WASHINGTON (AP) – Amtrak says it must spend tens of millions of dollars to replace defective railroad ties on the heavily traveled Northeast Corridor.

The problem could delay trains – and thus cost Amtrak business – if not addressed quickly, the railroad warned in a letter to Congress last week.

The concrete ties were purchased beginning in the 1990s and have already begun to crack, Amtrak spokesman Cliff Black said Wednesday. Concrete ties normally last about 50 years.

The total cost of fixing the problem is still unclear. But in its annual funding request to Congress, Amtrak said it expects to spend at least $23.5 million on it this year alone. Black said costs are likely to be similar next year.

The ties are manufactured by Rocla Concrete Tie Inc. at a plant inside an Amtrak maintenance yard in Bear, Del. Amtrak said that under the terms of the contract, the supplier must replace the defective ties for free, but won’t reimburse the railroad for the labor.

“Amtrak and Rocla are working together to ensure that the replacement ties that they are providing us are top quality,” Black said. “Amtrak is comfortable that the manufacturer has corrected the problem.”

If concrete ties fracture severely, they can’t properly support the rails, Black said. However, he emphasized that the problem does not pose a danger because it was caught early and is being addressed.

It’s not the first time Rocla has been blamed for defects. New York’s Metro-North commuter railroad sued the company in 2006 for premature cracks in ties purchased in 1997. The case was settled out of court.

Metro-North spokesman Dan Brucker said Rocla agreed to replace the ties as part of the settlement. That process is expected to be completed within the next three years, Brucker said.

The president of Denver-based Rocla, Peter Urquhart, declined to comment Wednesday on Amtrak’s concerns.

Black said the cracking was first spotted in the fall. Since then, Amtrak has been implementing speed restrictions, known as slow orders, on sections of track between Washington and Boston.

“This is a critical problem, since tie-related slow orders are already delaying trains on the Corridor,” Amtrak Chief Executive Alex Kummant wrote in the $1.67 billion funding request.

The Northeast Corridor is home to Amtrak’s only high-speed service, the Acela Express. Good on-time performance has helped the railroad take business away from the airlines between Boston and Washington.

In 2007, the Acela Express arrived at its destination within 10 minutes of the scheduled time 87.8 percent of the time. That has fallen to 84.2 percent in the current fiscal year, which began Oct. 1.

However, Black said the drop for the most part is not connected to the slow orders, but stems from running more trips with the same number of trains.

Still, if enough slow orders were to accumulate, it would be difficult to make up the time. The degree of the speed reduction depends on the concentration of faulty ties in a given area. In the worst cases, they force trains to drop from 135 miles per hour all the way to 60 mph.

So far Amtrak has replaced about 5,000 defective ties on a spot basis, lifting slow orders as the problem spots are fixed. In the spring, the railroad plans to begin using a track-laying machine to replace ties systematically, Black said. The process may require adjusting timetables to lengthen trip times or temporarily reducing the number of trips on the corridor. It could also affect commuter lines that operate on Amtrak-owned tracks.

Black said he did not know how many of the 3.4 million concrete ties on the corridor were supplied by Rocla since Amtrak began doing business with the company in the early 1990s. According to the Web site for Chatswood, Australia-based Rocla Pty Ltd., its U.S. affiliate produced 895,000 for Amtrak and Metro-North from 1996 to 1999.

Amtrak began replacing its wooden ties on the Northeast Corridor with concrete ones in 1978. Concrete ties are more expensive, but last longer and require less maintenance. They are also better for high-speed operations, Black said.

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Amtrak: http://www.amtrak.com/

Rocla Concrete Tie Inc.: http://www.roclatie.com/

AP-ES-02-27-08 1832EST

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