requested to be available also. He is managing director of procurement for Amtrak, of course, for Amtrak's part of the improvement project.

Mr. Chairman, as you have already pointed out, Alan Boyd is not with us today. He was here on Thursday, so he heard all of the presentation and questions and so forth.

Mr. BURTON. Right.

Mr. REISTRUP. We will pass along your comments and he will, of course, respond in any way you see fit.

Mr. BURTON. It may be necessary sometime shortly to have an additional hearing on this matter or be able to work something out with him, because I can understand his problem. He could be at the hearing or he could be moving back here.

Mr. REISTRUP. Yes.

Mr. BURTON. I understand.

Mr. REISTRUP. As you know, approximately 3 weeks ago I stepped down as the chief executive of the corporation and you, realizing that, did wish me to testify on the current status of the Northeast corridor improvement project from Amtrak's perspective.

I came to Amtrak in March of 1975 and served as president for 3 years and 3 months. When I came, the corridor improvement progam was under consideration by the executive branch and the Congress and the project was enacted into law in February of 1976.

The authorized scope of the program, counting State matching funds, was $1.9 billion, and a high performance standard was set, together with a short deadline by which the improved performance was to be achieved.

Whether the program today is behind schedule, and how far behind, is an arguable matter. I have said that I wish we were today quite a bit further along, and that is still my feeling.

What has happened up through yesterday, of course, is now all history. Nonetheless, it is the past that makes the situation what it is today; and the situation today all flows from the events of the first year enactment when the Department of Transportation, under a Secretary hostile to Amtrak, was fighting the congressional intent for Amtrak to become the owner and operator of the Northeast corridor.

The result was that there was no work to speak of accomplished on the corridor during 1976 and the first work season was actully lost. With the new Secretary, Brock Adams, we arbitrarily set a date at the end of March 1977-the date, specifically, was March 31-for a groundbreaking ceremony, and work finally got underway. There were quite a few jobs that could be started immediately without the need for elaborate planning. We could be farther along on this sort of basic trackwork if we had been able to start in 1976. Much of the project is of such scope and complexity that considerable preparatory work really is needed, and experience with similarly sized projects around the world shows that a 2-year leadtime is required to get major elements in place. Here, too, we lost a year during the argument about corridor ownership and project direction.

There is leadtime involved in procurement of the basic suppliesrails, ties and so forth-and time is needed for getting the specialized equipment built and delivered. Leadtime is also needed for

developing the human resources; and, because of inflation, time lost means money lost. The corridor project is not as big today as it was a year ago. Elements originally included have had to be eliminated.

One of the latest casualties is the program to scrape and repaint all the poles for the electrification system. This sort of deferral will cost us more later. Paint is cheaper than new poles and getting them painted now would be cheaper than getting them painted later. I think we all have to keep in mind that the work that doesn't get done under the improvement program cannot just be forgotten.

We identified the kinds of work that could be done right away, as opposed to the project elements that needed more detailed, special engineering or the fabrication of special equipment like the concrete tie-laying system.

Our first real work session was in 1977. Despite the problems, which also included training new employees and melding them into smoothly working teams, we managed to reach about 85 percent of our target last year for new rail laid, ballast undercutting and track surfacing, new ties installed and things of that sort.

This year, as we are about 2 months into the 1978 work season, we are running about 90 percent, so we are gaining on it as the crews are becoming more proficient. What we need, of course, is 100 percent, and this is one of the things I had in mind when I wrote in the letter of February 6, accompanying Amtrak's second annual report on the project, that "progress has not been what we had hoped."

The other concern I have is the tendency we have already seen for major program elements to be pushed back toward the final years of the project.

Even if we get the progress rate up to 100 percent-and we will-we are still at this stage only doing those things we can do, and we have yet to begin work on some of the most important elements; and here I am still talking about just the track work. The interlocking plants are a case in point and a serious problem. These are the sections of track where the switches are clustered, where trains can change from one track to another or branch off onto different routes. There are 60 of these between Washington and Penn Station in New York and 38 between New York and Boston, excluding those between New Rochelle and New Haven, which is within the territory of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and the Connecticut Transportation Authority. These interlocking plants have always been hard to maintain, requiring a great deal of skilled hand labor and expensive to maintain because of the complexity of the components; consequently, through the years-and this includes the era when the Metroliners came in; they were sort of skipped when the Pennsylvania Railroad was upgrading the corridor and for that reason they are in very bad shape today.

We have yet to complete work on the first plant. Much of the trouble is institutional. What we have organizationally now-and this, too, stems from that first year of acrimony under the past administration-is a three-headed monster. Despite the good inten

tions of all involved-and we do have that now-there is still too much cross-confusion over roles and responsibilities.

The Federal Railroad Administration is supposed to be the architect doing the conceptualization and relating each element to the whole so that the project works as was intended. Amtrak, as the owner-operator of the corridor, has the actual responsibility for the hand-on work on the live railroad. The Department of Transportation is to administer the program and provide the funding, not drive the spikes.

One major problem is that the prime engineering and design consultant, De Leuw, Cather/Parsons & Associates, works under contract directly for FRA. Amtrak has never been privy to this contractual arrangement and we cannot therefore direct De Leuw, Cather/Parsons to work on the priority projects first.

As I mentioned, we haven't yet fixed one interlocking plant the way it should be fixed. As of today, there are no completed plans for any of the rebuilt interlockings and we won't even get one until next year.

In round numbers, De Leuw, Cather/Parsons began doing designing for a $4 billion project; but the funding was for work in the $2 billion range. Furthermore, the slow flow of funds during the early years is going to create some major problems in the outyears. With the big jobs shoved to the end, where they will either cost more or have to be scaled back to fit the funding, I can see a corridor project in 1981 with only the building trades at work, while Amtrak has run out of things we can do with our own labor, which was hired and trained for a long-term, continuous project.

Our people will have to be furloughed waiting for completion of the postponed, heavy construction, which will involve a violation of our labor agreements.

Meanwhile, we have to hold the railroad together-and it was in very bad shape when we got it—and we have to keep it safe and run it as fast as possible. Now, we will have to keep holding it together about 2 years longer. This means we have to keep patching, not renewing as we would if we were on schedule; and on some stretches, such as where the concrete ties are going to go, it is not economical even to patch.

It is difficult to project what the loss of that first year will cost. The main effect will be the reduced scale of the completed project. We have every hope and intention to be running trains in 1981 according to the mandated trip-times in the legislation, but we will not be able to run as many of those as we had hoped. It will be touch and go in meeting the speeds because of project elements in the original plan that have fallen by the wayside. Cutting back the project to fit the funding will also give us a corridor that will be more expensive to operate and maintain than it would be if all the improvements were in place. The electric catenary poles will still have to be painted, or, if we let them go too much longer, replaced. This is an example.

I believe I should also mention three other problems that have yet to be resolved and which will require congressional action. The first and, I think, very, very important, is the need for new, high-speed equipment to operate over the improved corridor. We will have the tracks but we will still need the trains. New high

speed equipment was not authorized as part of the upgrading program. Amtrak has requested capital funding for new cars and locomotives for rebuilding and upgrading the present Metroliner fleet and, eventually, for a second generation of Metroliners.

The second and, again, a very important item is the need for completely new tunnels through Baltimore. The fate of the present tunnels is still undetermined but, in my view, there is no way to fix them; more money would be wasted. New tunnels are needed and there is no need for another study; it should just be done, and done promptly.

The third is to fix the mess at Washington's Union Station. We are going to have a new railroad and a completely inadequate station at the important southern terminus of the whole project. It is also the gateway to the Nation's Capital and it belongs to all the people. The current unfinished status of the station is a national disgrace.

I would not want to leave this committee with all the stress on the negatives. Our working relationships with the Department and with FRA within the Department have been greatly improved under the leadership of Secretary Adams. Much still can be done, especially in the area of establishing more direct communications between Amtrak and the design and engineering firm of De Leuw, Cather/Parsons, and I believe we will see continued progress in this regard.

Even though we will not be getting all that was envisioned by way of physical improvements when the project was enacted, we will have a greatly improved railroad capable of providing a higher level of service than was ever before offered. It will be no small achievement; it will still be the most concentrated track and facility upgrading program in American railroading history.

It appears that as we enter the post-1981 period we should have some very good plans and blueprints in hand for the remainder of those parts of the project that could not be undertaken because of time or funding constraints. By then we should also be able to see some of the resulting benefits in terms of ridership and revenue growth that should help justify the further investment should the economy and the budgetary situation permit.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We all three are available for all of your questions.

Mr. BURTON. Who made the decision to reduce the scope of the project?

Mr. REISTRUP. The ultimate responsibility rests with the Department, the Secretary, and the Federal Railroad Administration, so that the decision, as I understand it, rested with the Project Director, who first was General Sawyer, and the next was Dave Gedney, as Acting Director, and now is Lou Thompson.

Mr. BURTON. In other words, they just looked at the situation and said that, "We can't do it" and started cutting out things to see if it would help them meet the deadlines and the fiscal restraints? Mr. REISTRUP. Yes. I was somewhat involved in this process. There was, of course, an attempt to keep the priority items in and let some of the things that were, let's say, nice to have, fall out. Mr. BURTON. Involved in this are Amtrak, the FRA and DCP. There is not a lot of communication between the three of them?

You aren't privy to whatever DCP and FRA have worked out as far as some of these cuts? DCP is not privy to some study that either you or FRA is doing as a potential reevaluation?

Mr. REISTRUP. Mr. Chairman, it is a rather strange organizational setup for a project of this sort.

Mr. BURTON. It seems a heck of a way to run a railroad?

Mr. REISTRUP. There is a problem with communications. We have tried to do the best we could, and I would say that we have done as well as we have due to the good intentions of those involved; but there is no contractual relationship at all between DCP and Amtrak and

Mr. BURTON. How about between you and FRA?

Mr. REISTRUP. There is a contractual relationship, a rather lengthy one.

Mr. BURTON. I would think that it makes commonsense for them to let you know what they are doing with DCP, wouldn't it?

Mr. REISTRUP. It would be helpful. We in the working meetingsand there are monthly reviews-and then also we have had decisional meetings involving all the parties, Amtrak, FRA, and DCP; and we have tried to surface the major decisions that need to be made on work elements, but to my knowledge we have never discussed these institutional relationships, unless you have in your meetings. Have you?

Mr. LAWSON. No, but we pretty well get together and fight out the problems.

Mr. REISTRUP. These would be the engineering problems, construction problems.

Mr. BURTON. Which just seems stupid-that three elements aren't working in concert as much as possible-to me.

On page 1 you state that whether the program is behind schedule and how much it may be behind is an arguable matter. It is arguable to a degree, right?

Mr. REISTRUP. Yes; it is a complex matter to try to weigh just where the project is today because so many elements which are very, very important are doing very well, replacing crossties being an example. Other elements which aren't so vital, such as cleaning ballast on the shoulders, are not vital to the trip times, aren't doing as well, last year particularly.

I would like to word it this way: On a weighted basis-and I recall all the dialog at your hearing on Thursday-on a weighted basis, the Amtrak portion was completed at about 85 percent last work season. Now, we did have to work into the winter to reach that complex percentage.

Mr. BURTON. I don't think there is any question that the whole project as initially envisioned would be completed by the target date. That is because they are cutting stuff out. But, with the things that they have left in, it seems questionable whether that deadline would be met, anyway.

Mr. REISTRUP. I would say that the deadline, February 5, 1981, will see work still going on.

Mr. BURTON. Work going on on the things that weren't dropped out?

Mr. REISTRUP. Yes. Hopefully, all of the elements that are needed to meet the trip-time goals will be completed; Amtrak is dedicated