Amtrak to get $63 million for work in Chester

At the height of the morning rush hour, the power outage stopped 112 trains in their tracks, from Maryland to New York.

Eventually, an electrical substation in the City of Chester's west end was identified as a critical link in the chain of events on May 25, 2006, that led to the worst rush-hour jam-up in Amtrak's history.

Yesterday, Sen. Arlen Specter (R., Pa.) announced that Amtrak would be getting $63 million to build new frequency converters at the Lamokin Street station as part of the federal stimulus package.

In all, Amtrak will receive about $1.3 billion in stimulus money, including $97.5 million for work in Delaware, the Obama administration said.

The funds will result in adding or retaining 6,000 jobs, said Amtrak spokesman Clifford Black. He said a final decision on the allocations was pending.

"Clearly it's going to make a difference," said Robert Puentes, a senior fellow and transportation expert at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank.

However, Puentes estimated that only about $800 million of the money would go toward actual maintenance projects, with the rest used for security measures.

"Given that Amtrak is a national system serving almost every state," he said, "suggesting $800 million is going to solve all Amtrak's problems is just not going to get us there."

While Amtrak has long struggled financially, its on-time performance has improved. For fiscal 2008, it reported a record 28.7 million riders, fueled in part by rising gas prices. Of those, 10.9 million used Northeast Corridor service, Amtrak said.

The smooth operation of the Northeast service depends on Amtrak's network of substations. However, on the morning of May 25, 2006, machines that convert power to the type Amtrak requires failed in sequence, from New York, to Maryland, and then to the Lamokin complex, which was built in the 1930s.

Ironically, the failures were set off by a problem at the merely four-year-old Richmond substation in Northeast Philadelphia.

The failures caused a massive shutdown that for several hours stranded tens of thousands of Amtrak and local commuter-line passengers, some in a tunnel beneath the Hudson River.

At Lamokin, the stimulus money will be used to build three new rotary frequency converters, which - as the name implies - convert commercial power operating at 60 Hertz to the 25-Hertz AC current used by Amtrak.

The Delaware money will include $21 million for restoration of the the Wilmington station.

While the funds are welcome, Puentes said, the subsidized carrier continues to suffer the long-term effects of a lack of federal support.

"It's a system that folks have tried to kill," he said, "but it has survived."