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Tag: high speed rail

Florida’s high-speed rail loss is the Northeast’s gain

Secretary Ray LaHood is in a good mood this morning. The U.S. Department of Transportation has announced the recipients of $2 billion in high-speed rail funds, a total of 22 “carefully selected projects that will create jobs, boost manufacturing and spur development while laying the foundation for future economic competitiveness,” LaHood wrote on his blog.

The lion’s share of the money —$795 million — will be used to upgrade the most heavily-used sections of the bustling Northeast Corridor, increasing speeds from 135 to 160 miles per hour on critical segments, as well as improve on-time performance and add seats, according to USDOT. Amtrak already carries a majority of the traffic between DC and New York and better service will help meet burgeoning demand in that corridor.

“I am thrilled,” the Secretary added. So, too, are the diverse array of recipients. Connecticut Governor Dan Malloy, who netted $30 million, called the decision “great news and a win for the state.” California Congressman Dennis Cardoza, whose Central Valley district has weathered double-digit unemployment and some of the nation’s highest foreclosure rates, said the $300 million his state received was a “step forward in connecting our Valley with the opportunities of the future.”

In Michigan, Transportation for America organizer CeCe Grant told the Detroit Free Press that the $200 million in funds to rebuild rail lines between Dearborn and Kalamazoo would result in nearly 70 percent of Michigan residents and 71 percent of the state’s employees within 15-miles of a high-speed rail station.

Other winners, as described by USDOT, included:

  • $25 million to Rhode Island to design and construct an additional 1.5 miles of third track in Kingston, enabling trains operating at speeds up to 150 mph to pass other trains on a high-volume section of the corridor.
  • $58 million to New York to upgrade tracks, stations and signals along the Empire Corridor, including replacing the Schenectady Station and constructing a fourth station track at the Albany-Rensselaer Station.
  • $40 million to Pennsylvania to rebuild an interlocking near Harrisburg on the Keystone Corridor.
  • $186.3 million to Illinois to construct track along the Chicago-St. Louis corridor between Dwight and Joliet to accommodate 110 mph trains.
  • $13.5 million to Missouri to advance design work to replace the Merchant’s Bridge over the Mississippi River along the Chicago-St. Louis corridor.
  • $5 million to Minnesota to complete engineering and environmental work to establish the Northern Lights Express, which would connect Minneapolis and Duluth with 110 mph trains.
  • $15 million to Texas to conduct engineering and environmental work to develop a high-speed rail corridor linking Dallas/Fort Worth and Houston.
  • $4 million to North Carolina to conduct an environmental analysis of the Richmond-Raleigh section of the Southeast High Speed Rail Corirdor.
  • $1.5 million to Oregon to analyze overnight parking tracks for passenger trains on the southern end of the Pacific Northwest corridor, which will add capacity and enable increased passenger- and freight-rail service.

The funds were made available when Florida Governor Rick Scott rejected federal support earlier this year.

“If I sound excited about the prospect of American high-speed rail, it’s because I am,” Secretary LaHood concluded on his blog. “High-speed intercity passenger rail offers real, practical benefits — benefits we cannot afford to ignore.

USDOT has a full list of project recipients here.

New York Times: High-speed rail deserves continued support

Originally uploaded by pgengler to Flickr.

The New York Times resolutely defended high-speed rail in an editorial this morning, characterizing the elimination of remaining funds for the program this fiscal year as “harebrained.”

The budget deal reached by the White House and Congress zeroed-out the $1 billion allocated for high-speed rail in fiscal year 2011 and rescinded an additional $400 million that had been returned by Florida Governor Rick Scott. A previous agreement to keep the government running for an additional week had already included $1.5 billion in cuts.

Governor Scott weathered heavy criticism for rejecting the funds, including from fellow Republicans, and his administration has since acknowledged getting key facts about the project wrong in a presentation to the state Supreme Court.

The Times strongly opposed Scott’s decision, but noted that his action has enabled other interested governors, including 11 Republicans, to put in bids. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has 90 proposals from 24 states to choose from, with a total price tag of $10 billion, and a total of $2.4 billion to distribute. The Times wrote:

Two areas stand out on that list: the Northeast corridor from Boston to Washington; and California, which has ambitions to build a high-speed rail system from San Francisco and Sacramento to San Diego. California voters have approved almost $10 billion in bonds for the project (which has an ultimate price tag of some $45 billion), but the state wants the $2 billion for an extension.

While supportive of California’s efforts, the Times would like to see Amtrak’s application for an upgrade to the Northeast corridor’s Acela line receive top priority. Their $1.3 billion request would boost Acela’s speed from 135 miles per hour to 160 miles per hour between Philadelphia and New York City, one of the busiest and most popular stretches in the country. And, New York submitted an application to clear a path for Acela through New York City’s Penn Station, which more than 750 trains pass through daily.

USDOT has not yet announced when recipients will be selected.

Government audit confirms that TIGER, rail grants followed merit-based process, despite GOP complaints

Although a Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that the Obama administration set and followed a merit based decision-making process for awarding high-speed rail and TIGER grants, several Republican lawmakers claimed the report revealed a lack of transparency and accountability for where the money went.

“Although we can develop cost-effective high-speed rail transportation in this country, I cannot imagine a worse beginning to a U.S. high-speed rail effort,” House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman John Mica, the Florida Republican pictured at right, said in a statement earlier this week.

But as Tanya Snyder at Streetsblog Capitol Hill reported, the discrepancies cited by Republicans are largely the result of the two-step awarding process at the U.S. Department of Transportation. The GAO noted that the review team considered a broader range of criteria, including geographic diversity, than the evaluation team, and thus differing results were not unexpected. Snyder wrote:

GAO doesn’t dispute the validity of those decisions but would have liked to see more thorough documentation of why they chose some of the previously lower-ranked projects over higher ones. Draft minutes of meetings shed some light on the decisions but were never published.

Further, the GAO noted that TIGER was a newly-formed program under the Recovery Act and that USDOT “developed a sound set of criteria to evaluate the merits of applications and select grants that would meet the goals of the program.” The GAO went on the write:

By thoroughly documenting how its technical teams considered and applied the criteria, clearly communicating selection criteria to applicants, and publicly disclosing some information on the attributes of the projects that were selected, DOT took important steps to build the framework for future competitive programs and its institutional capacity to administer them.

The GAO also concluded that the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA), which awarded high-speed rail grants “established a fair and objective approach,” but noted that the “exception is what we view as incomplete documentation of why some applications were chosen and not others, and how FRA decided to distribute the funds at the time those decisions were made.” The FRA later clarified and provided details for most of the GAO’s questions.

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood strongly defended the decision-making process, saying the GAO report confirms that “we did everything above-board,” and Streetsblog concluded with:

The GAO reports pointed out room for improvement but were overwhelmingly positive about both the TIGER and high-speed rail programs.

A link to both reports can be found on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee website.

Photo courtesy of the Washington Post.

Mad Men actors go to bat for high-speed rail in new video


Mad Men On Trains from Rich Sommer
 

Two lead actors from Mad Men, the 1960s era advertising agency show, appear in a Funnyordie.com video endorsing high-speed rail posted earlier today.

Attacks on high-speed rail in both Congress and state capitals prompted U.S. PIRG to tap actors Vincent Kartheiser and Rich Sommer for the segment, which was can be viewed at this link or above.

In the video, Mad Men character Pete worries that his agency might have picked the wrong horse by advertising for cars, while Harry assures him that “America always makes the right investments. Trains are the most efficient, most economic, best investment.

“But, honestly, I think you can relax on the whole thing,” Harry continues. “I read that in 40 years, gas is going to be almost a dollar a gallon.”

Supporting President Obama’s high-speed rail push “saves oil and gives people a more efficient alternative to the hassles of flying and driving,” says U.S. PIRG’s Phineas Baxandall. “Even 40 years ago it would have been a no-brainer.”

If you support high-speed rail and want to fight back against its critics, watch the video and rate it “funny” to keep the message out there.

Vice President Biden makes the case for rail, cites T4 America co-chair’s hometown as an example

Vice President Joe Biden made an emphatic case for high-speed rail in Philadelphia today as the Obama administration kicks off a series of events this week to highlight the need for infrastructure investment.

Biden, who was joined by Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood and other officials, is a fitting messenger for rail’s benefits. Dubbed “Amtrak Joe,” he was a regular commuter on the Acela line during his 36 years as a U.S. Senator from Delaware. While campaigning in 2008, he told the New York Times, “If we get elected, it will be the most train-friendly administration ever.”

The Vice President announced a six-year, $53 billion investment in national high-speed and intercity passenger rail during remarks at Philadelphia’s historic 30th Street Station. Passengers traveling on Amtrak’s Keystone Corridor from Pittsburgh and Harrisburg use the station to connect to the popular and speedy Acela line, which runs through New York City, Boston and Washington, DC.

While the Obama administration has made clear that responsible deficit reduction is a priority, Biden emphasized there are some areas where it would be irresponsible to scale back.

“As President Obama said in his State of the Union, there are key places where we cannot afford to sacrifice as a nation – one of which is infrastructure,” the Vice President said, adding: “If you shut down Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor, you’d have to add seven new lanes to I-95 to accommodate the traffic.”

The Vice President singled out Meridian, Mississippi mayor and T4 America co-chair John Robert Smith, who served his hometown for four terms. Biden hailed Mayor Smith for using passenger rail to revitalize the economy, bring jobs to the region and improve quality of life. Meridian’s restored Union Station serves 300,000 passengers, hosts over 250 events every year and has leveraged millions in downtown investment.

The need for increased travel options to accommodate expected population growth was also a theme in the Vice President’s address, along with the fact that simply widening highways and building new ones will not suffice.

“In the next 40 years, the United States is expected to increase in population by 100 million people,” he said. “Seventy percent of all people in America now live within 50 miles of the Atlantic Ocean or the Pacific Ocean. You know how congested we are now. What happens with 100 million more?

“When you talk about the investments we’re making in rail, they pale in comparison to investment you’d have to make in runways or highways,” he added. “And that’s before you factor in the environmental benefit of taking cars off the road.”

With this long-term commitment, cities and states now have the certainty to pursue longer-term plans for rail, and businesses can move forward putting more Americans to work making this vision possible. The administration has also made strides on streamlining existing programs in USDOT. Now, for the first time, all high-speed and passenger rail programs are consolidated into just two new accounts.

As Streetsblog already noted, the politics of transportation spending remain muddled, but today’s announcement was a key step toward laying the foundation for a 21st century system.

Photo: CNN

Proposed budget would gut transit spending, passenger rail funding

Sound Transit underground Originally uploaded by Transportation for America to Flickr.
A Seattle Sound transit light rail car moves through a tunnel south of downtown. Sound Transit’s new line was funded in part by the federal New Starts transit program.

The budget proposal from the Republican Study Committee, which consists of 165 of the 242 GOP House members, released a week or so ago, calls for completely eliminating the main federal transit program, zeroes out Amtrak, cuts all funding for the metro system in the nation’s capital and slashes $2.5 billion in high-speed rail grants.

This shortsighted proposal would derail with uncanny precision exactly the kind of investments that are most critical for creating jobs and developing a 21st Century transportation infrastructure. And as far as transportation spending goes, these are some of the investments that create the most jobs per dollar spent.

The proposal eliminates New Starts, the transportation program that funds all new transit projects in the country, and slashes high-speed rail funding — the same program touted by President Obama to great fanfare in last week’s State of the Union.

It even chops all federal funding for Washington DC’s transit authority, the very transit system that these legislators’ staff and neighbors rely on every day to get to and from work.

This budget is a trial-balloon for the budget fight to come. We need to waste no time making it clear that these kinds of cuts are short-sighted and unacceptable.

Sign our petition objecting to this assault on public transportation funding. We’ll deliver the petition with your signature along with a letter from us and our partners to lawmakers. (Are you a T4 America partner who wants to sign your org onto the letter? Contact Heather Brutz for more info.)

The lawmakers who crafted this budget clearly aren’t aware that millions of Americans — including their own constituents — rely on passenger rail and the types of transit projects these programs fund.

These are also the very projects that pay some of the most far-reaching economic dividends. Study after study has shown that every dollar spent on public transportation generates more jobs than any other form of transportation spending. This proposed budget cuts the investments that create the most jobs – an especially poor decision in the face of a recovering economy.

We can keep this proposal from becoming law if we speak up now and make it clear that Americans aren’t going to sit by as federal investments in transit are gutted.

Sign our petition to protect federal support for transportation and jobs!

California needs smart station planning to maximize high-speed rail’s benefits

This is a projected image of the area around the Sacramento station, courtesy of the California High-Speed Rail Authority.

High-speed rail investment has the potential to yield great economic and environmental rewards for California, but only if communities make smart decisions about land-use and growth at and around new stations.

A new report prepared by the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association offers prescriptions for how communities can prepare for rail investments.

“The new statewide rail system presents a once-in-a-century opportunity to reshape their local economies and set the course for more compact, less automobile-dependent growth,” according to the report.

The first leg of California’s high-speed rail is the backbone of the system through the state’s Central Valley, including population-rich Bakersfield and Fresno. Once all 26 stations have been completed, the system will reach northward to Sacramento and include service from San Francisco to Los Angeles and further southward to San Diego.

The benefits are plentiful. For starters, by shortening travel time between successful metro areas, high-speed rail brings geographically distant focal points closer, connecting more people to opportunities and jobs. The new stations and ease of travel can also revitalize downtowns, bring economic opportunity to low-income communities and reduce suburban sprawl.

By providing a viable alternative to the car — and, in the case of longer journeys, to energy-intensive air travel — high-speed rail is also a terrific means of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and assisting California in meeting the targets of its groundbreaking climate change law, AB 32.

But each of these potential benefits comes with a cautionary tale. The BART system in the San Francisco Bay Area, for instance, was intended to fuel compact and transit-oriented development, but many of the more suburban stations were surrounded by parking lots and built away from town centers, missing the opportunity to add ridership by building up those areas or spurring new walkable centers. Similarly, most of California’s airports are surrounded by parking lots and access roads, making nearby development less desirable. Policymakers must make a concerted effort to avoid a similar fate near high-speed rail stations and be willing to prioritize growth in strategic areas.

The station sites face myriad challenges and opportunities. Some, like San Francisco and Sacramento already have traditional downtowns, while San Jose and Anaheim have emerging downtowns with the potential for growth. Stockton, Merced, Fresno and Bakersfield have downtowns as well, but struggle with high unemployment and a lack of private sector investment. Reconciling rail with more traditional suburbs and major airports will be the focus at other stations.

SPUR offers ten recommendations for planning preparation, which include:

  • Developing station area plans for each high-speed rail station area
  • Drafting statewide station area planning and development guidelines to inform local decision-makers
  • Drafting a statewide implementation plan
  • Providing financial support for local planning as needed
  • And, establishing local development corporations to facilitate local area development

To see the rest of SPUR’s recommendations and the entire report, you can visit their website here.

Could another new passenger rail line be facing the ax?

An Amtrak passenger train heads back to Chicago with a heavy load of passengers. Photo by David Johnson/NARP

UPDATE (1/21/11): The Iowa House approved a measure to cut the funding. It will likely move to the Senate. If you live in Iowa, use this link to contact your Rep and Senator today to tell them you support this important line.

Potentially following in the footsteps of Wisconsin and Ohio, the Republicans in the state legislature are considering the possibility of killing Iowa’s portion of a planned higher speed passenger rail line from Chicago to Iowa City that would pass through the Quad Cities and the new Moline (Ill.) multimodal transportation hub funded by a TIGER grant.

Just after the last round of TIGER grants were announced, Iowa and Illinois received a joint $230 million grant from the Federal Railroad Administration — separately from the DOT’s high-speed rail program — to start new 110 mph service from Chicago to Iowa City; service that could eventually connect to Des Moines and Omaha and lay the groundwork for a true 220 mph high-speed system connecting Iowa to the hub (Chicago) of the midwest’s high speed network.

The feds have committed $230 million of the $310 million that the two states were asking for on this project, leaving the states to come up with the rest. Iowa had committed around $10 million toward the gap, but state Republicans are currently working on a budget that would cancel that funding and result in all sorts of dilemmas for the project. From the Des Moines Register:

The Republican-sponsored budget package would not provide any state money needed to establish and subsidize operations for the route, almost certainly forcing the Iowa Department of Transportation to return a federal grant of $81.4 million already awarded for the passenger train project.

Where the story on this project differs from similar recent stories in Wisconsin and Ohio of grants going back to Washington is that this project spans two states for an interstate rail line. Illinois will be able to keep their share of the grant, which is larger since the bulk of the route spans their state, but what will happen to the route? Will it simply stop at the border at the new Moline multimodal hub? What about the future of a Omaha/Des Moines/Iowa City connection to Chicago? Will it bypass important Iowa cities?

It’s imperative that the Iowa legislature and Governor Branstad follow through on their state’s commitment to build this valuable new service. Following the path of I-80 and I-88, it would hit all the major population centers of Iowa on it’s way to and from Chicago.

Could this be the new terminal of the line intended to travel into Iowa? Photo of the planned Moline (Illinois) multimodal center.

The silliest comment of the day comes from Senate Minority Leader Paul McKinley, who somehow manages to compare the benefits of a ditch being dug and filled in to an invaluable direct transportation connection to the economic engine of the Midwest.

“I can hire someone to dig a ditch, hire somebody to fill it in, and somebody would claim it creates a job, but does it really accomplish anything?” McKinley said. “I think that’s the question we have to ask ourselves about passenger rail to Chicago.”

The legislative session hasn’t started yet, so it may be premature to jump to any conclusions yet as the Iowa Chamber said, but as the recent cuts in Wisconsin and Ohio showed us, it’s important that these leaders hear from supporters early and often — long before a decision is made. And incoming Governor Terry Branstad has thus far pledged to keep the issue nonpartisan and examine the project fairly and honestly. He needs to be held to that promise.

Iowa residents: Call and write your state legislators and Governor Branstad and tell them that this project is crucially important to Iowa’s future. You can use this page to look up their phone numbers and emails.

President Obama hails high-speed rail as “the infrastructure of tomorrow”

Mayor John Robert Smith
John Robert Smith is co-chair of the Transportation for America campaign and former mayor of Meridian, Mississippi.

Hearing President Obama call high-speed rail “the infrastructure of tomorrow” gave me great hope. Very rarely has transportation investment made the final cut in a presidential State of the Union address. The fact that it did make the cut this time really speaks to the president’s commitment to making high-speed rail a reality.

I’ve heard critics say over the years that the U.S. is too big for high-speed rail. China is the biggest country in the world and they built over the Himalayas and are now committing an additional $500 billion over the next 20 years. Saudi Arabia too is investing in high-speed rail in preparation for that certain day when oil reserves will no longer sustain the country. If they can do it, we can do it.

High-speed rail investment is about jobs, and not just temporary jobs, but long-term American jobs that cannot be outsourced. These jobs will employ Americans to build both rail networks and passenger rail equipment. This could be a real lifeline for unemployed automotive workers struggling to get and keep a new job. And these Americans will be going to work building a cleaner environment and more sustainable future for all of our children.

I have seen first-hand what investment in rail infrastructure and transit-oriented development can do to lift a mid-sized city like Meridian, Mississippi. Now there are people living in downtown, there’s entertainment downtown and a conference center has been built. It all started with a public sector investment done right. The vibrancy that returns to smaller communities as a result of rail service has improved the quality of life for millions of Americans. This is not about big city versus small, or urban versus rural. Chicago and Los Angeles will surely benefit from rail investment, but so too will places like Minot, North Dakota and Whitefish, Montana. This addresses the needs of our entire country and should be embraced by our representatives in Washington from all corners.

Of all the issues facing Congress, surely high-speed rail investment can transcend partisanship. As a Republican, I have worked with some the most liberal and conservative members of the United States Senate to protect Amtrak for people who depend on it. I see the potential for similar partnerships today and am heartened that we have a president who is leading the way.

Mayor John Robert Smith is co-chair of the T4 America Campaign, president of Reconnecting America, and former mayor of Meridian, Mississippi.

High speed rail grantees awarded, was your state included?

As you may have heard by now, President Obama is following up his favorable mention of high speed rail in last night’s State of the Union address with a Tampa event to announce the winners of federal grants for high speed rail service. (In case you missed our official statement about the announcement, read that here.)

The President is due to make his announcement this afternoon, but the list of awardees has already been released. So who were the big winners? Certainly Florida and California, who got the biggest grants, netting $1.25 and $2.3 billion respectively. Although the lion’s share of funding is going toward a handful of corridors, 31 states will receive some portion of funding or benefit from new or improved rail service, according to reporting on the proposal. A few notable bloggers have already done superb analysis of the recipients of the $8 billion, starting with Yonah Freemark’s excellent corridor by corridor breakdown on the Transport Politic:

After months of speculation about which states will get funding from the Federal Railroad Administration to begin construction on new high-speed corridors, the news is in. As has been expected, California, Florida, and Illinois are the big winners, with more than one billion in spending proposed for each. But other states with less visible projects, including Wisconsin, North Carolina, and Washington will also get huge grants and begin offering relatively fast trains on their respective corridors within five years. The distribution of dollars is well thought-out and reasonable: it provides money to regions across the nation and prioritizes states that have made a commitment of their own to a fast train program.

Elana Schor at Streetsblog DC included a quote from Chairman Oberstar, who was certainly delighted at the first small step toward a true nationwide high speed rail network.

House infrastructure committee chairman Jim Oberstar (D-MN) hailed today’s first rail grants as “a transformational moment,” adding: “The development of high-speed rail in the United States is an historic opportunity to create jobs, develop a new domestic manufacturing base, and provide an environmentally-friendly and competitive transportation alternative to the traveling public.”

Information about all the corridors can be found in the White House briefing room online. We hope to post additional reaction and analysis later today or tomorrow.

Tell Congress to make a historic investment in high speed rail

Congress is heading towards a decisive, historic moment on investing in high speed rail for America. But the outcome is far from certain.

In the next few weeks, Congress will decide whether or not to give the Department of Transportation $1.2 billion or $4 billion on high speed rail for the next year. $8 billion was allocated for planning and implementing clean, efficient, high speed train travel in the economic stimulus earlier this year, and with another $4 billion, we’d be making a historic $12 billion investment in high speed rail to help us move into the 21st century, unclog our congested airports and airspace, and provide a new clean, efficient alternative for speedy travel between major metro areas.

Sometime in the next week or two, Congress will decide whether or not to give DOT the amount in the House version of the bill ($4 billion), or the Senate version ($1.2 billion).

Tell Congress to keep $4 billion in the bill at www.fourbillion.com

Transportation for America is partnering with U.S. PIRG, Virginians for High Speed Rail, and the Midwest High Speed Rail Association to send a message to Congress that now is the time to make a historic investment in high speed rail.

Midwest High Speed Rail Association LogoFed of State PIRGS logoVirginians for high speed rail

Want the wonky details? As you may remember, the Senate passed the bill that funds the Department of Transportation and the Department of Housing and Urban Development last week. The bill that passed last week is what’s known as a (yearly) appropriations bill, where the budget for the department and the programs are finalized and officially given their money by Congress. The House passed their version of the DOT/HUD funding bill several weeks ago, so the differences between the two bills will be ironed out in a conference committee very soon. The House and the Senate will select conferees to reconcile the two versions of the bill, before sending a final bill back to the House and Senate for a last vote and then to President Obama’s desk.

Let’s tell them to send the president a bill with $4 billion for high speed rail.


Post this action on Twitter, or with other tools via the button below.

States clamor for high-speed rail stimulus funds as applications pour into DC

Amtrak Acela 654 Northbound Originally uploaded by Jim Frazier

When the stimulus passed in February, $8 billion for high-speed rail was added at the 25th hour, at the behest of the Obama administration. In the days since, states have scrambled to prepare their proposals to receive a share of the money, which will be distributed via a process of competitive grants.

When the administration’s blueprint was released in April, President Obama said “high-speed rail is long-overdue, and this plan lets American travelers know that they are not doomed to a future of long lines at the airports or jammed cars on the highways.”

With states competing for their share of the $8 billion to start developing and building high-speed corridors, competition was sure to be tough. As recently as yesterday, we had heard that $93 billion in grant applications were submitted to the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA). Just today, we saw this statement from DOT Secretary LaHood’s office detailing an even higher number: 278 pre-applications for grant funding totaling $102 billion. 40 states and the District of Columbia submitted proposals to get a share of the $8 billion available in the stimulus.

“The response has been tremendous and shows that the country is ready for high-speed rail,” Secretary LaHood said.  “It’s time to look beyond our highways and invest in public transportation services like rail, which will enhance regional mobility and reduce our carbon footprint.”

Next up for the DOT and the Federal Railroad Administration is figuring out which of these 278 applications to move forward in the process. The first step will likely be figuring out which proposals best line up with the administration’s already-released blueprint for the 10 national high-speed rail corridors. The first grantees will be announced in the fall, according to the DOT release.

More on today’s high speed rail announcement

President Obama’s remarks from the press conference this morning have been posted on the White House blog. In his remarks, joined by Vice President Biden and Transportation Secretary LaHood, Obama appealed to our national pride and pointed to the benefits that high-speed rail would bring to all Americans:

There’s no reason why we can’t do this. This is America. There’s no reason why the future of travel should lie somewhere else beyond our borders. Building a new system of high-speed rail in America will be faster, cheaper and easier than building more freeways or adding to an already overburdened aviation system — and everybody stands to benefit.

They also posted some details about the corridors eligible for funding, including this map below, which is very similar to an older Department of Transportation map from several years ago.

White House high speed rail corridor map

According to the information from the White House site, the potential corridors eligible for funding are:

  1. California: San Francisco Bay Area, Sacramento, Los Angeles, San Diego
  2. Pacific Northwest: Eugene, Portland, Tacoma, Seattle, Vancouver, B.C.
  3. South Central: Tulsa, Oklahoma City, Dallas/Fort Worth, Austin, San Antonio, Little Rock
  4. Gulf Coast Corridor: Houston, New Orleans, Mobile, Birmingham, Atlanta
  5. Chicago Hub Network: Chicago, Milwaukee, Minneapolis-St. Paul, St. Louis, Kansas City, Detroit, Toledo, Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, Louisville
  6. Florida: Orlando, Tampa, Miami
  7. Southeast: Washington, Richmond, Raleigh, Charlotte, Atlanta, Macon, Columbia, Savannah, Jacksonville
  8. Keystone: Philadelphia, Harrisburg, Pittsburgh
  9. Empire: New York, Albany, Buffalo
  10. Northern New England: Boston, Montreal, Portland, Springfield, New Haven, Albany

Transportation for America released a statement this morning from Campaign Director James Corless in support of the President’s initiative:

We applaud President Obama’s leadership, and look forward to working with him to help shape the sustainable transportation solutions that will bring our system into the 21st Century. It is clear that President Obama and his administration are ready to move America in a new direction. Transportation systems have enormous impacts on the lives of the American people – from our pocket books to climate change, from our household expenses to the global economy.

Americans are increasingly rejecting the status quo in favor of more transportation options that will make our communities more walkable, more energy efficient, more equitable and healthier. The President’s commitment to high speed rail is an important piece of what must be a bold new vision for our national transportation program.

You can watch video of the press conference here, via Politico.com

A day of air travel over North America, and what it means for rail

From Wired Magazine via Aaron of Streetsblog comes this amazing map and video that shows a day of air travel over North America. Using data from the Federal Aviation Administration and a service called FlightView that tracks airline travel each day, artist Aaron Koblin created this Google map that shows 24 hours of airline travel on August 12, 2008.

Aaron Koblin Airline Travel

There’s also a breathtaking movie version of this same map, that shows the flights in real time through the course of the day.

The sheer number of airplanes traveling over the United States is simply mind boggling. On this day chronicled in the map, the FAA tracked 205,000 flights in U.S. airspace. Anyone who has ever traveled by plane knows that we have plenty of air above our country, but the problem is the fact that too many of them need to be in specific pieces of air at the same time. Or traveling through the same crowded airports.

Watch the movie and look at what happens to the east coast — especially the northeastern corridor — during the major commuting hours. Our major airports are bursting at the seams, and our air traffic control system, while among the safest and most professional in the world, is hard pressed to keep up with the growing demands placed on it. (more…)

Transportation numbers emerge on the stimulus

UPDATE (2:00 p.m., 02/12/09): Talking Points Memo has acquired a summary of the new bill, which includes a comparison of each spending item to the House and Senate legislation. It looks like the final number for highways is $27.5 billion. The bill to come out of conference also includes $1.3 billion for Amtrak.

—

We now have what appear to be the final numbers for transportation infrastructure in the stimulus. While the totals for transit and highway spending were both in the same ballpark as what they were in the original House and Senate bills, the sum for high-speed has drastically increased from the numbers in the first two versions. Here’s a rundown:

  • $27.5 billion for highways and bridges
  • $8.4 billion for transit
  • $8 billion for high-speed rail
  • $1.3 billion for Amtrak

Although it’s too early to know exactly how things played out behind the scenes, the Associated Press reports that President Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid helped push up the funding for high-speed rail.