble-they took action...
...Among other things, the “Northeast Corridor Completion Act of 1979” redirects the completion date of the project five years into the future (although the clock doesn’t start ticking until the legislation is passed, so even if Congress acted tomorrow, NECIP wouldn’t be finished until 1985...
...For comparison, as recently as 1969 the Penn Central offered a nonstop train that beat this time by ten minutes...
...Delay has become a fact of life on the stretch of rail from Washington to Boston ever since Amtrak began the so-called Northeast Corridor Improvement Project (NECIP) four years ago...
...Revitalize the service-smooth out the roadbed and get some of those really modern high-speed trains like they have in Japan running along this corridor-and it was a mortal lock you’d lure plenty of those urban Easterners out of their cars...
...FRA has had four NECIP directors since the 4R Act was passed, and Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor division has undergone at least eight reorganizations since 1976...
...dreams: the act specified “the accomplishment of the required improvements in a manner compatible with accomplishment in the future of additional improvements in service levels...
...The system is extremely prone to failure- and it cannot handle the dramatic increase in passengers the NECIP project is designed to stimulate...
...We passengers are patient and tolerant, however, because we know the delays are all in a good cause-the best cause, you might say...
...As the work proceeded from crisis to crisis, progress-despite the full year of planning-was abysmal...
...These additional contractors have cost $14.3 million, but the value of their contribution is in dispute...
...No doubt there will be appropriate, preprinted messages handed to them as they shuffle back to their cars and drive off onto the highways, burning up their precious $8-a-gallon gasohol: “Amtrak is undertaking major track rehabilitation on the Northeast Corridor...
...A few minutes out, I slipped off into a halfsleep, filled with memories of the places and friends I was returning to see...
...Thoughts like this were bubbling in Congress’ brain when it passed, by a wide majority, a bill designating $3.6 billion for improvements along the Northeast Corridor...
...Meanwhile, other problems were croping up...
...At each stage, as the “three-headed monster” that runs NECIP consumed more time and money, the FRA reacted by paring down the “scope” of the project...
...You won’t catch the FRA admitting this-precisely because the trip times are written into law, the FRA has treated them as holy writ, even to the extent ofjustifying the project’s “redirection” on the grounds that Amtrak will still be able to meet the statutory timetable...
...I think they are up to their ears” (Amtrak president Paul Reistrup, referring to the FRA...
...To get a handle on them, it helps to know that the “85-10” reliability standard that will be used on the finished corridor is the same as the standard Amtrak uses now...
...By the time the Congress and the President struck a compromise, the cost of NECIP had been whittled down to a bargain-basement price of $1.75 billion...
...No one who worked on the project was particularly surprised, for example, when Amtrak installed 50,000 ties that failed to meet FRA specifications...
...The effect of curves on the operation of a railroad is more subtle than that of dilapidated bridges...
...The GAO report caught FRA by surprise, and the agency decided to respond firmly...
...While curves don’t have the potential for interrupting your commute with an early morning dip in the Hackensack, they do have a major impact on the speed and reliability of the system as a whole...
...The delays and waste during the first two years of the project assured that it couldn’t be completed within the time, or the budget, specified in the 4R Act...
...Less than a year away from its alleged completion date, NECIP is a shambles...
...The Northeast Corridor project was part of that bill, and at the time, there hardly seemed to be anything that more clearly needed doing...
...No use pouring money down that hole, they said...
...In fact, since the inflation that has helped drive up NECIP‘s costs is caused, in large part, by the skyrocketing price of the very oil an efficient train system would save, you could argue the system has become more necessary, even as its costs have risen...
...Trains were the most fuelefficient means of long-distance transportation around, everyone agreed...
...But with all the curves that are staying curved, and the bridges left on the drawing boards, it’s difficult to see how even these schedules will be met...
...In simpler language, none of the three agencies knew what it was supposed to be doing, a result that might have been anticipated by anyone who looked at the convoluted relationship between the FRA, Amtrak, and DCP...
...That number has now been cut to 41, all of them mere bankings...
...Radically improved passenger and freight capacity would stem the Northeast’s outflow of population and industry-the railway, NECIP proponents said, was a “spine” supporting the sagging infrastructure of the region...
...But a chain, they say, is only as strong as its weakest link-and the weak link of the Northeast Corridor, as far as peoplecarrying capacity is concerned, is the antique electrification system running along the southern leg from New York to D.C...
...Time was not standing still...
...There is, for example, the following provision: “In recognition of the uncertainties associated with work on a live railroad, Amtrak‘s obligation to perform work within schedule and budget estimates is explicitly limited to the exercise of its best efforts...
...Congress knew what would attract riders to the trains, which is why they went so far as to write the projected trip times into the 4R Act itself...
...It was as if time had slowed its pace for my benefit...
...has not demonstrated the ability to plan, supervise, and execute work with even a remote semblance of good management,” (a DCP employee referring to Amtrak...
...But the other curves, along with several that will now be banked instead of straightened, will still provide ample opportunities for nausea...
...The average Amtrak rider, twiddling his thumbs on a siding in Wilmington, and the average driver guzzling his way along the New Jersey Turnpike because he didn’t have time to wait on that siding, probably would have the same reaction to the cost overruns: Who cares...
...The nation was coming out of Energy Crisis I, shocked at its vulnerability to a cut-off of oil supplies, determined, we told ourselves, not to let it happen again...
...In a different atmosphere, the FRA might have been able to go to Congress and say, “Look, this project is more necessary than ever, and this is what we will need to finish it...
...if not, you must decide whether to build a new bridge or fix the old one...
Vol. 12 • April 1980 • No. 2
