President Obama delivers on American High-Speed Rail

I have looked forward to this day for a long time.

It is a great honor--a great honor--to have President Obama and Vice President Biden in Tampa, Florida, to announce our American Recovery and Reinvestment Act High-Speed and Inter-city Passenger Rail grants.

 
The investments we announce today make rail a viable transportation alternative in many regions. With this historic $8 billion investment by President Obama, we are jump-starting American High-Speed rail.

The bulk of today's awards go to new, large-scale high-speed rail programs--projects such as Florida, with $1.25 billion to develop a high-speed rail corridor between Tampa and Orlando with trains running up to 168 miles per hour--and California, with $2.25 billion to connect Los Angeles to San Francisco and points in between with trains running up to 220 miles per hour.

In total, 31 states and the District of Columbia will receive awards. In addition to 13 corridor investments, we are also awarding several grants for improvement projects and planning. These efforts on existing routes and emerging corridors will lay the groundwork for future high-speed and intercity rail development. 

I've said it before, and I believe it even more today: this is an absolute game-changer for American transportation.

We will make passenger rail more efficient, providing better service in travel markets across the country.

• High-speed rail travel offers competitive door-to-door trip times
• It reduces congestion on key routes between cities
• It reduces transportation emissions
• And, most of all, it creates the jobs of the future, the jobs America needs right now

Look, I am very proud of what our transportation infrastructure helps us achieve every day. Moving hundreds of millions of people and millions of tons of goods from place to place. It's amazing.

But it's not good enough. It's the infrastructure of a previous century, one with plentiful energy and no sense of the role carbon emissions play in our health and the health of our planet. And it's not adequate for the growth of our nation's population, its commerce, its mobility.

We need an expansive, safe and energy efficient rail transportation network. We need to generate economic development. We need to reposition our infrastructure for the 21st century.

As we mentioned last April when we announced the program, our overall strategy has two parts: improving our existing rail lines to make current train service faster and identifying potential corridors for the creation of world-class high-speed rail.

Today’s awards begin us down the path toward these goals.

Now, the particular investments we're making today--they make sense. We're connecting cities that are too close for efficient air travel but--with the highways connecting these cities nearly choked beyond capacity--too far for productive road travel. Cities like St. Louis and Chicago.

We know that people already want to travel between these cities; we're here to begin making that downtown-to-downtown travel significantly easier, faster, and more productive.

As I've mentioned on this blog before we received many more applications than we had funds to distribute. States and regions and communities across the United States are clamoring for high-speed service.

But some areas are just not ready. In some areas, investments to lay the groundwork for increasing the speed and reliability of current service have been deferred and deferred.

Today we're fixing that. We've made awards to states to improve existing track, repair tunnels and bridges, and increase the speeds of lines already serving passengers.

We can't just put faster trains on old tracks and send them across bridges that need repairs. So, with these targeted investments, passengers will see many benefits in the near term.

High-speed rail corridors will offer competitive door-to-door trip times. From Los Angeles to San Francisco, a 2-hour 40-minute comfortable ride from city center to city center will replace a 6-hour trek of fighting traffic to get out of one downtown and fighting traffic to get into another.

High-speed rail will create jobs now and for the foreseeable future. We have commitments from over 30 companies in the rail business to create or expand U.S. rail manufacturing should they be awarded contracts for portions of this money. These companies know high-speed rail, and they could become partners to those awarded rail grants.

What kind of jobs? Planning rail networks; designing, producing, and laying miles and miles of track; building, installing, maintaining, and operating equipment; constructing or upgrading stations, tunnels, and bridges; operating the routes.

It's pretty clear we're talking about a lot of jobs--tens of thousands. And let's be clear about this: that $8 billion will do its job-creation work right here in America.

High-speed rail reduces oil use and the environmental costs of the mobility we prize so dearly. Hey, I'm an old-fashioned guy who grew up in the Midwest--I love cars. But let's be realistic; cars are the least efficient method of travel we have, even with our fuel-economy standards. Rail ridership takes cars off the road.

Now, before we get too carried away with the very near future, I have to remind everyone about the past. The interstate highway system that we take for granted today did not materialize overnight. It has taken over a half-century, and we're still building onto the network.

But, the point is that today we can take it for granted. Our highways take us where we need to go, and the nationwide coast-to-coast system has been a model for the rest of the world.

And President Obama’s vision for high-speed rail mirrors that of President Eisenhower, the father of that Interstate highway system. 

It's also worth pointing out that designing, building, expanding, and maintaining those highways has created job after job after job for decades. When completed, the highways brought people. People brought small businesses and more jobs.

We have no reason to expect that developing high-speed rail will not also be an engine of jobs and economic development.

And someday--tens of thousands of good-paying jobs from now, one reborn American manufacturing sector from now, and many federal-regional-state and public-private partnerships from now--we will be able to take for granted an efficient high-speed rail network that is equally the pride of our nation and an engine of growth.

Until that day, we do have some learning to do. I have seen high-speed rail working in Spain and just being introduced in Russia. Only last week, I heard lessons from the experience of developing a network in Japan.

These countries have all seen the future; these countries have all made the commitment that we make today with President Obama's initial investments in Florida and 30 other states.

And I assure you that one day, not too many years from now, ours will be the go-to network, the world's model for high-speed rail.

Today we embark on the first step of that exciting journey. Today, as promised, we change the game.

Comments

[Harry]

Mr. Secretary, it's Christmas in January.

[Mary Kay Wiltz Morrison]

Awesome news. While the Rockford Illinois area is disappointed we are not included in the this round of funding....I am pleased to see the progress being made under your leadership Ray! Thank you for all you are doing from a former St. Bernard's classmate!

[Dan]

Here are the detailed plans for the Orlando to Tampa link: http://www.metrojacksonville.com/article/2010-jan-florida-high-speed-rail-officially-announced

[Wade White]

Would it be possible to get a higher resolution image of the proposed funding map? The one on the web is not that clear.

[John Matthews]

Thank you President Obama and Secretary Lahood. We love you guys for this!! (and my dear state of Georgia isn't even getting funding)

Keep up the good work!

[Truckdrivernews]

This makes very little sense to me, to spend billions of dollars we obviously don't have, judging by the shape the roads are, in order to give someone a ride on a train at over 2oo mph.

I say this because, unless the train pulls up to exactly the place the person is going to, you still will need a car or bus to get there.

[nottheonlyone]

Everything has advantages and disadvantages. Sure the rail transportation idea is great, its been practiced for decades now in countries all over Europe and Asia. Anyone that has travelled to Europe can attest to the distance you can travel on $30.00 US dollars. I personally live in Boston and you can't even get halfway from Boston to New York City with $30.00 dollars. Yes, this will create jobs paid for with US taxpayers dollars and will push the country into a larger black hole of debt. I would like to see the actual numbers for development, construction, operation and maintenance cost. Let's be real, if money is invested it has to be recovered, what is going to be the price for an average roundtrip fare from Boston to New York? I am all for new technology and transportation improvements but would like more details. I think that if this option is so viable the public should know up front how long it will take to be self sustainable, 50 years, 100? I'm sure someone will comment on reduction of carbon and saving the planet with this technology. This new system will obviously not be powered by coal but electrical "efficient" energy. Let's see now, nuclear energy=clean energy right? Wrong, what is the current plan for nuclear waste, dump it into the mountains or somewhere outside US borders. Its a scientific fact the nuclear waste is radioactive and is worst for the environment if not disposed of correctly. Residents of the US, not just citizens, please let’s do our part and ask more questions and state our thoughts before things just happen and we are forced to go along with it.

[Adam Old]

Can you please re-upload the image as a PDF or in a less compressed format? It is illegible as it is.

[Mike]

Could be wrong here, but I think the Autobon was the model for interstate travel and some bad dude :{ was the father of interstate travel.

[Kevin C]

Is there a table or press release with a detailed list of what the projects actually are?

[Dan]

Why did Pennsylvania receive such little money??? Sixth largest state and only 26 million out of 8 billion??

[Larry R.Cripe CEO Unitran Monorail Inc.]

To Ray LaHood. Dear sir, We have a developed overhead-suspended Monorail System,which also switches into stations and to alternate roots. Unitran Monorail is the most fesible systems which will be 90% prefabricated.The system will be installed in a shorter time period,and lesser cost, then any other system.The car and the guide ways are all built of Carbon Fiber Composites. Unitran runs on linear induction,totally pollution free.On top of the guideway we will run continuous solar panels to create power to the grid. We will build down major right of ways. In most cases we will not have to buy or clear land.We have had succesful meetings with Congressman Dean Heller and Governor Jim Gibbons office here in Nevada. I would like to further present our Monorail System to you and the President. Waiting to hear from you.Sincerely, Larry R.Cripe/President-CEO Unitran Monorail Inc.Gardnerville,Nevada

[Thomas Erdmann]

HIgh speed rail is most defnitely a good investment. depending on the way the trains will be propelled, the building of these trains and tracks can also be viewed as a form of demand for alternative energy, for example electricity produced with non poluting methods such as solar power, wind power, and combinations of energy.
The trains may, some day, replace short haul airplanes, and as a result cerate an enivronmental improvement.

[Damian]

This is history. Now, it is time to go about the work of getting the highway/transit funding ratio inverted. As you said,"cars are the least efficient method of travel we have". So, let's put the dollars to better use. Thanks for all your hard work on this!

[Sam Goater]

I like what you are saying, but I'll believe it when I see it. You are a Republican after all...

[ROPED]

I am very excited about high speed trains. Also, I love trains!

[Brad Brockschmidt]

As much as i like the idea of walking onto a train and wooshing at 300mph to my destination, i belive that this project is a complete waste of money. This is not a major cross country expanse that will get me from NY to LA in a few hours, it simply connects me to the nearest city at a wopping $8,000,000,000 price tag. I can drive from Cleveland to Columbus in 2 hours, but in the future I can drive to the terminal, wait for the train, travel to columbus, unload, wait for my luggage, find a taxi, and finally get to my destination. That will take more time than if i just drive to there now. what is it saving? I can do that today and save a ton of money. What are you guys thinking? How many people at the terminals are needed to run this. I wanted to ride Amtrack from Toledo to Fort Meyers, FL. The cost of this trip for a family of 4: $1700; the cost of flying: $900; the cost of driving: $250. Why would i pay 6 times as much and spend 16 hours MORE to ride a train than drive only having to rent a car at my destination to get around. This makes no sense. The government has gotten way out of hand and this needless spending needs to come to an end.

[Gresham Fedora]

You should look at China's system as well, they just introduced a newer, faster train on a new line and they are a country that is roughly the same size as the US. We can learn from their mistakes and take advantage by learning from what they have done correctly.

[Michael E. Bailey]

Highspeed rail will be a major benefit to the country and to our California region. I hope that safety improvements to the current fleet of commuter rail and Amtrak passenger cars will not be given second place or be sacrificed because we need both the high speed rail and safe passenger cars to use now while high speed rail is being set up. We also need good transit systems that will connect the train stations to where people live and work. And, if we are lucky, housing and business will grow up near the train stations providing even easier access. Best wishes, Michael E. Bailey.

[buy r4 dsi]

Obama Administration officials are traveling across the country this week to announce funding for the high speed rail projects and discuss how this investment will create local jobs and rebuild the economy.

[Harrison]

As a proud american am very much excited and even moreso joyful of these proposals due to their potential to restart the economy and much more on the viability to improve our carbon footprint on the globe. Truely its great news and it couldn't have come any sooner. Now, lets get to work folks and get this party started as the benefits resulting are just enormous.

[Judith Ford]

I appreciate your ideas on High-Speed Rail, but I'd like to see SOMETHING in the energy plans that includes natural gas. We have great reserves, so using nat gas in transportation would help us gain energy independence and it would create jobs in infrastructure and transportation industries. I believe there is legislation being considered to have government vehicles use this fuel. I would love to see your department get behind this movement.
Gas vs high speed rail would not be an either/or, since we could do both. I'd also say nat gas vs 'clean' coal technology isn't either/or. We have reserves of both.
Are you at least considering natural gas in your plans if not the legislation, and if not, could you explain why (not?)

[Harry Dale]

Unfortunately our elected officials, transportation planners and other important policy makers in the country today tend to be affluent Caucasians and want to believe that our dominant transportation policy will never change from what they have grown accustomed to (multiple private motor vehicles per household and ever increasing roadway capacity to carry those vehicles).

We expect large future increases in our national Latino population because Caucasian, Asian, African American and other minority populations are not having more than two children per couple as a general trend. Latinos typically have large families, much more so than other groups. They also tend to live in more urban environments, own less cars, drive less, walk more and use public transportation more than their affluent Caucasian counterparts do today.

Perhaps even more importantly, we are all getting older. Our senior population as a percentage of our overall population will be growing significantly in future years. They also will be living in more urban environments, driving less, walking more and using public transportation more. Our land use planning folks nationally (Land Use Institute and the American Planning Association) are looking much more closely at what is called a complete streets and/or a livable communities initiative which takes into account transit access and pedestrian facilities and walking access between residential and commercial properties in planning residential and commercial development. In other words, stop planning our residential and commercial environments only for cars!!!!!! Our Public Health officials on a national scale are also starting to connect the overall improvement in public health that is possible when we are able to actually walk on a daily basis between destinations instead of satisfying every daily trip by the use of a private motor vehicle for door to door service.

In addition, growth in China and India will not only drive up demand and limit the availability of conventional energy fuels, but drive up the cost and limit the availability of lots of minerals, such as the already rare earth minerals required to make lithium ion batteries and solar panels. As the Chinese and Indian middle classes move up from only owning bicycles to owning mopeds and scooters to owning automobiles, we could see a jump from 2 billion motor vehicles in the world today to 4, 5 or 6 billion motor vehicles in the world tomorrow. Our global supply of easily accessible natural resources and energy fuels to keep building this number of motor vehicles (that require replacement every 5 to 10 years) is just not there. No one in the world is thinking about this today.

A very few number of people are thinking about the world’s energy supply and its outlook based on global population growth looking out 50 years or more. Most who look at this, believe we are in big trouble, since our easily produced fossil fuels will be gone by then and although there will be lots of fossil fuels remaining, they will require more energy to extract than they will produce when they are consumed. They call this a negative Energy Return on Investment or negative EROI. It will never be economically practical to consume more energy in extracting a fuel resource than that fuel resource can actually generate once it is extracted. This is really just simple math.

The same is true of minerals, but with a slightly different twist. It is only economically practical to produce minerals as long as the selling price for those minerals covers the cost of the energy and labor consumed in the extraction process along with the cost of the dedicated infrastructure used for the extraction process. When the cost of the energy, labor and infrastructure development for the extraction processs increases exponentially due to the limited availability of fossil fuels and easily accessible minerals for energy production and infrastructure development; it will become economically impractical to extract minerals. So, the global consumption of all the easily accessible fossil fuels will not only drive energy costs higher, but will drive the cost of mineral extraction higher. In both cases once the easily accessible energy fuels are consumed, we will very rapidly reach a point where it is economically impractical to continue to produce both fossil fuels and minerals.

No one is thinking about this today, either. Worse still, the industries that continue to profit by extracting the easily accessible fossil fuels and minerals will do so until they are exhausted. They will also lobby congress and other elected officials, policy makers and political leaders to keep laws in their favor and discourage competition and the development of renewable and replacement energy sources. They will also lobby for continuing the status quo of building and expanding roads and consuming fossil fuels exponentially because that will drive up the price of fossil fuels and make them and their stockholders greater profits. This is free market capitalism at its best which focuses only on short term gains and not long term trends that might impact the general public in a negative way.

Political leaders today simply assume that we will develop renewable energy resources to take the place of fossil fuels by the time fossil fuels become too costly to produce economically. So no worries. But constructing the renewable energy infrastructure on a global scale that will be necessary to replace our reliance on fossil fuels and our exponentially increasing global appetite for energy; will take enormous amounts of energy, minerals and labor which we are not currently setting aside for that purpose. The current analysis would suggest that by the time our global political leaders (especially the Neanderthals in the US – both Democrats and Republicans) realize that the era of cheap fossil fuel consumption is coming to an end, there may not be an adequate supply of the traditional energy and mineral resources to actually convert our economy from a fossil fuel consumption based economy to a renewable energy based consumption economy. In a world of finite resources, simple math will tell us that perpetual increasing and thus infinite demand in both energy and natural resources is not possible. But our global leaders do not understand simple math, so this basic fact will continue to be ignored until we are at a crisis stage.

My point is that 50 years from now, if we are smart, we will see the exact opposite of what we see today in terms of travel behavior. Many more of us will live in urban environments and travel less because it will be more energy efficient, more convenient and less costly to do so. The percentage of the population that use public transportation as their primary means of transportation in 50 years may approach the number of people that use private vehicles as their primary means of transportation today. Transportation investment in long life cycle, energy efficient mass transit infrastructure such as maglev and super energy efficient trains, will be a far better use of our public dollars and our limited energy and mineral resources than continuing to encourage the production of private vehicles that need to be replaced every 5 to 10 years.

Again, it really is simple math that will dictate these changes, but our political leaders fear change so much that they cannot wrap their minds around this. The vast majority of our elected officials believe that our current preference for driving petroleum based private motor vehicles will never change. They have already forgotten the sharp rise in fuel prices in 2008. The norm of continuing to build new roads and expand old ones is well accepted and anyone who opposes such a strategy is ostracized and considered some kind of radical. Of course, the "radicals" are more correct today than they have been in years, but continue to be ostracized for being ultra liberals and out of touch with reality. Ironically, it is our critics who are out of touch with reality but are too blind to see it.

[Eric]

Someone should work to build a line out of Detroit, that doesn't connect only to Chicago. Greyhound runs Detroit to Ohio, but only via Chicago first. I guess what we're actually proposing here, with this map, is an upgrade of Greyhounds systems?

People want to get out of Detroit. And they don't want to go to Chicago to do it.

[JJM PE]

I'm curious about the parallel routes from NYC to Montreal and Hartford CT to Burlington. Why not make the east-west Boston to Albany route a higher priority than Hartford to Burlington? It would serve more people, I think. Better yet, Boston to Chicago?