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.

John Robert Smith, co-chair of Transportation for America and former mayor of Meridian, Mississippi, released the following statement in praise of the Obama administration’s $2.4 billion in grants for high-speed and inter-city passenger rail corridors in the United States: “A national high-speed rail system is not only an opportunity to redefine how we travel and [...]

The city of Moline, Illinois was a big winner in last week’s TIGER grants, receiving $10 million to convert the historic O’Rourke building on the downtown Moline riverfront into the Moline Multimodal Station, serving the community as a transportation hub that will reconnect the Quad Cities with Chicago; and ultimately Iowa City, Iowa and Omaha, Nebraska.

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.