The announcement has been made, the results are in, and the biggest winner is…California, which will receive $2.25 billion to build a line from Los Angeles to San Francisco with trains running up to 220 miles per hour. The Chicago-St. Louis route will get $1.1 billion, while Minneapolis-Milwaukee-Chicago will receive just over $800 million for a variety of functions including refurbishing existing stations and track improvements. Sure enough, the Tampa-Orlando-Miami camp is getting a big chunk, with $1.25 billion, while New York-Albany-Buffalo is a surprising loser with just $148 million for improvements to existing routes and new track construction. Another $112 million will go towards improvements on the existing Northeast Corridor. For a full list, click here.
Ray LaHood has written a blog post hailing the funding, and the plans for high speed rail, a “historic…game changer for American transportation.” Meanwhile, Curt Pringle, Chairman of the California High-Speed Rail Authority, released the following statement:
This award is fantastic news for California and for our state’s high-speed rail project. It is an award that will lead to the creation of tens of thousands of quality jobs in the near-term and to continued economic strength and enhance our transportation network in the long term.
This award will go toward specific projects, but it will benefit every single section of our planned high-speed rail system by moving this entire vision closer to reality – closer to being the first true high-speed rail system in the United States.
California’s success in winning a significant portion of this federal funding, for which there was tremendous competition, is a tribute to our partnerships with our Legislature, with local governments, and to the hard work and leadership of Governor Schwarzenegger and California’s senators and congressional delegation. A California high-speed rail system truly gives each of us the opportunity to change the future of California for our children and grandchildren.
Image courtesy of DOT
CLICK THROUGH FOR A LARGER MAP
CLICK FOR LARGER VERSION
January 28th, 2010 at 11:59 am
Can you please provide a link to the full-resolution image or PDF of the “High-Speed Passenger Rail Program” map shown in this post?
I am unable to find this map on the DOT website, etc. and am a little surprised at Infrastructurist that I can’t view the full-size picture from this post. (The map’s text is too hard to read in its smaller form.)
Thanks!
January 28th, 2010 at 12:13 pm
The Transport Politic created its own map with slightly more project detail: http://www.thetransportpolitic.com/2010/01/28/high-speed-rail-grants-announced-california-florida-and-illinois-are-lucky-recipients/
January 28th, 2010 at 12:17 pm
map probably not available because they appear to have significantly messed up the layout of the southeast corridor. someone must not know where Charlotte, Raleigh, Atlanta and Birmingham are….
January 28th, 2010 at 12:18 pm
[...] to get $2.25 billion in Federal funds to build a high speed rail line. SACBEE, INFRASTRUCTURIST It’s a “Major victory” for California High Speed rail says the official [...]
January 28th, 2010 at 12:20 pm
The initial map was the first one issued by the DOT, but we’ve since posted an updated map that can be enlarged by clicking. Thanks - Melissa
January 28th, 2010 at 12:27 pm
I’m not sure I really get the Obama-generated map in this post - the Transport Politic map that Steven Vance posted seems much more accurate.
I’m thrilled to see Charlotte-Raleigh faring well. The grant will also go to replace the ghastly Charlotte Amtrak station with a centralized multi-modal station (Gateway Station) that will tie in much better with the city’s transit infrastructure. North Carolina has been able to reduce travel time between the two cities from 5 to 4 hours in the past decade, and these improvements will hopefully see it fall closer to 3 (and will beat travel time by car!).
It will be an important link to an eventual HSR all the way from Atlanta to DC and NY/Bos beyond.
January 28th, 2010 at 12:33 pm
Any word on whether or not existing diesel lines will be converted to electrified trains? This seems to be an overlooked topic on this and many other websites dealing with mass transit and commuter service in particular. The benefits would be enormous, both in terms of services (increased reliability, speed etc) and for the environment (quieter trains, no diesel emissions etc). It would be great if the Infrastructurist would at least talk about this issue more often. Diesel should have no future, or at least a very limited one, in our nations passenger rail service.
January 28th, 2010 at 1:33 pm
The fact Chicago-St. Louis being 2nd highest (tying Florida), and Minneapolis-Milwaukee-Chicago being 3rd highest, says something about Crook County being in the White House.
January 28th, 2010 at 1:39 pm
Chicago is the historical center of the US rail universe. The MWHSR association has been pushing these plans for far longer than Obama has been in the White house.
January 28th, 2010 at 2:49 pm
Why is there no passenger service along the existing rail from Detroit to Toledo? The Hub and Spoke model failed the airlines, don’t make Amtrak use failed business models.
Trains from Detroit to Cleveland and the NE Corridor NOW.
January 28th, 2010 at 4:04 pm
[...] President Obama announced that High Speed Rail in California is getting $2.5 billion dollars. Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood gushed on his blog (he has one!) about how President Obama [...]
January 28th, 2010 at 4:33 pm
How does this money compare to the complete project costs? It feels like we should celebrate, but I have a feeling we’ll need billions more to build it out.
January 28th, 2010 at 4:38 pm
Chicago is the 3rd largest city in the U.S., and the Chicago-St. Louis metro pop totals above 12 million people. The line is ripe for a speed upgrade. Clearly Obama must be the most corrupt politician in history for promoting an expenditure that makes absolute sense.
January 28th, 2010 at 6:05 pm
tozmervo- the Raleigh to Charlotte train (Piedmont) makes the trip in 3:12 on the timetable and has finished as quickly as 2:58 when running on time out of the last station before Charlotte.
I attended the event today and the NCDOT SecTrans said the new target with this money is 2:15, which would *smoke* the drive time between RGH and CLT.
January 28th, 2010 at 8:29 pm
I stand corrected, I hadn’t realized that the travel time had gotten down that low. 2:15! That’s incredible!
January 29th, 2010 at 12:28 am
[...] in transportation in the past day or so is the $8 billion of federally funded money that has been distributed across the U.S. to build high-speed rail and fix already-existing railway infrastructure. California got a big [...]
January 29th, 2010 at 10:48 am
[...] And the high speed rail cash goes [...]
January 29th, 2010 at 1:19 pm
[...] announced the winners in the $8 billion high speed rail grant program. The Infrastructurist has the details, but major winners [...]
January 31st, 2010 at 8:48 am
[...] And the High Speed Rail Cash Goes To… » INFRASTRUCTURIST [...]
January 31st, 2010 at 10:19 am
In addition to breaking it down state by state, which class one railroads are the biggest winners, as most of these funds go towards shared freight and passenger tracks.
Did the FRA attach some strings to these grants, such that in a few years the passenger trains are not sidetracked for a ‘hot double stacker’ behind schedule?
Or, worse yet, the class one’s just say were way too busy for anymore passenger trains — more money please!
February 1st, 2010 at 4:26 pm
[...] federal investments in high-speed passenger rail were announced last week. Another map of high-speed rail corridors is available here. (Map: US Department of [...]
February 5th, 2010 at 1:03 pm
@Pete
This is why people in the rest of the country resent the coasts sometimes. Perhaps this is news to you, but Chicago is the 3rd largest metropolitan area in the country and is America’s 4th busiest airport system in international passenger traffic (behind NYC, Los Angeles, and Miami). The Great Lakes industrial region (the entire area stretching from Milwaukee to Pittsburgh, a heavily urbanized area) is also one of the most densely-populated regions of the United States. A St Louis-Chicago HSR has been talked about for several years now, this isn’t something the Obama administration just cooked up. Illinois also has several mid-sized cities in-between, including the state capital, which desperately need faster connections to the Chicago and St Louis metro areas, and whose regional airports have had a decline in flights in recent years, due to cuts by UA and AA. As the de facto capital of the Midwest region, it makes sense that Chicago serves as a rail hub for the region, or at least the heavily-populated eastern half of the Midwest. If the Midwest actually had a speedy and efficient rail system, it would not only be a more practical alternative to short-distance flights (or intercity buses), but also serve as a feeder system for Chicago’s airports for longer-distance flights.
Unfortunately, this HSR proposal for Illinois is a joke, just like the Acela. Trains will not be true HSR by European and Asian standards, not by any means. California HSR *will* be true HSR. The proposal for Illinois is simply to “upgrade” existing track so that trains travel at 110mph, instead of actually building specially-designated high-speed lines, which true HSR requires. This is very pathetic. Both the Great Lakes region and the Northeast corridor got the shaft with this proposal. The Northeast, where true HSR would make the *most* sense, will be stuck with running Acela trains on conventional track, and the Midwest will soon get a carbon-copy of this retarded arrangement.
February 17th, 2010 at 9:18 pm
[...] 17, 2010 senateagenda Leave a comment Go to comments First, the stimulus awarded $8 billion to high speed rail projects across the country, and now TIGER grants from the stimulus is awarding $1.5 billion to [...]