Posts about High-speed Rail

Ask Congress for $4 billion: A Congressional conference committee will soon reconcile two transportation appropriations, one with $4 billion for high-speed rail in the House, and the other for $1.2 billion in the Senate. T4America and other groups are asking people to push for the higher number. (Comment · Share)

High-speed map of rail: Where would the nationwide high-speed rail network go? RPA created a great interactive map showing various phases. (America 2050) (Comment · Share)

Cowening before trains: Tyler Cowen isn't convinced by Infrastructurist's improved HSR cost-benefit analysis. Cowen also doesn't take the Metro because he can't stop along the way to run errands. (Marginal Revolution, Froggie, David C) (Comment · Share)

Krugman looks where Samuelson doesn't: Ryan Avent, Matt Yglesias, and others have been beating up on Robert Samuelson all week for essentially comparing the average population density of the entire U.S. to Europe's, and concluding high-speed rail is therefore impractical. The fallacy: most people don't live in Montana. Paul Krugman looks more intelligently at Census data and finds that about ¼ of the population lives in areas as dense as his home near Princeton, where trains are a major form of transportation, and where European-style HSR could be quite successful. And that doesn't even consider the future land use potential of HSR. (Times, Cavan) (Comment · Share)

What's really inefficient is freeway building: Saint Louis Urban Workshop modifies Samuelson's op-ed to replace "high-speed rail" with "endless highway and road building." All of a sudden the arguments make more sense. (Via @NewUrbanism) (Comment · Share)

HSR looks better when you consider real projects: Ed Glaeser's "back of the envelope calculations" for a silly HSR segment nobody is actually considering suggest HSR isn't worth the investment. Yonah Freemark does his own calculation based on a real HSR proposal, the "Texas T-Bone," and discovers far more benefit. (Infrastructurist, цarьchitect) (Comment · Share)

High-speed, Baltimore to Richmond, bit by bit: Both Virginia and Maryland will apply for some of the federal government's $8 billion high-speed rail money. Virginia wants about $75 million, for a third track over a segment of the rail line paralleling I-95, and will apply for more in October. Maryland has a $360 million package to fix or replace bridges, tunnels, signals and more along the Washington-Baltimore corridor. (WBJ) (Comment · Share)

From bad to worse quality commentary: Harvard's Ed Glaeser has been picking on high-speed rail in a New York Times blog for the last few weeks with poorly thought-out arguments that Ryan Avent has been patiently refuting. Yesterday, Robert Samuelson rolled Glaeser's arguments into a an even sloppier piece with the faulty syllogism that since a) Amtrak has gotten subsidies in the past and b) rail in this country isn't amazing, then c) spending money on trains must be wasteful while all car spending is great. Avent refutes once again. (Post, Streetsblog, Chris R) (Comment · Share)

Rails and trails: Washcycle summarizes a Finish The Trail series rebutting anti-Purple Line forces' arguments about the Capital Crescent Trail. ... A growing number of Virginia organizations are petitioning the Commonwealth to include pedestrian and bike facilities along with future rail projects. (VBF, Gavin Baker) ... That might include high-speed rail to Richmond, the subject of another petition for high-speed rail on the DC-Richmond corridor, a project Virginia plans to submit for a competitive stimulus grant. (Joey) (Comment · Share)

Transit

LaHood, Biden meet with governors on high-speed rail

by Elana Schor • June 3, 2009 4:30 pm

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood and Vice President Biden met at the White House this afternoon with officials from 20 states in contention for funding as part of the Obama administration's high-speed rail program.

The high-speed Midwest Regional Rail Initiative's proposed reach. (Photo: Michigan Messenger)

"This is how the interstate highway system started, folks," Biden told the governors, according to the pool report filed by the White House press corps. "It wasn't like the Lord on the eighth day said—boom!—there's the interstate highway system."

The group included eight governors—from Michigan, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Wisconsin, Illinois, Massachusetts, Georgia and Missouri—but not New York's David Paterson, who's taking some flak from a Democratic state legislator for his decision to focus on legislative priorities in Albany.

Applications are due this summer for the $8 billion in high-speed rail money that was added to the economic stimulus bill, and detailed guidance on that process is slated for release by month's end.

It's still unclear, though, how many projects are in line for a share of that pot, not to mention the passenger demand and matching-funds requirements that rail proposals would have to meet.

As Sarah pointed out in her Streetsblog Network post today, directing the money to the most high-demand areas remains a key concern for transportation planners.

Another unanswered question is whether Congress will sign on to the administration's pitch for $5 billion in annual high-speed rail funding over the next five years. LaHood is headed to the House Appropriations Committee tomorrow morning, where part of his job will be to sell that long-term rail investment to his former colleagues on the Hill.

Meanwhile, the most well-represented corridor at the meeting appears to be the Midwest Regional Rail Initiative, which would link Chicago with St. Louis, the Detroit area, Wisconsin and the Twin Cities of Minnesota. In an April letter to LaHood, governors from that region estimated the cost of their high-speed rail corridor at $3.4 billion, using 3,000 miles of track that don't require negotiations over rights-of-way.

Midwestern senators are also working the phones to ensure that freight rail doesn't stand in the way of an expansion of high-speed passenger service. Will the Midwest initiative's political might—both LaHood and the president are Illinoisans—help vault it ahead of the competition?

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