White House Announces Another $53 Billion for High Speed Rail

I’ve been critical of the Obama Administration for its lack of adequate financial commitment to high speed rail in America. Well they shut me up, as Vice President Biden announced $53 billion over the next five years for HSR projects.

The goal is to make high speed rail accessible to most of America within a generation. That’s a laudable-yet-lofty goal considering the high costs and anti-train attitude of many older people, whose parents ironically relied on trains as their principal form of transportation. It’s about damn time the government sank some serious money into high speed rail though, as to date just $13 billion has been spread out among at least a half-dozen different HSR projects. That’s hardly enough money to even start one project (the California HSR project is estimated to cost $40-50 billion alone.)

However, $53 billion over the next five years is a serious chunk of change and should go a long way towards obtaining Obama’s goals. The money aims to improve or create three kinds of high speed rail corridor:

Core Express: These will be the main lines with trains traveling at average speeds of 125-250 mph
Regional: Money will be used to improve already-existing corridors like the Northeast to increase average speeds to 90-125 mph (America’s only high speed train, Amtrak’s Acela, runs the Northeast corridor but currently averages around 70 mph because of outdated tracks and infrastructure)
Emerging: Start new rail lines connecting cities with speeds up to 90 mph

It’s an ambitious plan to be sure, but it will create millions of jobs and give commuters an option other than traffic jams for getting to work. If Obama wants to get reelected though, he’s going to have to get these projects going sooner rather than later and convince elder Americans that trains are the future…again.

Source: The White House

Chris DeMorro is a writer and gearhead who loves all things automotive, from hybrids to HEMI’s. You can follow his slow descent into madness at Sublime Burnout.

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Tags: $53 billion, corridors, high, high speed rail, HSR, Investment, Joe Biden, President Obama, Rail, Speed, Vice President Biden, White House

About the Author

Christopher DeMorro A writer and gearhead who loves all things automotive, from hybrids to HEMIs, Chris can be found wrenching or writing- or esle, he's running, because he's one of those crazy people who gets enjoyment from running insane distances.

http://Web Name (required)

And who is going to pay the 53 billion – Chine??

Get real we need to get the budget under control fierst. If there was a real need for this, provate companies would make the investment. Why don’t you get a house closer to where you work? I do not want to pay for your commute and I do not want my government to pay for it either
- http://Web Adam
  
  They already do pay for your commute. You drive a car right? The government already pays Billions into maintaining roads and Highways. I’d rather see this put into Nuclear energy and electric cars myself, as I think personal transportation in the US is still going to be largely reliant on small vehicles and we ship a ton of freight on our rails right now. But it certainly could be argued that its about time we put our due money into high-speed rail. Especially for certain major routes with significant commute volume.
  
  Besides, where do you work? Every business in the country relies on and benefits from transportation. If ultimately certain areas can be more efficient from High-speed rail then EVERYONE benefits. Period.
http://Web Dick Engel

And who is going to pay the 53 billion – China??

Get real we need to get the budget under control first. If there was a real need for this, private companies would make the investment. Why don’t you get a house closer to where you work? I do not want to pay for your commute and I do not want my government to pay for it either. Generally government spending on these programs are wasteful and never break even, creating an eternal subsidy that the nation cannot afford
- http://Web ziv
  
  Both air travel and road travel are subsidized so it is only fair that an entire mode of transportation shouldn’t be eliminated because it needs a relatively modest amount of subsidies and the amount Amtrak gets is relatively small. They would need a lot less subsidies if the government hadn’t restricted their top speed to 79 mph, making Amtrak the slowest show in town. PTC will allow Amtrak to speed up to 95 mph in 2015 and probably up to 110 mph shortly thereafter. Faster trains on the regular routes will allow high speed rail to be worthwhile in more places.
  If the Empire Builder from Chicago to Seattle could get their time down from 48 hours to 40 hours it would make a huge difference. The west has more wide open spaces with much shallower curves so it will be easier to increase speeds everywhere but on the east coast…
http://Amazingidea Art Wallis

Just what we need: More empty trains to wave at as they go speeding by. When are you folks going to start doing the proper math. This isn’t Europe or Japan, no matter how much you want it to be. So, the potential traffic patterns necessary to make HSR even remotely worth the subsidies that would be required to operate it do not exist outside of a precious few existing corridors. Moreover, the present railroad infrastructure simply does not allow for the addition of the kind of high speed rail advertised for other areas of the country.

On the other hand, I suppose if we raise taxes high enough to pay for the continuing operation of this type of profligacy, we’ll eliminate most of the industrial activity which currently clogs our present railroad infrastructure with freight traffic, leaving the way clear for all those empty high speed passenger trains.
http://Web Tim Cleland

I sure hope this goes down in flames. NM has a train from Albuquerque thru Santa Fe up to the Colorado state line (the Rail Runner) and it’s a huge boondoggle. It cost taxpayers $475M to build (was originally estimated at $120M) and another $22M to operate each year. Passenger fares brought in only $1.9M last year. So, basically taxpayers are paying the other ~$20M/year so that a lucky few who happen to live convenient to the train stations can enjoy the ride.

Trains are a bad idea. If they were a good idea, they would be able to sustain themselves on their own profits. I’m hoping the GOP house slams the door on this and doesn’t even bring it to a vote.
- http://applesvsoranges Jcmarching
  
  how much “government money” ie. tax revenue, is spent on dirty, dangerous clogged roads and dirty, inefficient airports? How much imported energy is used to keep them running? Advanced Trains can run on domestic energy (the $ stays in our economy = jobs) much of which is clean and will be cleaner.
  - http://Web Name (required)
    
    Yes lets burn more coal to produce the electricity ! The dems wont let us build clean nuclear plants. The roads are self sufficient operated and constructed thru the gas tax. Maybe we should use the gas tax to pay for the trains? What a waste. When the marketplace demands it, the free marketplace will deliver. Meanwhile the government should stay out of it
    - http://Web Jonny_Balls
      
      Holy F.. get an original thought rush limbaugh/hannity ditto head.
- http://Web Chris T
  
  NM has a train from Albuquerque thru Santa Fe up to the Colorado state line (the Rail Runner)
  
  Seriously? There aren’t many places with lower population density. Who dreamed that one up?
  - http://Web Tim Cleland
    
    Gov. Bill Richardson and his fellow Democrats in the NM legislature.
http://Web philaphonicus

Alright you two nattering nabobs, no need to get your negativity in a twist.

High speed rail will suceed or fail depending on how well it is thought out. Tim, you can suggest anything is a failure simply by mentioning the worst example you can find. Why, remember that car, the Yugo? What a crappy vehicle! It sucked! Obviously then, all cars suck and we shouldn’t have them. There, I just used your anti-rail “logic”.

As for gummint spending, Name, I suggest you do some research on how much of your taxes have gone into road construction and repair. And corporate subsidies/tax breaks to oil companies (and car makers). By not mentioning those things, you either infer that type of government spending is okay with you, or you are ignorant of it all. If the former, you’re a hypocrit; if the latter, well…

And let’s suppose the governemnt had never subsidized or financed any road construction anywhere. Let’s suppose it was all done by private corporations. What would that USA look like? I’ll hazard a guess that, amidst the nightmare transportation infrastructure we would have, there would be a lot more rail travel because travel by private car would not be anywhere near as cheap and easy as it actually is today.

$53 billion for 5 years is about $34 per citizen per year. If you are looking for ways to get the federal deficit under control, please start by looking at the costs of our two voluntary wars of aggression and tell me how much we can save each year by ending them. There are many other ways of controlling the deficit, but that’s a whole other topic.
- http://Web ickengel
  
  The roads are built basedd on user paid gasoline taxes – Let the railroad tax its current users to build the next railroad!!! Don’t tax the 98% who will never use the train for the 2 % who will – What a waste!!!
  - http://Web Johnny_Balls
    
    So we should just settle for having a third world infrastructure?
    
    Hey , the majority of our populations live in a major cities. Why should they have to pay for roads that go through states with under 600k citizens.
    - http://Web Itsaboutchoice
      
      “..we shoujld settle for hnaving a third world infrastructure?”
      
      Well, Yes! We’re broke, China, Japan and the Fed are buying the debt. When China and Japan stop, it’s over folks. The Fed will print money and hyper-inflation will move in and eat us out of house and home. Stop the spending. Cut the Government 10% across the board. President, Congress on down. 10% off wages, 10% off benefits, reduce the size of every government program by 10%. No ifs ands or buts. Do it or we’re doomed.
- http://Web Tim Cleland
  
  “Tim, you can suggest anything is a failure simply by mentioning the worst example you can find. Why, remember that car, the Yugo? What a crappy vehicle! It sucked! Obviously then, all cars suck and we shouldn’t have them. There, I just used your anti-rail “logic”.”
  
  But it’s not the “worst example”. There are no passenger trains anywhere that survive without (non-passenger) taxpayer subsidy. Roads need taxes too, but they get them on a user-only basis from the gasoline tax. Only those who use roads, pay for them. If you don’t drive, you don’t buy gas, you don’t pay road tax.
  - http://chrisdemorro.com/ Christopher DeMorro
    
    Tim,
    
    You say there are no passenger services anywhere that don’t survive without taxpayer subsidy. Maybe that’s true in America, but oil and coal are also both heavily subsidized too, and our highway system costs hundreds of billions to merely maintain every year. The simple fact of the matter is that our great and wonderful interstate system is old, out of date, overburdened, and a perpetual money sink. No matter which way you cut it, hundreds of billions of dollars are at stake. So do we keep investing in the same thing (highways) even though we know congestion and oil prices will only get worse. Or do we try something new, something that works for much of the rest of the world?
    
    Once upon a time, America had the greatest train system in the world, and that is what united this country more than anything. Today, we’ve fallen behind the rest of the world when it comes to mass transit. But America has a way of pulling up itself by the bootstraps even when things look their bleakest, and there’s no reason in twenty years we can’t have the best mass transit system in the world, if only we take the time to invest in it.
  - http://Web Rejinx
    
    The Gas Tax does not cover the infrastructer cost in the US. In 2008 Congress had to add $8,000,000,000 from the genaral budget to keep it a float. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/05/AR2008090503525.html
    Plus most new projects are fund though other means, I.E. stimulis or earmark.
    - http://Web Tim Cleland
      
      Then they need to raise the gas tax (a few cents/gal would cover $8 billion). As I’ve said here many times, the gas tax is the most fair tax we currently have. It is essentially a user-fee based on your vehicle’s weight and how much you drive. That’s as libertarian as a tax can get.
      
      I would have no problem paying for the initial cost of rail if the ridership could pay for the operation. That’s never been true anywhere in the U.S.
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