In an article for today’s Boston Globe, Derrick Jackson writes that “train travel is finally becoming a third rail of politics,” and “the first one to fry over it might be John McCain.”

For years, McCain, in the comfort of cheap gasoline for autos and airplanes, made Amtrak a personal whipping boy. Despite the fact that governments in Western Europe and Asia zoomed far ahead of the United States by supporting high-speed trains to relieve congestion, promote tourism and now as we are coming to know, save the planet, McCain has spent considerable capital in denying the passenger rail system the capital to modernize.

At this point, the current Amtrak passenger boom and capacity crunch has been well documented by the national media. Obama is a supporter of high-speed rail, which would include the proposed DC/NY system and, possibly, a funding boost for Moynihan Station.

The House and Senate have passed bills calling for new investments in passenger rail, creating the same federal incentives for states to invest in rail service, offering 80 cents for every 20 cents spent by the states. Barack Obama is a cosponsor of the Senate bill. Noting on his website that he is committed to the development of high speed rail, Obama said, "In many parts of the country, Amtrak is the only form of reliable transportation."

In the section of McCain's website called "reforming our transportation sector," there is no mention of rail. There is only his clean-car challenge to automakers, his $300 million prize to design battery cars, and enforcing only existing gas mileage standards. When The Washington Post reported on how President Bush's fiscal 2006 budget did not include a subsidy for Amtrak, would kill both $20 million for the next generation of high-speed rail, and $250 million for railroad rehabilitation, it quoted McCain as saying on television, "I'm glad the president is coming over with a very austere budget."

The luster of austerity is gone. Public transportation is becoming a real issue for the campaign trail. If so, McCain has all but handed Obama a golden spike to beat him over the head with.

Also, New York City Council Member Daniel Garodnick penned an editorial for today’s New York Sun calling for more federal support for the repair and expansion of the infrastructure system.

It is safe to say that the federal government has an interest in New York City remaining a global center of commerce, one with a mass transit system that can support a growing population, and a healthy infrastructure that does not endanger residents or discourage business, unlike the case of last summer's eruption of an 84-year-old steam pipe in Midtown Manhattan.

The extension of the no. 7 subway line to the Hudson Yards area is underway and when it's complete, its $2 billion price tag will have been paid entirely by the city of New York. Same goes for the $6 billion cost of building a third water tunnel that will serve New York City. Indeed, state and local governments foot most of the bill when it comes to infrastructure investment.

Add Moynihan Station to the list!

Read “McCain’s Agenda on Amtrak,” by Derrick Jackson for The Boston Globe

Read “Rebuilding New York,” by Daniel Garodnick for The New York Sun

Also, the National Association of Railroad Passengers has an excellent explanation of why the “mandate for profitability” is unfounded.

The Economist has an excellent article on the critical state of our nation’s infrastructure in its current issue. After describing the ills the article prescribes a cure for projects not unlike Moynihan Station:

The federal government should do what it can to ensure that these [metroregions], first of all, have the infrastructure they need to thrive.

This means, among other things, an enhanced federal role in projects that cross state borders, including not only the interstates but intermodal freight and high-speed rail. A better system for evaluating a project’s benefit—within a broader strategy for economic development, for example—would help the public get more for its money. Metros would be given more incentives to reduce congestion and sprawl.

In New York, the MAS believes a meaningful step in the right direction would be for Governor Paterson and Mayor Bloomberg, co-founder of the Building America's Future coalition, to host an infrastructure summit of all the major players to discuss the status and evaluate the public benefits of all current projects, including Moynihan Station, Hudson Yards, the 7 line extension, the 2nd Ave Subway, Lower Manhattan/JFK link, etc., in order to set some priorities for moving forward in a tough economic environment. A clearer sense of what is most important and a public display of leadership might even attract more federal support.

Read “The Economist Says it is Time to Revive our Infrastructure,” from the Economist

After a few quiet weeks in the world of Moynihan, the Farley Post Office emerged unscathed from a two-alarm fire on Tuesday night and Steve Roth, chairman of Vornado, and Steve Ross, chairman of Related – the Moynihan Venture tag team – spoke about the project at a real estate breakfast this morning in New York. The Venture's latest scheme is to get the Port Authority to buy the Garden from the Dolans and liberate the coveted air rights on the arena site. Eliot Brown of the Observer has this report:

In case there was any doubt, Steve Roth and Steve Ross really want Madison Square Garden to move.
This morning, some 13 weeks after Madison Square Garden announced it was renovating and staying in place (i.e. not moving), the developer duo professed, once again, their eagerness to see the Paterson administration pick up the ball and move forward with the large-scale Moynihan Station plan. The plan, in its most recent iteration, would involve the state using Port Authority money intended for regional transportation projects to buy the Garden and its air rights from the Dolan family—that is, if they’re willing to sell (the Dolans have expressed no interest and are moving forward with the renovation).

Mr. Ross is the chairman of the Related Companies and Mr. Roth is chairman of Vornado Realty Trust, the two designated developers in the project that would redo Pennsylvania Station.

Why not let the dream die? The air rights that would be unleashed from the Garden moving, as Mr. Roth reminded the crowd at the Portfolio real estate breakfast at the Four Seasons Pool Room, are of great value.

“Since Vornado owns all the property around it, and half the air rights above Madison Square Garden, obviously, it’s ‘Come to mama,’” he said.

Some other tidbits from the breakfast:

• Mr. Roth was candid as to why he wants the Garden to move to Farley: It’s the only other place they’ll consider besides their current site, he said. “We don’t care if they move to Iowa. ... They can move as far west as they want.”

• Apparently the plan to move the Garden to the rear of the Farley building was the brainchild of Mr. Ross, at least according to Mr. Roth.

• Mr. Ross likes the Port Authority for reasons other than just its money. As he put it, “If the Port Authority does it, there isn’t any additional approvals, and you don’t have to go to the state or Shelly [Silver, the Assembly speaker] to get approvals to make it happen, so I believe that the governor will see it that way.”

• Mr. Ross and Mr. Roth seemed to differ some in how strongly they feel about pushing the larger plan. Mr. Ross said he was optimistic that the whole thing would come together, (rating its chances 8 out of 10). Mr. Roth has previously trumped a scaled-down “Plan B,” though talk of that was absent today (at the end of the discussion on Moynihan, Mr. Roth put the chances of everything coming together at 7.5 out of 10 … though he also added later that the reason the two were so optimistic was there was a tenant in the room, looking squarely at S.I. Newhouse, whose Condé Nast is on the hunt for a new office tower.

Read “For Moynihan, Two Steves Still Want MSG to ‘Come to Mama,’” by Eliot Brown for New York Observer

The steady drumbeat of news on the recent growth in passenger rail travel continued on Saturday when the New York Times reported that Amtrak is “bumping up against its own capacity constraints” as intercity trains are already sold out for some days this summer. However, “despite its popularity with passengers, the biggest determinant of the railroad’s health is still the federal government, and in Washington, views diverge sharply,” according to the article. The future of Amtrak “hinges on who wins the White House; Senator John McCain of Arizona, the presumptive Republican nominee, was a staunch opponent of subsidies to Amtrak when he was chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee. Barack Obama, the probable Democratic nominee, was a co-sponsor of the Senate version of the bill to provide an 80/20 financing match.”

Amtrak is an alternative to airlines along the Boston-New York-Washington corridor, and on some routes out of Chicago and a few in California. But most of its other routes are so slow that people take those trains because they have no alternative to reach places like Burlington, N.C., or Burlington, Iowa. Or they go for the train ride itself.

The railroad carried about 25 million passengers last year and may hit 27 million this year. (That is all intercity traffic; commuter rail, connecting suburbs and cities, is also growing, but that is not Amtrak’s market.) By contrast, the airlines carry about 680 million domestic passengers a year. If Amtrak were an airline, in terms of passenger boardings it would rank approximately eighth, behind Continental and US Airways and ahead of AirTran and JetBlue.

H. Glenn Scammel, a former head of staff of the rail subcommittee of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, said the railroad should give up on some of its cross-country trains and redeploy the equipment on relatively short intercity trips, where it could provide enough frequency to attract new business. (Providing one train a day in each direction will not draw many new business travelers.)

But the railroad’s labor contracts provide stiff penalties for dropping routes, and dropping states from its itinerary would hurt its political support, especially in the Senate, where thinly populated states are overrepresented relative to their population.

Scarcity is not all bad for the railroad, though. It has raised ticket prices, so that it recorded ticket revenues of $153.4 million in May, up 15.6 percent from $132.7 million in May 2006. That jump is higher than the ridership increase of 12.3 percent, to 2.58 million, from 2.30 million.

Read “Travelers Shift to Rail as Cost of Fuel Rises,” by Matthew Wald for The New York Times

A Taiwanese inventor has proposed a train that never stops. What about picking up and dropping off the passengers? Check out this video to see how it works:

Interesting, but we should probably focus on funding Amtrak first.

Today, the NHL “filed court papers Wednesday that included a draft letter from commissioner Gary Bettman proposing discipline against Madison Square Garden, L.P., that could lead to suspension or termination of its ownership of the Rangers,” according to the AP.

Curbed proclaimed: “This one’s for Moynihan…”

In an article posted today on GlobeSt.com, Paul Bubny assesses the state of various projects on the Far West Side of Manhattan and reports that “influential voices say the real catalyst for redeveloping the Far West Side is Moynihan Station.”

Among those voices is that of Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY), who points out that there’s six million sf of class A office space in the Penn Station area compared to 36 million sf near Grand Central Terminal, even though more than twice as many commuters use Penn Station. Last month, Schumer reiterated his call for jump-starting the Moynihan Station project and putting the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey in charge.

Kent Barwick, president of the Municipal Art Society, which advocates a redeveloped Penn Station, says he "couldn’t agree more. This is one of the most important projects for the future of this city, for a couple of reasons. One is that it’s a transportation project; it’s essential to strengthen our connections to the rest of the country. Secondly, of all the things that one might do, this is the most important in terms of creating access to the West Side. We’re aspiring to build a new city over there, one that’s roughly the size of downtown Seattle. It’s just not going to happen unless it’s convenient and easy to get to."

As a gateway not only to the Far West Side but also to the city itself, a redeveloped Penn Station could energize the commercial office market the way Grand Central did for its own district. "The site almost demands that the public sector give it the highest priority going forward," says Richard Anderson, president of the New York Building Congress. "That’s where you should put development." He cites Penn Station’s accessibility and capacity: with 550,000 daily users, it’s the busiest transportation facility in the US.

And that daily traffic may only increase. "As the price of gas goes up and flying becomes more inconvenient because of security, we think there’s going to be more and more rail travel," says Barwick.

Advocacy groups such as RPA and MAS argue that the station’s levels of convenience and aesthetic appeal need to be elevated along with its capacity, especially if it’s going to serve as the centerpiece of a mixed-use project that could include as much as one million sf of retail space. The original Pennsylvania Station, built in 1910 and demolished half a century later, was conceived as just such a centerpiece for large-scale development that never took place.

"We would love to see the broader concept—the one that involves moving the Garden—fall into place, but we’re enthusiastic about doing the Farley building whether that happens or not," says Barwick. "We think the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan had a great idea to create this additional capacity and in the bargain a grand space like Grand Central. If we can get the broader idea back together, terrific—provided it’s on reasonable terms. We don’t want to spend all this money to preserve and restore the building and then see it trashed by poorly thought-out commercial decisions. We’re optimistic that New York will not miss this chance."

Read “NYC’s Real West Side Story,” by Paul Bubny for GlobeSt.com

Last Thursday, Mayor Bloomberg testified before the Senate Banking Committee about the state of the nation’s infrastructure. “We are facing an infrastructure crisis in this country that threatens our status as an economic superpower - and threatens the health and safety of the people we serve,” he said. Bloomberg testified in favor of the creation of a National Infrastructure Bank that would issue up to $60 billion in tax credit bonds for infrastructure projects throughout the country. Earlier this year Bloomberg founded the Building America’s Future coalition with Governor Schwarzenegger of California and Governor Rendell of Pennsylvania.

Last week’s passage of the Amtrak reauthorization bill holds some promise for more federal funding for Moynihan Station, but the fact remains that state and local governments are responsible for three out of every four dollars spent on public infrastructure. New York City alone “needs $29.5 billion just in the next five years to continue to bring our mass transit system up to a state of good repair and to expand capacity to meet expected demand,” according to Bloomberg.

Here are some excerpts from his testimony:

To remain the world's economic superpower, we must build the infrastructure to support strong and sustained growth. And that means, very simply, things have got to start changing in Washington.

I hope 2009 will be a watershed year. The expiration of the current transportation bill will allow for a new debate on our infrastructure needs. I would hope and expect that it will focus on two issues: first, what should be the role of the federal government in our transportation system; and second, how we are going to pay for everything we know we need. And there are a few principles that I believe should guide the discussion:

First, we need to set clear goals - both for the short-term and long-term - and clear metrics for measuring success. Right now, we have no coherent national transportation policy. It's just a grab bag of programs with no goals that correspond to national priorities, such as reducing our dependence on oil and cutting our greenhouse gas emissions. We also lack performance standards to ensure we can meet our goals, which is just basic accountability. And we lack incentives that encourage cities and states to be more efficient, which is a basic idea of market economics. These practices are straight from Management 101, and we need to put them to work when it comes to transportation.

Second, we need to dramatically increase funding to help achieve our goals. Infrastructure costs money. But polls show that people are willing to pay for it - if they know they will benefit from it. Voters are smarter than politicians give them credit for being. They know there's no free lunch. But if they're paying for sirloin, they don't want to get served a bunch of baloney. To create the new funding we need, all options should be on the table, including general revenue, user fees, gas taxes, and public-private partnerships.

Third, we need to fund projects based on merit, not politics. One of the most promising concepts is the one introduced by Senators Dodd and Hagel: a national infrastructure bank. The bank would create an independent and nonpartisan entity that would fund the most vital needs - not the most parochial pork-barrel projects.

The bank's nonpartisan structure would also help us achieve the first principle I mentioned: instilling clear performance standards and accountability measures into projects.

These three principles are not Democratic or Republican. They are simply basic ideas that anyone serious about addressing our national infrastructure crisis should be able to support.

Today at a Crain’s breakfast, Deputy Mayor Robert Lieber expressed interest in the Port Authority taking over Moynihan – “they have money,” he said. This comes one month after Mayor Bloomberg deemed it a “horrible idea.” Crain’s has a recap and video.