Comments on: High-Speed Rail Could Get $53 Billion More from Obama Administration [VIDEO]

By: Clean Energy, Clean Transportation and Green Living News – Planetsave.com: climate change and environmental news

Thu, 10 Feb 2011 11:32:56 +0000

[…] discussing the White House announcement proposing $53 billion go to high-speed rail in the coming 6 years, Sam Stein of HuffingtonPost explains why this should be an easy thing to get […]

By: Zachary Shahan

Zachary Shahan — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 08:14:42 +0000

Thanks, Tim. That crossed my mind last night, but, for some reason, then thought it was ok & didn’t change anything. Just made some adjustments now — not only in the title — to make things more clear/accurate.

By: PSmith

PSmith — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 00:43:43 +0000

This is the sort of commitment that’s necessary to get local-level private investors interested in transit-centered development. With connection to a truly national rail network, multi-modal passenger facilities become potential magnets for investment in multi-use, sustainable development (smart urban renewal). Further still, sites that are often available for and well-suited to this sort of multi-modal use are situated along freight rail corridors and may have contamination issues or are otherwise not attractive for development (and clean up) without this sort of incentive.

The only problem is that some estimates place the cost of a national high-speed rail network at 500 billion dollars. And as far as I know, that figure doesn’t include the regional and local rail components necessary to make the overall system a true national network. Consequently, local investors aren’t likely to be willing to risk much if it looks like this is going to die on the vine.

By: Tim

Tim — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 22:16:21 +0000

Zach-

The title and the first sentence are a little misleading. The $53 billion for high speed rail is part of the Obama administration’s proposed budget due out in a couple weeks. There is a big difference between proposing $53 billion for HSR and actually getting it.