stimulus funds for high speed rail?

Tampa is planning a connecting service between downtown and the airport along I-275, which was just recently widened by moving one set of lanes a block south, leaving a huge median (they also did this to I-4 east of downtown, and in fact to I-4 most of the way between Orlando and Tampa, meaning they already have the right-of-way for the high-speed rail). As for connections in Orlando, the SunRail commuter rail will link up with the high-speed rail south of downtown. Hopefully there will be more frequent local service between Orlando airport and Disney.
The Disney station would be served by Disney's internal bus system, which is pretty decent. Obviously city buses would also stop there (there's currently an express bus along I-4 between Disney and downtown, for example, and feeder buses to the various stations would make a lot of sense).
I can see several big sources of ridership: Tampa residents vacationing at Disney (yes, even Floridians visit), Orlando residents and Disney visitors taking a day trip to Tampa, and Tampa residents connecting to a flight at Orlando (with the presence of Disney, Orlando has a lot of International flights).

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Here's a 3-page official summary with all of the awards:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/files/documen ... isions.pdf
from the White House web site.

And here's a link to the announcement on the Official Blog of the Secretary of Transportation:
http://fastlane.dot.gov/2010/01/preside ... -rail.html
with a detailed map.

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Here are the press releases on which places will get which money to do what:

Fact Sheet: High Speed Intercity Passenger Rail Program: Pontiac-Detroit-Chicago

$244 million - Additional tracks and related improvements in Illinois and Indiana.

Fact Sheet: High Speed Intercity Passenger Rail Program: Minneapolis/St. Paul - Madison - Milwaukee - Chicago

$823 million - Improvements of Chicago - Milwaukee - Madison tracks, planning work on Madison - Minneapolis.

Fact Sheet: High Speed Intercity Passenger Rail Program: Chicago - St. Louis - Kansas City

$1133 million - Improvements of Chicago - St. Louis - Kansas City tracks, enabling 110-mph service over much of Chi-StL.

Fact Sheet: High Speed Intercity Passenger Rail Program: Cleveland - Columbus - Dayton - Cincinnati

$400 million - Start of 79-mph passenger service on the "3C Corridor".

Fact Sheet: High Speed Intercity Passenger Rail Program: Eugene - Portland - Seattle - Vancouver, B.C.

$598 million - Seattle - Portland - Eugene. Will go from 4 to 6 trains/day between Seattle and Portland, and will do various track improvements, presumably including a downtown-Tacoma bypass of the slow, curvy Point Defiance line.

Fact Sheet: High Speed Intercity Passenger Rail Program: California

$2344 million - mainly for CAHSR construction, most likely San Francisco - San Jose, Merced - Fresno - Bakersfield, and Los Angeles - Anaheim.

Also, Capitol Corridor crossover near Davis, relocation of tracks at Sacramento's station, improvements of San Joaquin trainsets, and new track and crossovers for Los Angeles - San Diego.

Fact Sheet: High Speed Intercity Passenger Rail Program: Northeast Region

$480 million, with $706 million from other sources - lots of little improvements and plans here and there, like planning for new Baltimore tunnels, eliminating the last three grade crossings on the Philadelphia-Harrisburg line, design of a new bridge in New Jersey near NYC, restoration of Portland - Brunswick track in Maine, etc.

Fact Sheet: High Speed Intercity Passenger Rail Program: Charlotte - Raleigh - Richmond - Washington, D.C.

$620 million - DC-Richmond: 11 mi of high-speed-capable track, Richmond-Raleigh: 4 crossovers, Raleigh-Charlotte: 30 projects, making possible 90-mph service with double the number of trains per day.

Fact Sheet: High Speed Intercity Passenger Rail Program: Tampa - Orlando - Miami

$1250 million - for a Tampa-Orlando line.

Fact Sheet: High Speed Intercity Passenger Rail Program:Iowa

$17 million - four remotely-powered crossovers on BNSF's Ottumwa subdivision.

Fact Sheet: High Speed Intercity Passenger Rail Program: Ft. Worth Area

$4 million - improvements to grade crossings between Austin and Ft. Worth.

so being(specifically FL And CA) that these projects are shovel ready, how soon will we see some construction in these tow states.. this is very exciting..

superbad wrote:so being(specifically FL And CA) that these projects are shovel ready, how soon will we see some construction in these tow states.. this is very exciting..

Florida asked for $2.5 Billion, but got just half that. I have no idea what-so-ever where Florida is going to get the other half. Therefore, that trains will not be leaving the train station anytime soon.

California estimates it'll take $42 Billion to build its complete system. I assume $2.5 Billion is enough to build 88 miles of HSR tracks as in Florida. California HSR does have financial resources to match the Feds, so let's assume they have enough to build 160 miles of HSR corridor. Florida however already owned the land, the median of I-4, California owns just a small percentage of the rail corridors. It's possible California now has enough money to buy all the land needed. They're still short building the entire route. Which areas they build first is still not known. I assume they will start to build the sections they can finish with these funds.

There's more than the $8 Billion awarded today for HSR, there's another $5 Billion approved over the next five years. However Congress could end up funding much more than the $5 Billion already approved, for example the first year (FY 2010) they have approved $2.5 Billion (half of the the $5 Billion awarded in the first year of the five year plan).

So right now we have $10.5 Billion funded, of which $8 Billion was announced today. And an additional $2.5 on top of that (at the least) from FY 11-13. It's almost assured all the projects that were announced today that did not receive 100% of the funding they were seeking will receive the full amount within the next 4-5 years.

Just for the Hades of it, I decided to count up which states are involved, even if in a tiny way:

California, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, New Hampshire, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Texas, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin

I count 25 states, while the press releases I've seen claim 31. I'd like to see which states I'd missed.

The additional states in the FRA's new HSR-proposal maps are Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Georgia, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Wyoming - 16 states, for a total of 42 states.

The remaining 8 are Alaska, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah, West Virginia

The maps:
Old
New

I confess that I'm impressed with how many states it covers - seems like a good way to build Congressional support.

orulz wrote:

Vincent wrote:(Let's hope the trains are full and profitable, who will pay the operational subsidy if the project doesn't cover its costs?) The Tampa to Orlando project would also be the laboratory for HSR regulations and operations practices. Chicago to St. Louis or Detroit would be much stronger in terms of ridership, but those projects would cost more than $2 bn to build. Other HSR corridor proposals that could be built for $2 bn are in places like Portland to Eugene or Oklahoma City to Tulsa, neither of which makes sense at this time. So Tampa to Orlando it will be. If CA gets the rumored $4 bn that leaves $2 bn to spread around in the other corridors, which won't do much to improve existing services while we wait for Florida's bullet trains to start rolling.

You have to give FL credit for being shovel-ready. It serves downtown Tampa which is nice, and leaves the option open for further extension (at great cost) to St. Petersburg. I do question its usability as a laboratory, though. The top speeds will be somewhere between 150 and 160mph. That is significantly different from the 220mph that is planned in California.

Using the Jet Train or electric TGVs? I hope the latter.

Watching one of the promotional videos, I'm wondering if there are safety issues running the line between the two lanes on the interstate?

Chafford1 wrote: Watching one of the promotional videos, I'm wondering if there are safety issues running the line between the two lanes on the interstate?

I can't speak to the safety issues, but what an advertisement for high-speed rail to have your car eclipsed and overtaken by a train doing 220 MPH a mere 20 feet away.

http://www.floridabullettrain.com/modul ... id_cat=2#7
That is the website for the Florida project. Yet some of the info is outdated.

Chafford1 wrote:Watching one of the promotional videos, I'm wondering if there are safety issues running the line between the two lanes on the interstate?

There's presumably enough room for the necessary fencing. Here's one of the bridges over I-4 that was replaced in the recent widening (from 4 to 6 lanes) - lots of room to shift the lanes over to make way for the rail. Here's one of the new sets of bridges carrying I-4 over an intersecting road. They designed the widening to allow for something in the median, whether high-speed rail or separated express lanes. Some of the older bridges that were simply modified, like this one, will need to be replaced, however.
And then you get over to Tampa, where they took out a whole city block for new westbound lanes, and there's enough room for new rail and road.

emersonbiggins wrote:

Chafford1 wrote: Watching one of the promotional videos, I'm wondering if there are safety issues running the line between the two lanes on the interstate?

I can't speak to the safety issues, but what an advertisement for high-speed rail to have your car eclipsed and overtaken by a train doing 220 MPH a mere 20 feet away.

Taking Eurostar to Paris alongside the Route Nationale (toll motorway) one can see the cars look as though they are stationary.

Route Nationale is the old free road (like U.S. Highways here); the toll motorway is the Autoroute.

Chafford1 wrote:Using the Jet Train or electric TGVs? I hope the latter.

If I were a US politician I'd be loath to go for the Jet Train: Bombardier has developed a new generation of electric HS trains (the launch client is China - not Canada...) and is no longer marketing the Jet. If anyone bases a "modern" HS line on that old train I predict the press will be unkind to them. That said, if you look at the home page of the Florida HR Rail authority the construction times the foresee for Tampa-Orlando look incredibly tight (four years, start to finish). Seeing as it normally takes around 15 months to get the electrical system up and running, I fear that they may have in mind a "scraped solution".

priamos wrote:

Chafford1 wrote:Using the Jet Train or electric TGVs? I hope the latter.

If I were a US politician I'd be loath to go for the Jet Train: Bombardier has developed a new generation of electric HS trains (the launch client is China - not Canada...) and is no longer marketing the Jet. If anyone bases a "modern" HS line on that old train I predict the press will be unkind to them. That said, if you look at the home page of the Florida HR Rail authority the construction times the foresee for Tampa-Orlando look incredibly tight (four years, start to finish). Seeing as it normally takes around 15 months to get the electrical system up and running, I fear that they may have in mind a "scraped solution".

Given that only half the money required has been allocated, the temptation must be to scale back the project . Bearing in mind the short distances between stops, the 168mph capability from expensive TGVs isn't needed. And 16 daily trains each way (1 an hour?) won't provide a great financial return from an electrified high speed line.

What price a diesel hauled 125mph line?