President Obama’s Fiscal Year 2011 budget is a step forward for transportation options and livable communities and contains $1 billion in programs and grants to help turn this positive vision into reality. It is gratifying that Obama chose to boost funding on transportation and livability as other programs face cuts. His team understand that investing in the neighborhoods and communities of tomorrow can both create jobs and lay the foundation for future prosperity.

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.

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 Last with a Tampa event in Tampa 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.

Responding to his call for a jobs bill aimed at easing the unemployment crisis, the Transportation for America coalition today wrote to President Obama and cabinet members outlining the transportation investments can put the most Americans back to work, quickly. The coalition, now with more than 400 members, also applauded the President for moving ahead on his vision for a world-class network of intercity rail. “Our coalition members have worked hard to make the case for just such an investment,” said John Robert Smith, co-chair of T4 America, “so the President’s announcement today of progress on 13 corridors is welcome news, indeed.”

John Robert Smith, co-chair of the Transportation for America campaign and former Amtrak Board Chairman, released the following statement in response to Congress’ allocation of $2.5 billion for high-speed rail:

Four billion or about one billion for high-speed rail. That’s the question that a group of representatives in the House and Senate will soon have to answer as they try to reconcile differences in the two chambers’ versions of the yearly transportation appropriations bill. A few weeks ago, the House passed a transportation budget with $4 billion for high-speed rail. Shortly afterward, the Senate passed their version of the yearly spending bill with only $1.2 billion for high-speed rail. Last week, Congress got the message.

Two weeks ago, we were successful in beating back a handful of dangerous amendments to the yearly transportation budget in the Senate that would have broken federal promises to fund crucial, long-planned public transportation, passenger rail and bike/pedestrian projects. In less than 48 hours, supporters like yourselves sent more than 10,000 messages to your Senators in opposition of these dangerous amendments. Your quick action was instrumental in letting the Senate know that it’s important we continue funding alternatives to driving that can help us use less oil, cut our emissions, bike and walk safely and reduce the amount of time we spend in congestion each day.

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

UPDATE: Victory! For whatever reason, Sen. Bond decided not to offer his amendment and it will not come to the floor for a vote. Thanks to all of you who took action by writing or calling your Senators. In the last 24 hours we beat back a dangerous anti-bike/ped amendment from Senator Coburn. Now we [...]

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. With states competing for their share of the $8 billion to start developing and building high-speed corridors, competition was sure to be tough. But did anyone expect this many applications for the funds?