President Biden Announces $8.2 Billion in New Grants for High-Speed Rail and Pipeline of Projects Nationwide
Friday, December 8, 2023
Announcement includes 10 projects in 9 states ready for construction and 69 corridors across 44 states identified for future development through two grant programs funded by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law
WASHINGTON, D.C. – The U.S. Department of Transportation’s Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) today announced that it has awarded $8.2 billion for 10 passenger rail projects across the country while announcing corridor planning activities that will impact every region nationwide. This unprecedented investment in America’s nationwide intercity passenger rail network builds on a $16.4 billion investment announced last month for 25 projects of national significance along America’s busiest rail corridor. To date, the Biden-Harris Administration has announced nearly $30 billion in investments for our nation’s rail system.
Projects announced through the Federal State Partnership for Intercity Passenger Rail (Fed-State National) Program will advance two high-speed rail corridors and fund improvements to existing rail corridors for expanded service and performance. These investments will:
Help deliver high-speed rail service in California’s Central Valley
Create a brand-new high-speed rail corridor between Las Vegas, Nevada, and southern California, serving an estimated 11 million passengers annually
Make major upgrades to existing conventional rail c
Amtrak and the Feds are boosting expectation well above what they will probably execute on here. I seen numerous press releases on Facebook from all over the country about how Amtrak is going to start this corridor here and over there. They announced two new corridors in Wisconsin alone. Milwaukee - Madison - Twin Cities and Milwaukee - Green Bay, Minnesota they announced Twin Cities to Duluth…In Arizona they announced Phoenix to Tucson…and the list goes on and on. Everytime I read one of the FB posts on this shower of small amounts of Federal money all across the country for studies…this plays in my head over and over again…
We are what $33 Trillion in Debt. Which I am in a small minority of people that still thinks we are already overcomming that with past inflation as well as the comming tech boom with AI…even so it is a ridiculously high number and I don’t see the country spending another half to full trillion just on Corridor rail projects across the country. So in my view the complete lack of selectivity here is a waste of money.
Hey thats palgarism (heh). The best part is I just got a FB post about how Amtrak is going to restart the North Coast Hiawatha across three to four states. Apparently not only do people think the states it would run across have a money tree somewhere but also an Amtrak LD equipment tree…where you can just pluck off locomotives and passenger cars at random when you want to start new service in a year or two (10-15 years average - realistically). It’s getting ridiculous and a lot of people are wasting the grant money handed out on a lot of nonsense plans.
I would love to be more positive and optimistic about this but my past experience on adding new trains (Texas and Wisconsin) it’s not done in a few years and as I posted before it takes a strong grass roots effort and the states also have to backstop with money.
You might want to be careful about overgeneralizing the TX and WI unfortunate experiences to other regions. Some states (IL, MI, VA and even WI have done fairly well with improving and/or expanding services.
Right so IL, MI and WI are currently existing corridors being upgraded with the recent money since 2008, in my view that is not as difficult to accomplish because there is ridership and Amtrak trains on those routes already. I am referring to the recent promises of entirely new trains that do not currently exist on new routes.
I was referring to all Amtrak’s dreams nationwide of implementing Amtrak Connect US - patching up the National LD network and starting new services one train a day as a corridor starter like the the new Chicago - Twin Cities train, without much route improvement.
Not necessarily a national corridor network which my read on that is not only new corridor services but new corridor services with train frequency of 5 trains or more and 79+ mph or higher speeds along with rehabbed routes.
Amtrak only has 83 trainsets on order and my interpretation of that order was it is going to replace Amfleet I. Not sure it was intended for Amfleet II or Bombaridier. However, I have my doubts they are going to keep Amfleet I as spare equipment after the new trainsets come in. Pretty sure they will be sold or scrapped.
The routes in IL, WI, VA, MD and MI required effort to get funding to expand or even start. There are lessons there for other states/regions to emulate.
Still not clear from your reply where that half trillion $ number came from, Amtrak or your own estimate.
It reminds me of the 70’s energy crisis. Suddenly there were going to be all these new trains popping up, running between cities which had no train service.
$94 million was a compromise from what I read. They asked for a lot more money than that. So I think this is a scaled down project and some were disappointed.
Chicago - Twin Cities second train already approved, will start in 2024. Twin Cities - Duluth probably a year after, maybe early 2026.
Funding for high-speed rail between Twin Cities - Chicago was approved back in the Obama administration, but failed because Wisconsin refused to participate…largely for political reasons.
I think California taxpayers just wanted a High Speed rail line between LA and SFO but then the politicians got involved and the project manager apparently issued the directive: “Spare no expense”. I still can’t believe the route or the fact they are boring under multiple mountain ranges. I don’t even think Europe builds High Speed Railways that way.
I know the topography well having lived in California for 61 years. There is no other, better way to do it. The existing route from LA to Bakersfield, via Mojave even with it’s roughly doubled length still has grades that nearly exceed rail abiliies. Tehachapi Loop is a hint at the extraordinay measures to get even that lenghty line through.
The coast route is almost as long and includes grades an a much larger portion of the route. The San Joaquin Valley routing with substantial tunneling at the southern end is the only way to do this.
Wisconsin was 3 billion in the hole back then. Walker straightened that out. Saved state school districts from having to make deep cuts. People often have selective memory.
I don’t think the issue is selective memory because the route was Milwaukee to Madison for $800 million not Chicago to Twin Cities. There is a math issue going on there if people really believe a trully high speed rail line can even be built on the shorter route for $800 million.
I think the most interesting part about the $500,000 grant money toward route studies is that there seems to be no coordination or anyone specifically prioritizing routes. Case in point: Both Phoenix-Tucson and Los Angeles-Coachella Valley are being studied, which incorporate part of the Sunset Limited route. The IIJA specifically mentions funding to make the Cardinal and Sunset Limited daily trains. So, while all these things could come to pass, it’s likely one other important restorative aspect of the Sunset Limited route won’t happen, that is reopening the Phoenix-Wellton segment to return the train to Phoenix proper. This is because no government entity pitched Phoenix to Wellton as a desired corridor. Amtrak, of course, could apply for additional grant money to get the Sunset operating through Phoenix again, but I would guess any such applications would be made toward regional/state-sponsored service.
It also appears that those who get the $500,000 for route studies get say in who gets to do the studies. Anyone see anything wrong with this? I can see where the results could be anywhere from asking for the moon and the stars to requesting too little to get a new service launched.
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