http://www.toledoblade.com/Editorials/2013/05/03/The-road-ahead.html
Building a 21st-century transportation system will take the same commitment and vision that, nearly 60 years ago, launched the interstate highway system.
President Obama has taken a bold and laudable step by proposing to spend $6.6 billion on high-speed rail and related projects next year — and $40 billion over five years to improve intercity passenger service, develop new high-speed rail corridors, and upgrade freight rail.
http://www.midwesthsr.org/president-pushes-bold-plan-for-passenger-rail
The Obama Administration released its budget request for Fiscal Year 2014 today, and the President has once again put forth a bold plan for transforming and expanding train service in the United States, with $40 billion in passenger rail investment over the next five years.
The Administration’s budget allocates $6.6 billion to the Federal Rail Administration for fiscal 2014, with increasing amounts each subsequent year through 2019, then decreasing amounts to 2023. The request will be a boost for Amtrak, coming a day before the House Committee on Transportation holds a hearing on the railroad’s FY 2014 budget. The hearing, Amtrak’s Fiscal Year 2014 Budget: The Starting Point for Reauthorization [which will be streamed live], will address Amtrak’s funding needs, as well as the coming rail reauthorization (the current law will expire at the end of this September). Amtrak announced yesterday it had set a new ridership record during the first half of this fiscal year, and will be looking to translate its steady increase in popularity into an increase its funding for badly needed equipment purchases and infrastructure upgrades.
Speaking at last week’s Northern Flyer Alliance’s Passenger Rail Symposium in Kansas City, Mo., Federal Railroad Administrator Joseph Szabo reaffirmed President Obama’s commitment to passenger rail and stressed the need for long-term planning to create market-driven passenger-rail corridors.
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The U.S. Transportation Secretary, Ray LaHood, still wants to connect 80 percent of Americans to high speed rail by 2036. That’s the goal that President Barack Obama laid out in last year’s state of the union.
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President Obama’s program to bring bullet trains to the United States has been left on life support by the strident opposition of Republicans in Congress and in statehouses around the nation. But the idea may carry more favor with some of the Republican candidates vying to unseat Mr. Obama, who have a history of supporting high-speed rail.
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Some Republicans in Congress are claiming they’ve killed the expensive high-speed rail program President Obama had been pushing to establish. If funding for the proposed multi-billion dollar rail transportation program has been eliminated, Iowa Senator and Democrat Tom Harkin says it would be a real shame.
“I have long advocated, for at least the last 30 years, that we need to develop high-speed rail in America,” Harkin says. “Having ridden on high-speed trains when I was in the military stationed in Japan, they had a train that went 150 miles an hour and that was back in the ’60s.”
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Post Link: http://www.radioiowa.com/2011/11/17/harkin-doesnt-want-passenger-rail-funding-cut/
