In Wilmington, Biden announces $2.45 billion for Amtrak

• Federal officials are announcing new funding for Amtrak's passenger rail system.
• Vice President Joe Biden unveiled effort to improve infrastructure along Northeast Corridor.
• Biden was a frequent Amtrak rider during his more than 30 years in the U.S. Senate.

The Northeast Corridor’s passenger rail infrastructure – trains, stations and tracks – will be upgraded using a $2.45 billion federal loan to Amtrak, Vice President Joe Biden said Friday afternoon in Wilmington. It will be the largest single loan in U.S. Department of Transportation history.

"This is a serious, serious upgrade," Biden said. "One out of every three jobs (in the country) are here, along this corridor ... you'd need seven more lanes on I-95 to accommodate the traffic if Amtrak shut down."

Biden announced the funding – which will come from the DOT's Railroad Rehabilitation and Improvement Financing Program – during an impassioned speech in front of scores of transportation officials at the Wilmington train station, which in 2011 was named the Joseph R. Biden Jr. Railroad Station.

"If we don't plan this now, what's going to happen?" Biden said during the speech.

Under the plan, the nation's publicly-owned rail company will use $2 billion to purchase 28 trains for the Northeast Corridor’s Acela service between Boston and Washington, which will expand capacity by a projected 40 percent. Trains will be able to travel up to 186 mph when track improvements are made. The first ones are scheduled to enter service in five years.

Funds also will pay for track upgrades south of Baltimore and station upgrades in New York City, Baltimore, and Washington.

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"We're making the most significant investment in passenger rail that's ever been made in this country," said Amtrak board chairman Anthony Coscia.

Terms of the loan were not disclosed by the vice president's office. Under the RRIF program, the Federal Railroad Administration is authorized to provide direct loans and loan guarantees of up to $35 billion to help pay for rail infrastructure in the United States.

Biden, long an advocate of passenger rail service, is known for commuting aboard Amtrak trains from Wilmington to Washington, D.C., during his tenure in the U.S. Senate until 2008. He still rides the train along the route as vice president, from time to time, he said, to the annoyance of his U.S. Secret Service detail.

Wilmington Station is Amtrak's 11th busiest, as measured by the number of boardings and exits, according to the rail company.

The Northeast Corridor is the nation’s busiest and only profitable rail line.

But not everyone in Congress is such a proponent of passenger trains. Amtrak has been scorned by fiscal conservatives, who say it needs to operate more efficiently or be privatized. As a result, funding trains, tracks and stations has been a challenge at the federal level.

Amtrak also has a $7 billion backlog in maintenance needs.

Last year, federal and state agencies, including Amtrak, developed a five-year plan to spend $17.7 billion on infrastructure along the Northeast Corridor between 2016 and 2020. Forty percent of the planned projects had been funded by the end of 2015, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

On Friday, Biden raised his voice when his speech turned toward opponents of passenger rail service in the U.S. He said improvements are important to business and national security.

“Why as a country are we so boneheaded to not understand the essential value of a rail system that’s modern throughout the whole country?” said Biden, who estimated he had ridden more than 2 million miles on Amtrak.

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Amtrak also was criticized in a January report from the Government Accountability Office. The report stated it is difficult to determine how well various Amtrak lines perform financially because the agency does not keep sufficient records.

Its "inconsistent and incomplete reporting of its financial data hinders Amtrak’s ability to demonstrate the performance of its lines of business," the report said. "Congress and states lack information to inform their decisions about whether to provide additional funding to implement the (infrastructure) plans."

U.S. Sen. Chris Coons, D-Delaware, who also spoke at the event Friday, said he was not familiar with the statement from the report, but he "has not found Amtrak to be unresponsive when I have specific questions about operations, costs, facilities."

"But I'll remind you, what I'm focused on overwhelmingly are the Amtrak shops in Wilmington and Bear, and the functionality of the Northeast Corridor," Coons said.

In Delaware, a number of infrastructure projects are currently being planned or being built, including a third set of tracks south of Wilmington and a $26 million rebuilt and expanded train station in Newark, to accommodate passengers bound for the University of Delaware STAR campus.

The Federal Railroad Administration is also considering adding additional train tracks that loop around Wilmington, new stations in Newport and Edgemoor, and a possible rail spur that would extend between Marcus Hook, Pennsylvania, and the Philadelphia airport.

“We need these kinds of investments to keep this region – and our whole country – moving, and to create new jobs,” Biden said.

Contact Karl Baker at kbaker@delawareonline.com or (302) 324-2329. Follow him on Twitter @kbaker6.