High Speed Rail Faces its Biggest Challenge Yet
The high speed rail grant program created by the Federal Railroad Agency that was funded to the tune of $8 billion dollars in the stimulus bill is getting ready to award the first set of grants over this winter season. However, the US is finding that actually launching high speed rail, or even just marginally improving the existing passenger railroad system, is no easy task.
The FRA announced guidance that earlier this year that there would be two sets of awards, one for small ready to go projects sooner and one for major corridors and longer term projects second. However the FRA recently changed its mind and said that they two rounds would be announced at the same time to insure continuity between the phases amongst other reasons. That may be. But it is clear that the FRA has been overwhelmed. For a program that has never funded a dollar, there were $50 billion in long term and corridor work requests and $7 billion in shovel ready project requests.
Previous to the stimulus bill the FRA has run grant programs that ran into the millions not billions, and had been primarily a regulatory agency. Suddenly they are front and center with the largest new Federal transportation funding program in the recent past. And the agency is facing all of the classic challenges of how to create support for the program across the country and the political spectrum while at the same time insuring that something gets built, preferably as soon as possible given the employment situation in the US. And finally it has to address a fundamental question: what kind of high speed rail does america need? totally new systems, or gradual upgrades to corridors across the country?
The good news here is that these are the issues that are being discussed. What a difference a year makes! Remember during the Bush administration Amtrak skirted close to bankruptcy twice, with the encouragement of the White House. Clearly we should build a new build system in California, and the FRA will definitely fund it with the biggest dollars of any other project. And the existing Acela corridor will get major upgrades. After that I think the awards will go more the direction of what the FTA wants to promote. The Midwest seems like a good shot. And although Florida is pitching a new build system that looks good, the state has been so anti transit and so pro car for so long I am skeptical of their bid.
