Smart Growth Around America

When the federal government created an $8 billion pool of stimulus funds for worthy high speed rail projects, few anticipated how eagerly states would vie for the money. California alone submitted 42 applications for a total of $1.1 billion dollars in federal money.

Smart Growth America CEO Geoff Anderson spoke to WNYC public radio after this Monday’s application deadline about what the application process, what the money can buy, and what high speed rail can do for the United States. Here are some excerpts:

Q: “$8 billion is a lot of money, clearly. $8 billion is the same amount of money, more or less, that was in the stimulus bill for all of transit spending all over the US. But it’s not really enough to get you much high speed rail. How much can $8 billion buy you?”

A: “Well, $8 billion can buy you, for instance, somewhere in the neighborhood of the Midwest Regional Rail Initiative, which is a pretty significant build-out of the Chicago area rail. It can meet the needs for the Florida corridor. But yes, when you talk about what can it buy you given the demands that we’re seeing coming into the program, given the 11 corridors, it’s not a lot. Clearly, this $8 billion has to be — and ought to be — a down payment on the future, and it ought to be followed up by consistent investment over the next 10, 20, 30 years, in the same way that we have over the past 10, 20, 30, 50 years in air travel and in automobile travel.”

Q: “Now, tell us what you saw yesterday. I know that the applications are just coming in, but as you begin to digest them, what kinds of applications are coming in, and what states and regions seem to have their act together?”

A: “Well, I think we’re still waiting to see that, really, in terms of the specific states and regions that have their act together. A lot of the applications really are … looking at the existing system and identifying key points of congestion, key conflict areas between passenger rail and freight rail, and other very strategic incremental investments that you can make on existing lines that give you the biggest bang for the buck.

At the same time, I think we are starting to see some of the applications really looking at entire new lines and places where they can separate the passenger rail from the freight rail, and provide truly high speeds in the sense of the high speed rail that we see in Europe or Japan. I think places like Florida, California, the Midwest Region, and the Hartford line — those are places that have some good prospects. But we’ll have to wait and see exactly what’s in the applications.”

But beyond specific projects, Geoff Anderson believes that high speed rail has something to offer Americans that they desperately need.

“The biggest thing to me, the thing that’s most important, is that this is a major shift in federal policy, and really in thinking about transportation in the United States,” Geoff Anderson said. “It’s thinking about the future, it’s thinking about doing things differently than we have in the past. That kind of transition to a system that really is a system where we have options at the community level to walk and bike, to get on public transportation to get around a region, and to get on passenger rail and high speed rail to move us between regions around the country—and to connect the country economically. We can’t get there in twelve months, eighteen months or two years. This is a long-term proposition…You have to think about where we need to go as a country, and what kind of transportation systems are going to support us in that.”

You can listen to the full broadcast over at the WNYC website.

Tags: High Speed Rail, Railroads, SGA in the News, Transportation.
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