High speed rail – $2 billion investment
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In March this year, the Obama administration revoked a $2.4 billion grant after Florida Governor Rick Scott cancelled a high-speed rail project in his state, fearing taxpayers there would have to subsidize the project in the future.
The grant to Florida would have developed a high-speed rail link between the cities of Tampa and Orlando. Mr Scott said he did not want the cash-strapped state to have to pay for operating costs in the future, although state transportation officials had forecast the rail line would operate at a profit in its first year, 2015.
The money is being diverted to other congested areas of the United States. The projects will boost rail services between Washington DC to Boston, as well as in the mid-west and California.
These projects will put thousands of Americans to work, save hundreds of thousands of hours for American travellers every year, and boost US manufacturing by investing hundreds of millions of dollars in next-generation, American-made locomotives and rail cars,” Vice-President Joe Biden said in a statement released by the Department of Transportation.
The 22 inter-city rail projects to be funded by the $2bn include:
- $795m to upgrade the railroad in the heavily used Northeast Corridor between Washington DC, Philadelphia, New York City and Boston, increasing speeds to 160mph from 135mph in some stretches.
- $404m to expand high-speed rail between Detroit and Chicago, saving passengers 30 minutes of travel time.
- $300m to advance a high-speed rail project between Los Angeles and San Francisco.
The money will also improve service on commuter rail systems like New Jersey transit and the Long Island Railroad, both near New York City.
Rail travel in the US is tedious by comparison with services in many other countries.
In the Northeast Corridor, an express train takes about three hours and 40 minutes to travel about 220 miles from New York to Boston. By contrast, the Eurostar travels roughly the same distance from London to Paris in less than two and a half hours with over 20 miles of the journey under the English Channel.
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Well said Daniel – and I apologise for not realising you’re a Brit…a bit slow on the uptake me…
High speed rail links are great for commuters – or not so in the case of our London/Birmingham one – but they screw the enviroment therefore are a bad idea – but who cares if we can get from A to B quicker eh?
Possibly for all the wrong reasons but that Florida Goernor has done Florida a favour.
Rick Scott is a Tea Bagger favorite. Their goal is to elect fanatics such as Scott so as to carry on their ideology not to make for a progressive government.
The British government, despite the parlace state of our finances, is planning to spend $28bn on a high speed rail line between London and Birmingham. The present journey time is one hour twelve minutes. The time saved will be twenty three minutes but because the new station is farther away from Birmingam city centre the actual time saved will be ten minutes.
Everybody, except the government and Birmingham leaders, are up in arms about it. It will go through some of England’s finest countryside. It will disrupt existing rail services which will become worse.
The government claims that it will encourage London businessmen to open branches in Birmingham – I don’t think a short rail journey now stops them travelling, so a ten minute saving will be no incentive. It also claims that it will generate $72bn extra business and thousands of extra jobs. But 70% of those jobs will be in London. Nobody trusts these figures anyway.
Unlike America Britain is too small to warrant this sort of expenditure on fast trains. Our government is living in cloud cuckoo land.
Now THAT’S what I’m talking about!!
Florida’s loss is a real gain for these other states. There’s nothing that can be said about Scott that hasn’t already been said.
I’m still in shock over the fact that this looney was elected. He was under investigation during the election and is still under investigation. I’m hopeful the people, the smart ones, of the State of Florida will take a long hard look at this decision.
Can’t they recall the dumb SOB?
I was told by a WI resident that goofy Gov. Walker also returned Fed money that was earmarked for a high-speed rail between Milwaukee and Madison. Evidentially this is a Republican thing, can’t use money from a Democrat to help people and create jobs.