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GAO-06-820R 1 (2006-07-10)

handle is hein.gao/gaocrptatqk0001 and id is 1 raw text is: S=GAO Accountability * Integrity * Reliability United States Government Accountability Office Washington, DC 20548 July 10, 2006 The Honorable Richard C. Shelby Chairman Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs United States Senate Subject: Active Commuter Rail Agency Service Contracts Dear Mr. Chairman: Commuter rail is an important part of the transportation system in many cities and regions in our country, providing more than 420 million passenger trips in 2005. Although several of the largest commuter rail agencies hire their own employees, many agencies contract with other companies, including Amtrak, freight railroads, and private rail operators, to provide services that are critical to running the agencies' trains. These contracted services include providing crews to operate trains (train operations); maintenance of equipment (MOE), including maintenance of train cars and locomotives; dispatching train traffic; and maintenance of way (MOW), which involves maintaining the track, signals, and other track infrastructure. Commuter rail agencies can obtain these services by opening contracts to competition or through noncompetitive negotiations with a service provider. You asked us to provide information on the service arrangements between commuter rail agencies and other companies. Accordingly, we addressed the following questions: (1) How many currently active commuter rail service contracts were obtained through competitive and noncompetitive processes? (2) What differences, if any, are there between competitively and noncompetitively negotiated contracts? Through interviews and site visits with commuter rail agencies, we identified all 50 active commuter rail contracts that provided at least one of the four following services: train operations, MOE, dispatching, and MOW. Of these 50 contracts, we found that 22 only provided access to infrastructure and services directly related to maintaining and operating the infrastructure (e.g., dispatching and MOW). These contracts did not include other services, such as train operations, that are not bound to the infrastructure and for which a commuter rail agency could choose a provider other than the infrastructure owner. We excluded these 22 contracts from our analysis because commuter rail agencies must negotiate with the infrastructure owner for access, and infrastructure owners generally conduct their own dispatching and maintain their own rights-of-way. The other 28 contracts included at least one service that was not bound to infrastructure used by the commuter rail agency and, therefore, could be provided by an entity other than the infrastructure owner. These GAO-06-820R Commuter Rail Service Contracts