President Obama flew down to Tampa, Florida, yesterday to wield his stimulus bat for “transformative” passenger train development and struck a mighty bunt for high-speed rail.
All the hoopla by the administration (e.g., DOT Secretary Ray LaHood describing the $8 billion in grants as “an absolute game-changer in American transportation”) doesn’t change the fact that of the 29 projects awarded, only two – in Florida and California – qualify as high-speed rail by world standards.
Call the rest by what they really are – “higher speed rail” or “improving Amtrak on-time-performance rail.” The best of those projects, a $1.1 billion upgrade of the existing rail corridor between Chicago and St. Louis, will permit Amtrak trains to achieve 110-mph maximums and 70-mph averages between the two cities – far below the 125-200 mph standard set by the International Union of Railways.
Several corridor projects funded yesterday won’t even achieve 100-mph speed maximums because they are limited by the curves and grades of existing railroad rights of way that cannot easily, or cheaply, be modified for HSR service.
Let’s look first at the two projects that PPI recently argued should have served as templates for the administration’s HSR program.
Florida may actually get by 2015 what is running daily in Europe and Asia – “bullet trains” on dedicated track that rocket between major cities. The administration awarded the Florida Department of Transportation $1.25 billion to start a long-planned line between Tampa, Lakeland, Disney World and Orlando. Utilizing a new right of way and electrically propelled trainsets, the line is expected to operate at 168-mph top speed. Construction of the railway later this year would employ at least 15,000 workers.
But with the apparent aim of spreading stimulus cash to all corners of the country, the administration handed Florida less than half of the $2.6 billion needed to complete the 88-mile line. It is unclear how this funding gap will be overcome. One possibility is that Florida will receive funds from the $2.5 billion in HSR projects allocated by Congress for fiscal year 2010.
California’s HSR project was the other big winner yesterday, with $2.25 billion (of $4.7 billion requested) to purchase land and complete environmental reviews for a 200-mph line between San Diego, Los Angeles and San Francisco/Sacramento. The overall cost for this project is estimated at around $50 billion. Even though California voters approved the sale of $9 billion in bonds for construction, the project needs a lot more money to come to fruition. Does the Obama administration have a plan to make sure the project is sustainable over the long term and that some segments are opened for revenue service in the near term?
If properly funded, the Florida and California projects hold promise of starting a true HSR infrastructure, with all of the economic and environmental benefits described in the PPI policy memo. But instead of insisting on advanced rail technology elsewhere, the Obama administration has settled for modest state projects with humble goals.
Take the $598 million awarded to the states of Washington and Oregon to add sidings and improve signaling on the rail line between Seattle and Portland, which is owned jointly by freight carriers Union Pacific and Burlington Northern Santa Fe.
The administration’s fact sheet reports that passenger train travel time “will be reduced by at least 5 percent and on-time performance will increase substantially, from 62 to 88 percent.” Currently, Amtrak trains require 3½ hours to cover the 186 miles, a pokey 53 mph average. Reducing train time by 5 percent means saving all of 10 minutes.
Likewise, the $400 million in stimulus funds going to establish train service between Cleveland and Cincinnati would permit “speeds of up to 79 mph,” according to the administration’s fact sheet, while track upgrades between Raleigh and Charlotte, N.C., will “increase top train speeds to 90 mph.”
There is no doubt that President Obama is committed to upgrading intercity passenger rail. But yesterday he placed his feet squarely in both the visionary camp and the slow-speed Amtrak camp, spreading federal funds far and wide rather than focusing on two or three corridors that would give us trains equal to those in Europe and China.