| Note: for much more detail on the plan, visit my California High Speed Rail Blog
Today President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood announced the DOT's high speed rail strategic plan. You can find the full details of the plan at the USDOT website.
It's an important announcement and contains some long-awaited policy changes that will help make HSR a reality across the nation. It's not yet clear how this will impact the California HSR project, but the way the funding allocation categories are set up appears to be quite favorable to us here in California.
First, I want to quote from both President Obama and VP Biden - these guys get it when it comes to HSR. It is a sea change from the last 25 years of refusal to speak openly and honestly about our nation's transportation needs.
"My high-speed rail proposal will lead to innovations that change the way we travel in America. We must start developing clean, energy-efficient transportation that will define our regions for centuries to come," said President Obama. "A major new high-speed rail line will generate many thousands of construction jobs over several years, as well as permanent jobs for rail employees and increased economic activity in the destinations these trains serve. High-speed rail is long-overdue, and this plan lets American travelers know that they are not doomed to a future of long lines at the airports or jammed cars on the highways."
He nailed it. This quote has it all - energy independence, job creation and long-term economic growth, and relieving congested airports and freeways.
That case is made strongly and powerfully in the HSR strategic plan document (PDF, 3MB). It is one of the best arguments for HSR that I've ever seen. This administration is serious about HSR. The plan includes a good overview of the history of rail funding in America, explaining that we have spent over $1 trillion on roads and airports in the last 50 years but have starved rail - even though, as the report makes clear, high speed rail is one of the best methods to move people over distances from 100 to 600 miles.
The report also recognizes the need to update the FRA's regulations to make HSR more of a possibility in this country - current regulations require trains to be unusually heavy, which makes it difficult to import existing "off the shelf" train technology or to achieve high speeds in an energy efficient way.
The heart of the plan is a three-pronged approach to funding HSR using the following "tracks" - shovel-ready projects (including engineering and EIR prep); "corridor programs" to support HSR corridors where planning and engineering work has already been done but that aren't yet shovel-ready; and "projects" to help new HSR planning efforts get off the ground. The CA HSR plan potentially qualifies for funding under all three categories, since our project has some shovel-ready elements to it, as well as corridor design work to complete.
California has to compete with some other states, of course, including the Pacific Northwest, Illinois, Ohio, New York, Pennsylvania, and perhaps even Florida and Texas. The California High Speed Rail Authority had been hopeful that we could get as much as $4 billion out of the $8 billion HSR stimulus money. That's going to be a challenge, but the plan hasn't been set up to make that impossible.
So overall I think this is a huge boost for HSR, even though it does leave some things unclear as to how exactly our own project will fare. And it all depends on Congress's commitment to funding HSR in future years, especially in the next transportation bill, where the highway lobby will fight to prevent their money from going to HSR.
Over the flip, I take issue with Matthew Yglesias on this announcement. |
