States Clamor For High-Speed Funding

High-speed rail is red-hot. The U.S. Dept. of Transportation has been flooded with proposals seeking a piece of the $8 billion it received for high-speed rail grants in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. However, the potential plans far outstrip DOT’s ARRA rail bank account. DOT’s Federal Rail-road Administration reported on July 16 it had received 278 rail-grant “pre-applications” totaling $102.5 billion. Some applicants may not win grants, but more money may be on the way. A House committee has recommended an additional $4 billion for high-speed rail in regular 2010 appropriations.

Photo: California high speed rail authority

California’s $40-billion program is viewed as a leading contender for DOT grants.

Looking at the crush of interest, Rick Harnish, executive director of the Midwest High Speed Rail Association, says, “Basically, this confirms what we’ve been saying. All around the country people want good, high-quality, dependable train service, and there needs to be a federal program to make it happen.”

FRA is going through an “avalanche” of pre-applications that came in before the July 10 deadline, says spokesman Warren Flatau. Final applications are due on Aug. 24 for three of FRA’s four grant categories. The deadline for the fourth category is Oct. 2. DOT expects to award the first batch of rail grants in the fall. Secretary Ray LaHood says, “We’re going to try and really jump-start opportunities...in several places in the country where people have been dreaming about high-speed rail for a decade or more.”

Only states, the District of Columbia, or multistate groups are eligible to apply for the rail grants. DOT reports applications were filed by 40 states and the District of Columbia. Some states submitted multiple proposals. California led the way, with applications totaling $24.2 billion. It has plans for a $40-billion, 800-mile system linking major cities.

Peter Gertler, chair of high-speed rail for HNTB Corp., Kansas City, says substantive applications that include political support and local commitment come from California and the Midwest, with other good projects submitted from the Northeast and Florida.

Maryland ranked second, with more than $11 billion in proposals. Of that, $3 billion would be for projects within the state’s boundaries, most of them on Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor. Major items include $1.5 billion to replace three bridges and install new track structures and $1 billion to replace the Baltimore & Potomac tunnel, which dates from the 1870s. FRA also included in Maryland’s total about $2.4 billion for Northeast Corridor projects in other states, including $400 million for the long-delayed Moynihan station project in Manhattan.

Maryland DOT has been working with other Northeast states and agreed to take the lead for those corridor...

Aileen Cho, ENR's senior transportation editor, is a native of Los Angeles and recovering New Yorker. She studied English and theater at Occidental College, where a reporter teaching the one existing journalism course encouraged her to apply for the LA Times Minority Editing Training Program. Her journalism training led to her first stories about transportation, working as a cub reporter with the Greenwich Time. Her work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times and New York Times. Many of her experiences with engineers and contractors have inspired material for her alternative theater productions way, way off Broadway. For ENR, Aileen has traveled the world, clambering over bridges in China, touring an airport in Abu Dhabi and descending into dark subway tunnels in New York City. She is a regular at transportation conferences, where she finds that airport and mass transit engineers really know how to have fun. Aileen is always eager to hop on another flight because there are so many interesting projects and people, and she gets tired of throwing her cats off her computer in her home office in Long Beach, California. She is a very conflicted Mets/Dodgers fan.

Tom Ichniowski has been writing about the federal government as ENR’s Washington Bureau Chief since the George H.W. Bush administration, and he has covered at least five major highway bills. A recognized expert on government policy on infrastructure and regulation, Tom is also a Baltimore native and Orioles fan who grew up rooting for Brooks and Frank Robinson. He is a graduate of Columbia College and Columbia’s graduate school of journalism, where he once used “unrelentless” in a headline.

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