Word: conrail
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Reviving Railroads. On land, Adams' positions and records are even firmer. It was he who in 1970 did most to push through the legislation creating Amtrak as a first step in reviving the nation's dying railroads. In 1973 he was the primary author of the Conrail plan, merging the bankrupt Penn Central and other roads into a Northeastern network. He favors continued regulation of the trucking industry and−most important to big-city dwellers−he believes in improvements in mass transit...
Witty, extremely popular with his fellow Congressmen, Adams is the House's foremost expert on transportation . . . Drafted and pushed through a plan for the Conrail system that subsidizes formerly unprofitable Northeastern railroads . . . Urges thorough congressional reform of airline regulation; wants carriers to be freer in setting fares . . . As Chairman of the House Budget Committee, has deftly negotiated precarious compromises between big spenders and conservatives . . . Episcopalian . . . Married, four children . . . Superb tennis player...
...company also inherits the nation's largest railroading headache. By far its biggest component is the bankrupt Penn Central line, which six years of effort and about $800 million in federal grants and unrepaid loans have not restored to health. ConRail also now owns the Reading, Erie Lackawanna, Central of New Jersey, Lehigh Valley and Lehigh & Hudson River lines. Altogether, the six lines lost almost $2 million a day last year. But they carried too much freight (20% of the nation's rail total) and too many passengers (428,000 a day) to be allowed...
Unscrambled Routes. A new federal agency, the U.S. Railway Association, has tailored ConRail to make the best of this difficult situation. U.S.R.A. planners first unscrambled a spaghetti-like jumble of freight routes to find the combination with the most profit potential. That meant abandoning 3,000 track miles completely and operating another 3,000 miles of lightly used track only with Government subsidies. Next the planners got Congress to approve $2.1 billion in federal loans; that money, with another $4.7 billion in expected revenues, will be used over the next decade to upgrade tracks and buy new trains. Because ConRail...
Before then, several problems threaten to derail the bold experiment. Stockholders and creditors of the six bankrupt lines have vowed to fight for higher compensation for their property, which could boost the eventual payout well above the $685 million in stock that ConRail is now offering them. Pressure from local politicians might force Con-Rail to keep unprofitable segments of line in service. Then there are labor difficulties. By refusing to give up archaic rules and procedures, railroad unions have aborted a planned $66 million sale of almost 2,700 miles of track to the profitable Southern and Chessie railway...