Source: Tree Hugger)

 Is Enthusiasm for High Speed Rail Just Another Speed Addiction?

The world is a confusing place – no sooner do the governments of the world finally start taking high speed rail seriously as an alternative to aviation, and the environmentalists start complaining. First we had Obama’s massive investment in high speed rail, which Jim Kunstler (who else?) described as “perfectly f***ing stupid.”And now UK politicians are limbering up to support a significant upgrade of the country’s rail system – but John Whitelegg over at The Guardian says High Speed Rail is an expensive and counterproductive red herring:

(Source: Wired)

Transportation for America’s webinar on Transportation and Housing took place last week.  This is the third one in a series of webinars that explore the deep impacts of our transportation system on our housing and job markets, public health, energy needs, climate, economic competitiveness, and nearly every other pressing issue facing our country today.   This particular webinar on Transportation and Housing/Development had almost 300 people in attendance, who heard from development experts on the connections between transportation policy, real estate development, and affordable housing.  The following links will take you to the products (policy briefs and A/V recordings) from the session.

• Policy Brief: Transportation and Housing (pdf)
• Policy Brief: Transportation and Development (pdf)
• Audio and video recording of the entire webinar
• Podcast audio file (.mp3)
  
• Podcast video file (.mp4)

With economic crisis putting jobs in jeopardy, homes in foreclosure and entire communities in peril, Americans are facing extraordinary challenges in finding affordable and accessible housing options. Now more than ever, we need federal leadership to help make the critical link between our housing and transportation policies and creating revitalized communities where people can find good places to live and convenient ways to get around.

Shelley Poticha, President and CEO of Reconnecting America and the Center for Transit Oriented Development moderated the discussion and provided an overview of the Transportation for America Campaign.

Christopher Leinberger, Visiting Fellow at the Brookings Institution and Partner of Arcadia Land Company; discussed the benefits of walkable urbanism and the linkages between land value and transportation systems. Ann Norton, Senior Staff Attorney at the Housing Preservation Project, provided a snapshot of Blueprint planning from the Minneapolis / St. Paul Metropolitan Area that links up transportation and land-use planning. Finally, John McIlwain, Senior Resident Fellow at the Urban Land Institute discussed policy options for locating housing around transportation nodes and creating compact, mixed use, mixed income neighborhoods.

There are still more webinars on tap.  Sign up for more sessions on the webinars page. The next session is April 30  (2-3:30PM) on Transportation, Public Health and Safety.  Here is a brief description of the upcoming session:  Transportation influences the health and safety of communities by affecting physical activity levels, traffic speeds, and air pollution. This session will investigate the needs of paratransit and transit-dependent populations, the success of Complete Streets and non-motorized transportation programs, and the connections between transportation and active living.

(Source: Transportation for America)

(Source: The Brookings Institute)

As Vice President Biden’s Earth Day speech at a Washington area subway station makes clear, the connections between transportation and climate change are undeniable. Therefore, exactly how our metropolitan areas grow—and what type of transportation people use to get from place to place—will have a great impact not only on the economy, but also on global environmental sustainability.

Brookings fellow, Robert Puentes, argues in a new report that we need to change, in a systemic way, how we think about, design and implement transportation policies. Beyond more fuel efficient and alternatively powered vehicles, we need to act to reduce demand for driving by linking housing, land use, and economic development.

Report Excerpts:

Transportation is the single largest contributor to the nation’s carbon footprint, causing more damage than industry, homes or commercial buildings. More than four-fifths of transportation emissions come from the tailpipes of our cars, trucks and buses.  

Three factors affect the amount of carbon released into the air from transportation: the type of fuel we use, the fuel efficiency of the automobiles we drive and the amount of driving we do. Some improvements are being made on the first two legs of this stool with the push for hybrid/electric vehicles and tighter fuel economy standards.

Progress is much slower on the third leg: curbing the demand to drive. Though driving is down now because of our economic malaise, studies show that even small increases will spew out so much carbon that they will wipe out the benefits of fuel-efficient cars and the expansion of clean-fuel alternatives.  Take the Washington metropolitan area. This region is projected to grow from 7.6 million people in 2000 to 10.6 million in 2030. Employment could grow from 4.4 million to 6.4 million workers, and non-residential development from 3.6 billion square feet to 5.2 billion. That means about 60 percent of the buildings that will be here in 2030 will have been built after 2000.

How we accommodate this growing population and economy – whether we break the pattern of “sprawl as usual” – will significantly influence whether we secure our energy independence and forge solutions to global warming and climate change.

Click here to read the entire report.

Rick Karr, correspondent for Blueprint America, discusses his report on nation’s ailing freight-rail system airing on PBS’ The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

Last week, President Obama announced an ambitious goal to build a high-speed passenger rail line in ten regions across the country. But even if President Obama’s plans for passenger rail materialize, it won’t necessarily help the entire rail system. America’s freight, the cargo that moves goods across the country by rail, is in big trouble. To look at the state of the rails, The Takeaway talks with Rick Karr, a correspondent for Blueprint America. His report on the nation’s ailing freight-rail system will air on The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer tonight, offers insight into the  bottlenecks on America’s freight rail network and how they may be hindering the nation’s economic competitiveness.

In the Midwest, Chicago has been a freight rail hub for around a hundred and fifty years. In the old days, some lines brought raw materials to the city – like cattle to the stockyards – while others carried finished products to market. The city’s rails are still laid out that way: a couple of lines come in from the west and a couple of others from the east. Even though Chicago still handles about a third of the nation’s freight, a lot of it has to stop there – wait there – and shift from one railroad to another.

As a result, traffic on Chicago’s rails is even slower than traffic on its roads: A two-thousand-two study found that freight trains pass through the city at an average of just nine miles an hour.

But there is no agency in Washington, D.C. responsible for untangling, modernizing, or maintaining the nation’s freight rail system – or for paying for those improvements. And so, Federal support for improving freight has to come through the back door – tacked on to other transportation projects.

The Obama Administration’s plan announced last week for the expansion of high-speed passenger rail in several key corridors – including Chicago and the Midwest – is likely to improve the speed of freight as both kinds of trains share the same tracks in much of the country.

Click below to listen. 

Agence France-Presse/Getty Images via WSJ

Bullet Train Changes Nation — and Fast

CIUDAD REAL, Spain — To sell his vision of a high-speed train network to the American public, President Barack Obama this week cited Spain, a country most people don’t associate with futuristic bullet trains.

Yet the country is on track to bypass France and Japan to have the world’s biggest network of ultrafast trains by the end of next year, figures from the International Union of Railways and the Spanish government show.

The growth of the Alta Velocidad Española, or AVE, high-speed rail network is having a profound effect on life in Spain. Many Spaniards are fiercely attached to their home regions and studies show they are unusually reluctant to live or even travel elsewhere.

But those centuries-old habits are starting to change as Spain stitches its disparate regions together with a €100 billion ($130 billion) system of bullet trains designed to traverse the countryside at up to 218 miles an hour.

“We Spaniards didn’t used to move around much,” says José María Menéndez, who heads the civil engineering department at the University of Castilla-La Mancha. “Now I can’t make my students sit still for one second. The AVE has radically changed this generation’s attitude to travel.”

But the AVE-which means “bird” in Spanish- proved to be a popular and political success. Politicians now fight to secure stations in their districts. Political parties compete to offer ever-more ambitious expansion plans. Under the latest blueprint, nine out of ten Spaniards will live within 31 miles of a high speed rail station by 2020.

By last year, the sprawling network of lines that stretches out from the capital, Madrid, reached Málaga in the south, Valladolid to the north and Barcelona in the country’s northeast. Now, residents of Barcelona can be in Madrid in just over two-and-a-half hours-a journey that takes around six hours by car.

The University of Castilla-La Mancha’s campus here has grown sharply in size and importance. “The school is here because of the AVE,” says Mr. Menéndez, the department head. “Without it, it would be impossible to attract the high-level staff we need.”

Around a third of Mr. Menéndez’s students are from a different region of Spain — almost unheard of in a country where students mostly stay close to home.

(Source: The Transport Politic)

Proposal reveals a little – and a lot – about how the administration wants to proceed with its rail programs

Click here to read the entire article.

(Source: Good Magazine)

Click here to read the entire article.

 (Source: USDOT, Infrastructurist; YouTube)

President Barack Obama, along with Vice President Biden and Secretary LaHood, announced a new U.S. push today to transform travel in America, creating high-speed rail lines from city to city, reducing dependence on cars and planes and spurring economic development.

The President released a strategic plan outlining his vision for high speed rail in America. The plan identifies $8 billion provided in the ARRA and $1 billion a year for five years requested in the federal budget as a down payment to jump-start a potential world-class passenger rail system and sets the direction of transportation policy for the future. The strategic plan will be followed by detailed guidance for state and local applicants. By late summer, the Federal Railroad Administration will begin awarding the first round of grants.

The Infrastructurist summaries this nicely: ” In fact, he (President Obama) doesn’t pull any punches in saying that rail is a *better* way to travel than car or plane. It’s “faster, easier, and cheaper than building more freeways.” And he conjures the appeal of travel from city center to city center without having to dash out to far-flung airports — “no sitting on the tarmac, no lost luggage, no taking off your shoes.” And: “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.”

The report formalizes the identification of ten high-speed rail corridors as potential recipients of federal funding. Those lines are: California, Pacific Northwest, South Central, Gulf Coast, Chicago Hub Network, Florida, Southeast, Keystone, Empire and Northern New England. Also, opportunities exist for the Northeast Corridor from Washington to Boston to compete for funds to improve the nation’s only existing high-speed rail service.

President Obama’s vision for high-speed rail mirrors that of President Eisenhower, the father of the Interstate highway system, which revolutionized the way Americans traveled. Now, high-speed rail has the potential to reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil, lower harmful carbon emissions, foster new economic development and give travelers more choices when it comes to moving around the country.

“My high-speed rail proposal will lead to innovations that change the way we travel in America. We must start developing clean, energy-efficient transportation that will define our regions for centuries to come,” said President Obama. “A major new high-speed rail line will generate many thousands of construction jobs over several years, as well as permanent jobs for rail employees and increased economic activity in the destinations these trains serve. 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.”

“Today, we see clearly how Recovery Act funds and the Department of Transportation are building the platform for a brighter economic future – they’re creating jobs and making life better for communities everywhere,” said Vice President Biden. “Everyone knows railways are the best way to connect communities to each other, and as a daily rail commuter for over 35 years, this announcement is near and dear to my heart. Investing in a high-speed rail system will lower our dependence on foreign oil and the bill for a tank of gas; loosen the congestion suffocating our highways and skyways; and significantly reduce the damage we do to our planet.”

Ten major corridors are being identified for potential high-speed rail projects:

(Source: Reuters) 

Image: Seth Anderson via Apture

The Obama administration is expected to unveil its plans on Thursday for accelerating development of high-speed rail, a concept that in the past has had mixed political support and little public funding.

“It will be broad and strategic,” Karen Rae, acting head of the Federal Railroad Administration, told Reuters in an interview on Tuesday about the initiative described by officials as President Barack Obama‘s top transportation priority.

“It’s going to talk about how we begin to create this new vision for high-speed and intercity rail,” Rae said.

White House and transportation officials have spent the past several weeks weighing plans for developing at least six high-speed corridors.

High-speed rail initiatives are in various planning stages in California, Florida, Nevada, the Carolinas and the Northeast. States are already formulating how to use the large appropriation for high-speed rail projects in the economic stimulus act.

“Some of these plans are 20 years old,” said Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood in an interview this week with Reuters Financial Television.

In February, Congress included $8 billion for rail development in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and Obama has included another $5 billion for the efforts in the White House’s proposed budget.

LaHood said the $8 billion in stimulus money will “jump-start” the process, but rail advocates and transportation officials agree that financing high-speed rail nationally will cost significantly more.