Hats off to the Obama administration. The $2.4 billion in high-speed-rail grants announced yesterday by the U.S. Department of Transportation not only helps fix deficiencies in the original round of rail awards back in January, but shows welcome political moxie.
By allocating the bulk of its FY 2010 investment to California and Florida, the administration has thrown its support behind true “bullet train” service, or trains running on dedicated rights of way at more than 150 mph. It now appears possible that high-speed segments could be open in California’s Central Valley and between Tampa and Orlando, Fla., by 2016.
That’s a big change from the first round of grants last January, which we argued was flawed by a scattershot approach of approving projects that only marginally increased passenger train speeds on upgraded freight track. What was needed, we believed, was funding focused on “do-able” 150-mph-plus links that would serve as templates for an emerging state-of-the-art passenger train initiative.
For the most part, the administration has done just that. To be sure, it has not come up with a way to finance HSR over the long haul and it still faces multiple challenges in Congress, especially if Republicans take over one or both chambers. But what’s striking about yesterday’s awards is the administration’s firmer grasp of how to get HSR segments up and running in the face of local obstacles.
Consider California, which received the biggest grant yesterday, $902 million. The DOT award requires the state to primarily focus on rail development in the Central Valley between Merced and Bakersfield, where land acquisition costs are low and trains could reach their full speed, rather than build costly urban segments through greater Los Angeles and between San Francisco and San Jose that have stoked Nimby opposition.
That’s a shrewd way to get a workable segment built and in revenue service to make the case that HSR is an attractive choice of transportation for Californians. Kicking off construction in the Central Valley also gives a political boost to Rep. Jim Costa (D-Calif.), a strong HSR backer who is in a tough race with Andy Vidak, a Republican with Tea Party backing.
Likewise, the administration took a decisive step toward fully funding the Tampa-Orlando HSR line (which we’ve repeatedly supported) by awarding $800 million to the project yesterday. Florida now has $2.05 billion in the kitty to complete the $2.6 billion project, including the $1.25 billion it received in January.
The new grant has already softened criticism by Republican gubernatorial hopeful Rick Scott. In the last few days Scott has dialed down his rhetoric against the rail line as an example of federal overreach. With groundbreaking scheduled for early 2011 and the Obama administration hinting at more money from discretionary funds, it appears unlikely that Scott would sacrifice thousands of construction jobs by scrapping the project outright. The Democratic candidate, Alex Sink, is a strong supporter.
Two other projects awarded grants yesterday, while not strictly high speed, will improve rail service in critical corridors. DOT gave Connecticut $121 million to help double track the Amtrak line between New Haven and Springfield, Mass., and upgrade service to 110 mph.
As part of the agreement, Connecticut agreed to release $260 million in state funds to rebuild other infrastructure, which will eventually increase train service from six daily roundtrips to 25 or more. This would make the Springfield segment an integral part of the Northeast Corridor and eventual route of a proposed “inland” corridor between New York and Boston.
A flaw of past federal policy was its failure to flag rail lines abandoned by freight carriers as potential passenger routes. As a result, thousands of miles of secondary lines between major cities, considered duplicative by freight railroads, were torn up between 1970 and today.
A similar fate now threatens 135 miles of rail line between Kalamazoo and Dearborn, Mich., owned by Norfolk Southern (NS). The track, used for Amtrak’s Chicago-Detroit trains, was downgraded this summer, a preliminary step toward a petition for abandonment by NS.
Yesterday, DOT stepped in with a $150 million grant to fund Michigan’s purchase of the line. Since Amtrak already owns 97 miles adjacent to this section, the proposed purchase would result in public ownership of nearly 80 percent of the Chicago-Detroit corridor, laying the foundation for a high-speed passenger route.
Yesterday’s awards include the remaining funds in the $8 billion stimulus package as well as money allocated for FY 2010 by the Democratic Congress. Funding for HSR has yet to be agreed upon by Congress for FY 2011. Outside of discretionary funds within DOT, yesterday’s announcement represents the last definite federal distribution for high-speed rail.
For a full list of DOT grants, see https://www.fra.dot.gov/rpd/passenger/2243.shtml