US to allocate 800 million for high speed rail project

[kpete]

Source: Agence France-Press

US to allocate 800 million for high speed rail project

The US government will allocate 800 million dollars this week for the construction of a high-speed train in Florida linking the cities of Tampa and Orlando, local lawmakers and press reports said Monday.

The money would raise to more than two billion dollars the funds allocated for the ambitious project -- the first high-speed train in the United States.

"This is fantastic news for Florida," said Senator Bill Nelson. "This will ensure the state remains full speed ahead with high-speed rail construction."

The Tampa tribune reported that Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood told state legislators that 800 million dollars would go for the Tampa to Orlando line.

Another eight million dollars would go to study a future high-speed rail line between Orlando and Miami, the report said.

Read more: http://www.alternet.org/rss/breaking_news/307698/us_to_allocate_800__million_for_high_speed_rail_project/

[Taverner]

1. A W E S O M E !

Loves me some HS Rail!

[ozymandius]

2. Very cool!

Green transportation and stimulus all-in-one. That rocks!

[harun]

3. Sooner the better.

[zeemike]

4. 800 billion sounds like a lot of money

And it is until you put it into perspective...that is .8 billion and what does a Air Craft carrier cost....4 or5?
So for the cost of one carrier we could build 5 times as much high speed rail.
And what would a 10% cut in the military budget bring....80 billion?
It makes no sense not to do it.

On edit....I looked it up and found this.

The latest Nimitz class carrier to be built, the Ronald Regan, cost upwards of 4 billion dollars.
The information above is out of date. I live in the Tidewater Area. Aircraft carriers are built in Newport News Virginia. The George H W Bush (CVN - 77) was delivered on May 11, 2009. Price tag. $6.2 Billion.

The newest Ford-class carriers are expected to cost around $9 billion each (in 2010 dollars). These costs exclude any aircraft.

[ShamelessHussy]

5. peanuts - n/t

[madrchsod]

6. a japanese rail-car manufacturer is building a plant 15 minutes from my town

projected employment is 300 plus other industries that supplies the plant. we have thousands of unemployed and every job counts

[KurtNYC]

7. Hmmmm...Orlando...sounds so familiar...isn't there a resort there?

corporate welfare

[Posteritatis]

8. I thought the magical, unique, America-specific geography forbade anything to do with rail! (nt)

[bluesmail]

9. Florida (pardon me if I say it is a RW state) being a RW state, gets a big

allocation for badly needed rail projects. The R's are going to get all mooshy for Obama, (well a few). Good political strategy on the part of the D's. Really.

[catnhatnh]

10. Tampa and Orlando???

If you live north of Boston, to get TO Florida you must...Ride the train to Boston, Take a cab from one station to another, Ride to New York City, Change trains, Ride to Washington DC, Change trains, And ride to Florida.

So the best plan is to reduce an inter-city commute and not to make cross-country travel competitive??? Because I wanted to take a train south but one way cost almost three times the round trip flight and 22 hours...and my brother made the drive in less...

[SnoopDog]

11. Seems that we should allocate $1 billion per state...

... to implement high speed rail. That's $50 billion - we could just reduce the
War Department's budget a little bit.

I would imagine each state could benefit from such high speed rail. Maybe some states could get more,some less.
And maybe a 'High speed rail transportation department' could propose routes between states... Sort of like our rail road system...

[Roland99]

12. Any bets on how quickly Rick Scott would scuttle that if he won the race for Governor?

[Klukie]

13. Love this!! I live in Erie Pa....

and it would be a perfect location for high speed rail. We got Pittsburgh to the south...Cleveland to the west....and Buffalo to the north.

[Synicus Maximus]

14. Such a line does not sound every cost effective to save 20 minutes

Phase 1 of Florida's high speed rail program extends from Orlando International Airport to downtown Tampa.

The Tampa-Orlando line will run 84 miles from downtown Tampa to Orlando International Airport. The cost to build this line is projected to be $2.7 billion. The project will be built in the median of Interstate 4, where a 44-foot envelope has been preserved for this purpose. Right of way was preserved in the 1990s, and bridges were built higher and wider to accommodate high speed trains

Our initial projection is that run time between Tampa and Orlando with station stops would be about 55 minutes. These times are based on year 2004 high speed train technologies, which have since improved performance. The time travel chart for 2004 technologies between all stations is shown below. These travel times may be reduced depending upon station stops, final rail line geometry and the final selected technology. Express trips between Tampa and OIA would be even less, with the current express trip travel time estimated to be under 50 minutes
LINK http://www.floridahighspeedrail.org/fast-facts/

[Heddi]

15. I just moved from ampa back to Seattle. This is a useless line, only for the tourists

Yes, I know that tourists are 1/2 of the bread and butter of Florida economies (the other 1/2 being half-year retirees). But this solves no traffic problem in Florida. I have lived a few places in Fl---Boca Raton, Miami, St Pete....there are far more bottleneck traffic areas than Tampa to Orlando. I've never even HAD bad traffic between Tampa and Orlando, and in one case it took me longer to get from Tampa to St Pete than it did to get from Tampa to Orlando.

Like someone else said, this is just really big corporate welfare---what's in orlando? DISNEY! Theme Parks! Hotels!

God forbid something is done to help, yanno, the PEOPLE WHO LIVE IN THE STATE and have to drive the shitty, overcrowded roads