It Really IS Infrastructure Week!

By Jim Mathews / President & CEO

“It’s ‘Infrastructure Week!’” is no longer a sarcastic punch line, thanks to the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. At least in the world of passenger rail, this week really HAS felt like “Infrastructure Week,” with important Amtrak maintenance shop projects kicking off in Seattle and Philadelphia Wednesday and today.

Why should passengers care about maintenance shops?

Well, a lot of things we all complain about start in the world of maintenance. From drippy railcar interiors to sluggish toilets to lots of badly needed cars laid up in a maintenance backlog instead of out on the road serving passengers, maintenance drives a lot of what we care about when we ride our trains…and a lot of what we notice when maintenance chores fall behind.

Amtrak tells me they’re working hard on, for example, getting wash racks up and running this month and during the next few weeks across the system so we can finally see out the windows again without bringing our own squeegees. But this post is not about that situation. This is about a bit further over the horizon…about two years, to be exact.

That’s when Amtrak’s first new Airo trainsets will start to enter service, on the Cascades route, in 2026. And because the Airo trainsets are a different technology from the older cars they’re replacing, we need a network of new, modern, high-capacity heavy maintenance facilities throughout the Amtrak system to make sure that once those new trains start carrying fare-paying passengers they can be kept up to snuff.

Buying new trains is about a lot more than just the cars or locomotives. You need to make the right kinds of investments up front to manage and maintain your new fleet. Amtrak this week announced the beginning of an extensive modernization of its King Street Coach Yard, about a mile south of King Street Station, which handles some 200 train movements every day. And today I took part in a groundbreaking ceremony at Amtrak’s Penn Coach Yard facility in Philadelphia, where Amtrak is kicking off construction of another heavy maintenance facility.

In fact, these two facilities are part of a larger effort – all paid for by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, also known as the Infrastructure Investment in Jobs Act – that will encompass six heavy shops in all, with contracts soon to be awarded in Boston, New York, and DC. The expectation is for the King Street and Penn shops to be open for business in 2027, in time to support the new Airo trainsets after they've entered service. King Street will also handle the larger long-distance equipment that originates and departs from Seattle as it does today.

Apart from new coaches, diners, cafes, and sleepers, the entire rail ecosystem has to change to make sure these investments work for decades to come. What’s coming together in Seattle and Philadelphia is truly state-of-the-art and beyond, and is the kind of long-term capital investment our country has neglected since the 1970s. We’re excited to see it all finally happening!