(Source: TreeHugger)

Rail station in Shanghai, China (photo via thetransportpolitic.com)

Obama backs high-speed rail service | CourierPostOnline.com | Courier-Post.

President Barack Obama on Thursday proposed setting aside $5 billion over the next five years so states could boost high-speed rail service.

 

States would have to compete for the grants, which would total $1 billion each year beginning in 2010.

The money was part of Obama’s $3.55 trillion budget plan for next year. The White House only released the budget highlights; the detailed spending blueprint is scheduled to be unveiled in April.

The rail money comes on top of $8 billion for high-speed rail in the $787 billion economic stimulus plan Obama signed into law this month

The Transportation Department also received $48.1 billion in the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act for shovel-ready infrastructure construction projects.

The proposed 2010 budget includes a five-year, $5 billion state grant program for high-speed rail projects, which is above $8 billion set aside for high-speed rail projects in the stimulus package.

(Source: NPR)

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood says high-speed rail could be a signature issue for Obama. “I do think this is the transformational issue for this administration when it comes to transportation,” LaHood said. “I think President Obama would like to be known as the high-speed rail president, and I think he can be.”

LaHood has sent Obama a memo outlining a half-dozen rail corridors across the country that could be in line to get some of the high-speed rail mon,ey.

The state that may be furthest along in planning is California, where voters approved a $9 billion bond issue last fall for high speed trains. Quentin Kopp, a former judge who is chairman of the California High-Speed Rail Authority, expects a lot of the federal money to wind up in the California system, which would link the state’s largest cities.

Click here to read the entire article.

(Source: KERA – Publicbroadcasting.net)

Texas boosters of a cross-state high-speed rail project are looking at the Federal Stimulus package. There’s money available that could put the Texas T-Bone on the right track. Texas Public Radio’s David Martin Davies has the story.

The Texas T-Bone is a high speed rail plan that would stretch from San Antonio to Dallas parallel to I-35. But midway – in Temple – the rail would branch off to the east to College Station and over to Houston.

Fickes: We’re talking 180 to 220 mph high speed rail.

Gary Fickes is a Tarrant County Commissioner and the secretary of the Texas High Speed Rail and Transportation Corporation.

Fickes: There’s no engineering been done, There’s no environmental been done. Nothing is shovel ready. We’d like to start doing our feasibility studies. Identify right of way. I think primarily that’s what you’re going to see the stimulus dollars on high speed rail go towards.

Texas agricultural interests are viewing the project with suspicion. They see it as gobbling up precious Texas Farmland.

Click here to read the entire article.

(Source: Bostonglobe.com)

In the half-month since the Senate nearly slashed mass transit from the stimulus bill, yet more locales broke ridership records from coast to coast. The New York City subway system moved 1.62 billion people last year, the most since 1950. Combined with buses, the city moved 2.37 billion people, the most since 1965. The Metro-North rail that services the suburbs outside New York carried a record 84 million passengers.

In the Pacific Northwest, the Amtrak Cascades line from Portland to Seattle set a new record with a 14.4 percent increase. In the South, ridership for the Piedmonttrain between Charlotte and Raleigh was up 30.8 percent last year.

Click here to read the full article.

(Source AFP via Yahoo.com)

One hundred and forty years after a transcontinental railroad linked California to the world, trains are being hailed as integral to the state’s growth in the 21st century.

This time, state officials are preparing to spend billions of dollars on high-speed rail lines modeled in part on Japan’s Shinkansen bullet train and France’s sleek TGV systems.

Supporters say an 800-mile (1,200 kilometer) system of trains running at up to 220 mph (350 kph) will cost about half of the 100 billion dollars that otherwise would have to be spent on new highways and airport runways.

They say it will reduce environmental damage, lessen the state’s dependence on foreign oil, create 450,000 jobs and give a huge boost to California businesses. They envision a system, to be completed by 2030, that will carry 90 million passengers a year.

“We need a high-speed rail. Our rail system in America is so old, we are driving the same speed as we did 100 years ago,” said California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Click here to read the full article.