Trains on The Huffington Post

Mike Signer: Build This: A Real Infrastructure Policy for America

2009-10-28T14:44:35Z

Imagine boarding a sleek new bullet train and rocketing from Washington, D.C. to Richmond, VA in under an hour. Imagine creating thousands of durable new blue-collar jobs to build and maintain railways, construct and fine-tune railcars, and help design the electrical grid that would support high-speed rail. Imagine a new architecture for concentrating development around sophisticated new urban centers -- and a hungry new customer for clean energy.

Imagining high-speed rail in the U.S. has often just been the province of dreams. The idea has been bedeviled by various lobbying groups hostile to sustainable transportation, beset by internecine warfare between different states and federal agencies, and bereft of a long-term infrastructure policy. As one grizzled and skeptical railway executive told me at a conference held last week by the new U.S. High Speed Rail Association at the H.W. Marriott Hotel in Washington, D.C., "I attended my first high-speed rail conference thirty years ago."

But these dreams are about to leave the ether and descend to earth, in the form of concrete, steel, and electrical lines, as the U.S., thanks to the Obama administration, prepares to invest $8 billion in actually building high-speed rail. On the heels of the administration's announcement of $3.4 billion in grants to drive the creation of a "smart grid" in the country, the time is right to think about an infrastructure policy not just for next year but the next generation.

The U.S. High Speed Rail Association is a broad coalition of domestic and international partners working to drive American investment in high-speed rail. There's good reason to think it's an idea whose time has finally come, after eight years of the George W. Bush administration, during which federal funding for rail was essentially scaled to zero. The challenge will be to ensure that the initial $8 billion is not frittered away in a series of pork-barrel pilot projects, but instead becomes the first investment in the long-term infrastructure strategy the U.S. has been sorely lacking.

The organization estimates that a fully functioning, 17,000-mile, national high-speed rail system would cost at least $600 billion over 30 years. In his panel presentation, Gov. Ed Rendell (D) of Pennsylvania, a long-time advocate of high-speed rail, urged participants to take the long view on such an infrastructure investment. "We need a capital budget run through an infrastructure bank," Rendell urged. "It's the only way to do this." Rendell emphasized that thousands of "tough, blue-collar work" would be created by high-speed rail, citing an estimate by a Pennsylvania steel plant that makes rail ties that its work force would triple if high-speed rail were to become reality.

John Krueger, a staff attorney with the U.S. Public Interest Group who advocates for new federal budget priorities on transportation, argued that grassroots public opinion will ultimately change our infrastructure policies. "Why high-speed rail?" he asked the conference. "It's what the people want....The opposite of NIMBY (Not In My Backyard) is PIMBY--Please In My Backyard." Over 220 states and localities have submitted applications for the $8 billion the Obama administration has allocated to high-speed rail. And in the budget request for 2010, the House of Representatives approved an additional $4 billion of high-speed rail funding, surpassing an initial administration request of only $1 billion.

Presenting on the second day of the conference, Norm Anderson, who heads the consulting group CG/LA Infrastructure, emphasized a series of gaps in the nation's long-term infrastructure strategy. He highlighted the urgent need for a clear focus on the competitiveness and job creation dimensions of high-speed rail. With competitive nations such as China aggressively investing in high-speed rail, we risk losing our edge in technology, concentrated urban development, low-carbon transportation, and a stable employment base for thousands. Anderson also emphasized the need for a strong funding mechanism -- the national infrastructure bank also advocated by Gov. Rendell -- and a federal entity that would "own and understand" infrastructure, opening it to both competition and public-private partnerships.

Inspired by events such as the U.S. High Speed Rail Association conference and the Obama administration's $8 billion commitment, the Progressive Policy Institute's new E3 Initiative in the coming months will be developing and driving policy proposals on infrastructure and other areas central to rebuilding the nation's economy around clean technology. It's an exciting time -- and we need to ensure that the excitement does not fade into a passing fancy, but rather leads to real steps that revitalize the U.S.'s economic dynamism.

This piece is cross-posted on PPI's new blog, the Progressive Fix.

Amy Hertz: Spotted Reading Publicly

2009-10-27T07:34:57Z

Maybe it's because I'm in publishing, maybe it's because I love books, or maybe I'm just nosy, but when someone sitting near me in public is reading, I want to know what they're reading, why they're reading it, and why they decided to read it on the subway, at the doctor's office, on the airplane, or on a park bench. I end up setting aside what I'm doing in order to satisfy my curiosity, craning my neck and squinting my eyes to discern author, title, and if I'm lucky, publisher.

Lately I've been paying a bit more attention to what's being read publicly and here's what I and others have seen recently on the subway, at little league games and other venues:

Friday Night Knitting Club, Kate Jacobs

Blink, Malcolm Gladwell

Jemimah J, Jane Green

The Creation of Eve, by Lynn Cullen (forthcoming in March, someone was reading an advance copy)

The Art of Racing in the Rain, Garth Stein

I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell, Tucker Max

Spiced: A Pastry Chef's True Stories of Trials By Fire... , Dalia Jurgensen

Girls in Trucks, Katie Crouch

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Steig Larsson

I'm in No Mood for Love, Rachel Gibson

The Help, Kathryn Stockett

Twilight, Stephanie Meyer

Diary of A Wimpy Kid, Jeff Kinney

Nixonland, Rick Perlstein

The End of Your World, Adyashanti

The Last Lecture, Randy Pausch

Middlesex, Jeffrey Eugenides

The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver

The White Tiger, Aravind Adiga

Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of The World, Haruki Murakami

Too Big To Fail, Andrew Ross Sorkin

The Magicians, Lev Grossman

Treatise on the Great Stages of the Path to Enlightenment, Volume I, by Tsong Khapa (that was me reading on the 6 train)

We all have different ways of discovering books, and spotting them being read in public is just one. At Huffington Post, we are very interested in what people are reading around the country, and in particular we'd love to know what books you have seen being read in public. Just as we are now posting your reader recommendations, we'll post what you've spotted. So leave a comment letting us know the title and the venue in which the book was being read -- waiting room, bus, park bench, café, restaurant, airplane, airport, train, etc. -- or send e-mails to amyhertz@huffingtonpost.com. And let us know what you think of the books being mentioned.

Amtrak Loss Comes To $32 Per Passenger: Study

2009-10-27T06:42:13Z

WASHINGTON — U.S. taxpayers spent about $32 subsidizing the cost of the typical Amtrak passenger in 2008, about four times the rail operator's estimate, according to a private study.

Amtrak operates a nationwide rail network, serving more than 500 destinations in 46 states. Forty-one of Amtrak's 44 routes lost money in 2008, said the study by Subsidyscope, an arm of the Pew Charitable Trusts.

Paul Rosenthal: Regional Transit Key to Colorado's Future

2009-10-08T10:16:30Z

Long term, Colorado is going to continue to grow in leaps and bounds. In the Denver Metro Area alone, the population is forecasted to grow from 2.8 million now to 4.8 million by 2040. Given how much I despise sitting in traffic, this expansion really concerns me -- how is everyone going to get around? Will we all eventually have to move to Montana to find a square inch not covered by asphalt?

In my view, the answer clearly is rapid transit, particularly rail. I recently decided I wanted to deepen my knowledge of transit and transit-oriented development, so I applied and was accepted to the Transit Alliance Citizen's Academy. Our classes are once a week and hosted by the Denver Chamber of Commerce. This column is the first of six that I will write over the coming weeks summarizing what we discussed in class.

It bears expanding on the worst case scenario -- if unchecked and unplanned sprawl will continue, especially in the southeast, east and northeastern parts of the metro area; pollution will double (weren't we recently given the ignominious title of most polluted air?); government spending will increase per capita to pay for more roads, police, fire and water coverage to feed the voracious beast of growth; and this is not to mention that the way of life we currently enjoy will be displayed in a quaint exhibit in the Colorado History Museum. This all is according to the projection of the Denver Regional Council of Governments (DRCOG), which spends all day studying these things. I plan to retire by 2040, but honestly I worry not only about then but also what about the next 50 to 100 years after that? We need to think and act for the very long term.

Jill Locantore of DRCOG guided our 50 person class through an electronic voting system where we registered our feedback after a series of group "café conversations," a run-through of how the outcomes in our future will be determined by the series of decisions our government and voters make. The first question dealt with development density, with 67% of the class opting for the next to highest level of compactness -- lots of condos and smaller homes. Secondly, in terms of the type of development distribution we wanted, 66% said it should be around multiple centers in order to focus greater growth around transit stations. The third issue was how much we thought the metro area road network should be upgraded. Half of us preferred a moderate upgrade, and a third wanted to maintain it at current levels. This begged the next question of whether to maintain the current rail system and bus service, moderately expand it (ie. FasTracks), or significantly expand it beyond FasTracks. The last option was the clear favorite, with 71% of the vote. Next, would the urban environment favor drivers, maintain the current mix, or some scale of more heavily favoring alternatives? Sixty percent supported alternatives and the remainder felt even more strongly so. The last question dealt with the reason why we all live here -- the environment. Would we want to maintain the current investments in the management of energy, air, water and greenhouse gas emissions and waste? Fully half of my class thought we should achieve the highest level of best practices.

Presto magic, and Locantore's computer displayed how given the inputs the plurality suggested in each category, the outcomes would be much better than the worst case scenario. Upwards of 15% of people in 2040 would use transit, walk and bicycle, rather than less than the 5% currently. There would be more options for housing, more government spending per capita but less than the worst case scenario because development would be more compact and would not require as much strain on services. The class' collective wisdom even bested every category in DRCOG's recommendations in its MetroVision 2035 report, except for government spending because we suggested a greater investment in transit.

Naturally, all of our discussions in our groups struggled with the balance of where we need to go and how we were going to realistically pay for these projects to get there. In addition, we wondered if the outcomes would be as we expected it, especially given concerns over the sensitivities in the software calculating the results given our inputs. Besides, there wasn't always unanimous agreement even with the "progressive" nature of the class population.

Yet, the conversation was definitely worth it, and overall, 76% of the class was somewhat or very satisfied with the exercise and its outcomes. Naturally, it is difficult to project the future (as we see with FasTracks), so feel free to click here to make your own projections. But, as this exercise clearly showed, if we aren't aggressive enough in promoting transit-oriented development as we address our clear growth projections, today's kids and grandkids most certainly won't like the result of our decisions. See you next week.

Sophie Pollitt-Cohen: A List In Response To A News: Ladies' Specials? That's What She Said!

2009-09-29T11:48:37Z

In an effort to make travel safer and more pleasant for women, several new commuter trains in India are for women only.

Other Places I would Like To Be Only For Women

1. The women's bathroom at the movie theater on 68th street last night. That was really weird.

xoxo
Gossip Girl
(Sophie)

Antonio Villaraigosa: A Transportation Vision

2009-09-22T15:18:23Z

Yesterday, I delivered a keynote speech to the Mobility 21 Summit, where I shared my vision for an accessible, sustainable, truly regional transportation system in Southern California.

I asked the crowd of more than 600 transportation experts to imagine a system that is comprehensive enough to make owning a car in the greater Los Angeles area optional, and proceed to outline a list of projects that will help get us there.

At the top of that list is completing a subway line from Downtown LA to the Westside, connecting our two most concentrated job centers, and alleviating traffic region-wide.

This is so important to the people of Los Angeles that they voted to increase their sales tax by one half of one percent because they knew that investing in transportation and infrastructure is investing in our future. This kind of commitment from local government needs to be matched at the federal level if the US is going to develop the infrastructure it needs to continue to lead in the 21st century global marketplace.

One example: Investing in high-speed rail for California, along the guidelines recently outlined by President Obama, and investing in regional connectors that link major metropolitan centers together, will create jobs, cut emissions, and offer a viable alternative to highway and air travel.

I look forward to working closely with Congress and the Obama administration to ensure that every half-cent that we get from the people of Los Angeles is maximized to its fullest potential and that Angelenos have the opportunity to get out of their cars and ride a public transportation system worthy of this world-class city.

http://www.mobility21coalition.com/

Raymond J. Learsy: Tom Friedman's Take On "Wimps" and "The Cheese Eating Surrender Monkeys"

2009-09-22T07:08:54Z

In his Sunday New York Times column, "Real Men Tax Gas," Thomas Friedman had admiring words commenting on the French. Drawing sharp contrast between Americans, designated as "wimps," while the French are lauded for generating some eighty percent of their electricity from "clean" nuclear power plants. In contrast it is pointed out that we haven't built a nuclear facility since the Three Mile Island accident in 1979. The United States generates 20 percent of its electric energy through nuclear power whereas France's electric grid quotient from "clean" nuclear power is 80%. Friedman's contention, that the paucity of our commitment to nuclear power combined by our lack of gumption to reduce our oil consumption through a gas tax or carbon tax, qualifies us as being wimps. This in sharp contrast to the likes of France, and as also cited in his column, Denmark. That we, in essence have become the "The Cheese Eating Surrender Monkeys."

But in making this broad brush judgment a key point is lost. The issue doesn't simply attain to limiting fossil fuel consumption by significantly increasing gasoline taxes, as Friedman suggests. It attains to something much more fundamental. France's governance emanates from an elite corp of public servants, graduates of the "grands ecoles" who run the sinews of the Ministries of State. It has given France a government whose dedication and commitment to the general weal is keenly suited to a fiercely competitive world. Ours, by contrast is progressively dysfunctional, where the electorate has become increasingly powerless, neutered by moneyed and narrow constituencies whose parochial interests are served by an increasingly token government molded to do their bidding and override the general good with growing abandon.

France, has a government with vision, having the welfare of the general public foremost in its sights. Examples of its accomplishments in recent years has not only been a uniquely efficient power grid, but according to the World Heath Organization, France is first in the WHO's ranking of world health systems. This while the United States lingers 37th in ranking. (Behind, with apologies, such countries as Malta, Morocco, Colombia, Cyprus, Costa Rica, and on. I'm sure you get the drift.)

In addition, France has what is generally understood to be the most efficient high-speed rail service in the world, with plans to expand it to the four corners of the nation (please see "High Speed Rail Speeding Ahead at Snail's Pace"). This required years of planning and determination, the kind of vision that once, too many years ago, brought us to the moon. France's high-speed rail network is so successful that Guillaume Pepy, president of the French Rails, SNCF, would comment a year ago that not building a four-track high-speed railway roadbed had been a mistake. Other than the lame Amtrak corridor in the northeast, which is only intermittently conducive to high speed travel, we have none.

Further, the French government's priorities address lifestyle and quality of life issues in a dimension barely understood by those who govern us. Fully cognizant of the importance of Culture and Art in all its disciplines to the full life of its citizens, the French Government's commitment is massive compared to ours where our government grudgingly sets aside slightly in excess of $150 million a year toward the budget of the National Endowment of the Arts (NEA). Were the budget of the NEA comparable to the budget of France's Ministry of Culture on a pro rata basis, then the NEA's budget would be approximately $9 billion. Yes, the mandates are not altogether the same, but the sums speak volumes.

Culture is integral to the French government's call for better ways to calculate a nation's economic health. It is their contention, with the advent of the financial crisis, that a broader basis of measurement is called for. That the obsession with "gross domestic product" needs be altered to include such factors as health care availability, leisure time, as well as environmental concerns triggered by over consumption. To quote France's head of state, Nicolas Sarkozy, "The (financial) crisis doesn't only make us free to imagine other models, another future, another world. It obliges us to do so."

The French government is also aware of the dramatic divergence between the earnings of the general workforce and the egregious excess of executive compensation, and those of bankers and traders who have brought the "free market" to the edge of ruin. Where we have been slow to act, the French government has reacted with vigor and focus, setting forth tough rules and declaring clearly that those banks that do not abide by the new program limiting pay and establishing disclosure rules of bonus payments will be barred from the generally lucrative and supportive government mandates. To that end, Sarkozy stated clearly and unequivocally, "We will not work with banks that do not apply the rules."

But lest this be considered a paean exclusively to French governance, consider China. Here is a society with an elite corps of public servants. Only the best and the brightest from the very top schools gain access to what is today the almost ludicrously misnamed the "Communist Party." As David Brooks, with aplomb and tongue in cheek, appropriately observed in a long ago brilliant New York Times column, "The Dictatorship of Talent," "Imagine the Harvard Alumni Association with an Army... this is a government of talents. It rules the way a wise father rules the family." To further quote Brooks, "In the West there are tensions between government and business elites. In China these elites are part of the same social web, cooperating for mutual enrichment." And by "mutual enrichment" he had the general good of the nation in view, not as here the "mutual enrichment" of Wall Street cronies.

And how does that play out? I can report from personal experience. In 1980 I was in Beijing. I had organized the first sale of a cargo of American produced chemical fertilizer (diammonium phosphate -- don't ask) to mainland China . Beijing was a sea of bicycles, with a sea of mankind peddling away in Mao suits. Perhaps the tallest building in Beijing at the time was the Beijing Hotel whose access was restricted to foreigners and government authorized personnel. Fast forward thirty years later. China is a teeming landscape of modern cities, unruly traffic in spite of a purring infrastructure of roads and rail. In three decades, 350 million people have been brought into the consumer class, an accomplishment of herculean dimensions. Yes, there are issues of civil liberties and pollution. But these are being addressed. China is already lapping the United States on environmental technology and as to Mr. Friedman's lament about America's reticence to build nuclear power plants, know that China plans to build 25 by the year 2025.

All this raises a much more fundamental question: Given our current structure of government and the way it functions, how are we going to compete, and to hold our own in years to come as we go head to head with societies that are far better equipped to deal with the exigencies of the future and the long-term planning that is essential is to meeting the challenges ahead?

We are hardly a nation of wimps. Sadly, we have a government that is barely functioning. We have a government class too readily looking after its own interests and those of their campaign paymasters, rather than the nation as a whole. This has not always been the case. The American people are and have shown themselves to be capable of extraordinary accomplishments throughout their history. But today, in this world, given the leadership of other societies, much needs be done to change the way we govern ourselves and the way our government functions.

Senate Amtrak Gun Law: U.S. Senate Approves Firearms On Trains

2009-09-16T13:27:41Z

WASHINGTON — The Senate voted Wednesday to permit passengers on the Amtrak passenger railroad to transport handguns in their checked baggage.

The proposal, approved by a 68-30 vote, seeks to give Amtrak riders rights comparable to those enjoyed by airline passengers, who are permitted to transport firearms provided that they declare they are doing so and that the arms are unloaded and in a securely locked container.

Raymond J. Learsy: High Speed Rail Speeding Ahead at Snail's Pace

2009-09-03T08:48:34Z

In the months ahead the Department of Transportation will be begin awarding the $8 billion set aside under the federal stimulus program to those states presenting the most attractive plans for building high speed trains. Another $5 billion will be sought by the administration over the next five years. Not exactly chump change but for those counting, it's equivalent to the amount showered practically overnight to a single financial entity, the $12.9 billion paid out to Goldman Sachs through AIG's counterparty redemption of near worthless derivatives made possible by the government's infusion of cash into AIG.

Where once upon a time $8 billion plus the prospect of an additional $5 billion would have seemed like a munificent sum, given our recent conditioning of hundreds of billions being bandied about it seems insufficient to the task at hand and lacking in vision. And this for a program that would have an extraordinarily beneficial impact on our lives, on our economy, and on the environment. Quoting California's Governor Schwarzenegger, commenting on the proposed high speed link from the Bay Area to Southern California:

"On top of stimulating the California economy, Federal investment in California's rail systems will help lay a sustainable foundation for economic growth, help us meet our environmental goals and improve quality of life here in California."

Please recall that the $8 billion for high speed rail was barely mentioned in the first draft of the federal stimulus program (please see "The Stimulus Package: Why Is Intercity Rail Service at the End Of he Line") and added almost as an afterthought when enthusiasm for the concept received a much warmer following in Congress than had been anticipated and with the strong sponsorship of President Obama. Since then, support and enthusiasm for the program has broadened nationwide, extending to the 13 regions that will be submitting proposals to the Department in the next days. They range from submissions coming from California, from the Capitol Corridor including Virginia and North Carolina, from Chicago to points south to St.Louis, as well as east and west, from Arizona and Florida and beyond.

Most glaring is the paucity of national commitment to what could be a major and positive overhaul to how we travel, weaning us away from decades of addiction to endless highway and road building, and the endless subsidies toward air and highway funding.

Given the success and public enthusiasm for high speed rail in Japan and China coupled with a deep sense of national pride, our efforts are long overdue in what is rapidly becoming the preferred mode of transport of the 21st century and beyond. This is especially so when both England and France are undertaking major expansions of their already highly successful high speed rail infrastructure.

To the enormously successful high speed rail service linking London to Paris, the British government is proposing expanding service from London to Edinburgh and Glasgow serving both Manchester and Birmingham as well. Current plans call for the link to become operative by 2030 with an expenditure of $55 billion dollars. (BBC "New High Speed Plan Unveiled" 08.26.09). Travel time between Glasgow and London will be reduced from 4 hours and 10 minutes to 2 hrs and 16 minutes.

France, with perhaps the most effective national high speed rail network in the world is looking to double its reach within France and extend service links to Italy and Spain and ameliorate service links to Germany. More than 2000 additional kilometers of track will be put down by 2020 at a cost of 98 billion dollars (Le Monde: "Lignes a Grande Vitesse: la France de Demain" 08.11.09). On a proportional basis relative to size and population that would be the equivalent of the United States committing at least $490 billion toward an analogous project.

It needs be added, in terms of what forward thinking governance can achieve, that the French rail system is powered almost exclusively by an electric grid that is generated in excess of 80 percent by nuclear power, with the French government gearing to reach 100 percent within the next few years.

On the issue of high speed rail service we are riding the caboose of history attached to a hundred car freight train. "Lignes a Grande Vitesse: la France de Demain," freely translated is "High Speed Rail Network: the France of the Future". What about our future? And when are we going to have a government that once again takes the future in hand with vision and meaningful purpose and action?

Howard Learner: Midwest High-Speed Rail Development: On the Fast Track

2009-08-31T12:12:48Z

The world has changed. Just a few years ago, many people thought that high-speed rail development here was just a dream. Now, it's moving to reality. President Obama has made high-speed rail development his #1 national transportation priority fifty years after President Eisenhower advanced the build-out of the nation's interstate highway system.

On July 27th, eight Midwest Governors led by Governor Quinn, and Chicago Mayor Daley, joined together in signing a Memorandum of Understanding, committing to combine regional and state planning and development work, prioritize corridor buildouts, and coordinate applications for federal funding. Senators Durbin (D-IL) and Lugar (R-IN) and Congressmen Oberstar (D-MN) and Petri (R-WI) have formed a new bipartisan Midwest Congressional High-Speed Rail Caucus.

This structural transformation of our transportation system will improve mobility with a new modern, fast, comfortable and convenient transportation option for everyone. It will create jobs and spur economic growth by pulling together the regional economy. It will protect our environment through less pollution, reducing congestion, and counteracting sprawl by pulling jobs, people and businesses into downtown areas.

There is broad national support for high-speed rail development. Forty states have proposed 278 projects seeking more than $100 billion in federal funding. In addition to the $8 billion in federal economic stimulus funding approved earlier this year, the House has appropriated $4 billion more for FY 2010 and has proposed $50 billion in the federal transportation reauthorization legislation.

Good passenger rail service has been the weakest link in our intercity transportation system for too long. Not surprisingly, service improvements have resulted in more ridership. When Illinois invested state funds to increase the frequency of Amtrak service in the Chicago-St. Louis corridor a few years ago, ridership then almost doubled. "If you build it (well), people will come."

For many years, federal and state taxpayers have provided trillions of dollars of support for highways, airports and air service. It's now time for public investment in high-speed rail service to provide a third intercity transportation option that works better. According to an economic study conducted for the Midwest state Departments of Transportation, the new Midwest high-speed rail network can create 57,000 permanent new jobs across the region, produce more than a billion dollars in additional household income, and spur almost $5 billion in private new development near Midwest rail stations. Let's seize the opportunity to capture these benefits. This is a winner.

Let's be clear, though: what happens in Illinois and the Midwest is key to the nation's rail future. All eyes will be on the home region of President Obama, Chief of Staff Emanuel, Secretary of Transportation LaHood, Federal Railroad Administrator Szabo and Amtrak Chair Carper. Critics will look for proof that this is just hometown pork. They will search for railroad bridges to nowhere. And if they find much, the strong support could evaporate.

That's why what's good for the Midwest is good for securing our nation's high-speed rail investment for the future. Here's how we can make Midwest high-speed rail development work well:

First, as FRA Administrator Szabo urges, we need "one region - one voice." We should support a regional vision of a vibrant Midwest tied together by high-speed rail connections. The Midwest Governors are working together to coordinate their states' plans and federal funding bids. The rest of us should support this vision and this cooperation.

Second, let's not let perfection stand in the way of progress. The Midwest Regional Rail Initiative's ultimate vision includes 3,000 miles of passenger rail serving 65 million people in nine Midwest states. With a vision this ambitious and complex, there are sure to be details that are less than perfect. Let's not permit controversies over particular stations, routes or speeds stand in the way of a united front and overall progress.

Third, the Federal Railroad Administration's rules for the federal economic stimulus funding competitive bids make clear that this isn't only about trains. This is about mobility. This is about job creation. This is about economic development, growth and revitalization. This is about livable communities and less pollution and a better environment.

So, as we move closer to realizing the big vision, let's also focus on synergies to make these rail investments really succeed. Let's invest in train stations, as Milwaukee, St. Louis, St. Paul and others are doing. Let's bolster transit, bus, taxi and airline connections so that rail stations can serve as truly intermodal hubs of economic activity. Let's creatively build up vibrant communities around train stations, as Normal, Illinois is doing. Let's work to rebuild the rail manufacturing industry, and let's expand the market for using cleaner biofuels as Governors Quinn and Culver are discussing.

Working together, we can create a win-win-win for our region: good for jobs and our economy, good for the environment, and good for people and our communities. Let's get on board together and advance the smart Midwest high-speed rail development on a fast track.

Weekend Subway Service Advisories

2009-08-28T17:27:05Z

As people in Riverdale wonder what took so long for the MTA to fix known problems at 181st St. and bemoan the impact altered 1 train service has on their way of life, Upper Manhattan is again the focus of this weekend's service changes. For the second weekend, both 181 St. and 168th St. will be closed for, respectively, repairs and inspection.

Matthew-Lee Erlbach: The Harrowing Journey North with Rebecca Cammisa's Which Way Home

2009-08-24T16:23:10Z

Rebecca Cammisa became a filmmaker in 1998, when she teamed up to co-direct, co-produce, and shoot the feature documentary film Sister Helen. In 2003, Rebecca founded Documentress Films, and received development support from the Sundance Documentary Fund, HBO, the Wellspring Foundation, and the William J. Fulbright Fellowship in Filmmaking for Which Way Home.

Which Way Home airs on HBO, August 24th at 9pm. For more information on the film and how to take action, go to WhichWayHome.Net.

Why was this story essential for you to tell?

I was shocked that this was happening and how children and adults migrants were suffering just to get to the United States. The journey through Mexico can be completely dehumanizing and child migrants do suffering greatly. One reason this film was made was to make the families think twice about letting their children attempt this harrowing journey. I hope that lawmakers will watch this film and feel that it is imperative that humane, immigration reform bills get passed right away.

You show these terrifying images of children folded into the inside structure of cars--like the space between the actual door of the car. Talk about the toll of this kind of smuggling.

Those photographs were given to us by the Department of Homeland Security. One photo shows a child hidden inside a glove compartment in a car. Some child migrants are transported this way while others are forced to crossing the Sonora desert. If they do make it, they might then be taken to safe houses where they could be held for ransom, or if they are too weak, they will be left in the desert to die.

When I did ask parents and family members, "How could you let your child go with a smuggler," they often said, "You know, the person doing it is our neighbor. And he's going too: he can look out for their safety." So many times it's a neighbor who's accompanying the child, someone who's trusted, someone from within the community. But what they don't always understand is that the neighbor may not make it all the way through Mexico, and then their children end up in the hands of strangers who only care about money, or God knows what else!

The film touches on that: kids getting robbed, disappearing along the way, falling asleep and rolling off the train, getting killed by the tunnels, and in one instance, a girl's rape in a train car is recounted. Why are people risking so much to get to the United States?

Well the kids we focused on, some of them were kids who had parents and other relatives in the United States. And in other instances, these were kids from extremely poor families--and there's no jobs in their home countries--so they come to the United States hoping to get the money and send it back to their families. And you know, often times they don't know the reality of the journey. And they think once they commit and make it as far as Mexico, that they have no choice but to continue on. So much is depending on them succeeding in the U.S.

Many people think that migrants just easily appear at the U.S. border. But the tough journey begins at the Mexico-Guatemala border. And a lot of the criminality and violence occurs when traveling through to Mexico. So by the time migrants arrive to the US border, they've already been severely traumatized. It is my hope that when people watch this film, they realize what these people are put through. They really suffer.

What do you say to those that say the United States is not responsible?

Well first of all, U.S. economic policies have had some adverse affects on Central American and Mexican farmers by undercutting their ability to sell their products in their own countries. These negative affects have impacted the migration north. But putting that aside, the United States is not some floating island. We are part of North America and the Western Hemisphere.

Therefore, when there's poverty, environmental disasters, and destabilization in other countries, people migrate north just to survive. I would love to say that illegal immigration shouldn't be our problem, but guess what: problems magnify and illegal immigration is an issue that all of the countries in the Western Hemisphere must solve together as a shared responsibility.

So does this corporate exploitation of indigenous peoples contribute to this massive immigration?

Clearly the negative side of all corporate structures is exploitation. I've met many Central American migrants who said they would have stayed in their countries if they could make a decent living selling their crops. So when you say we're not responsible, you really have to look at the economic issues that people are being effected by, that's a shared responsibility that we all have to solve.

Talk about the Minutemen on the borders of the U.S.

Of the Minutemen/women we met, many of them are concerned because they own land on the border and they have massive amounts of people smuggling drugs into their land. There's violence, rape, robbery, shooting. So people who are living close that border have real concerns. Then we met others who traveled from states like Indiana, Pennsylvania, Maryland, etc. who felt that they wanted to do their part to protect the U.S. border. For many Minutepeople we met, they seemed to be very emotional about the immigration issue, however when I asked them what they knew about what migrants experienced when traveling north, mostly all of them were not that informed. They certainly were not aware of the fact that children were coming as a means of family reunification. After spending time with some members of the Minuteman movement, I definitely walked away believing that this film was much needed.

What humanitarian changes can be made in the US immigration system?

Well first of all there's the DREAM Act. The Dream Act is that if children come here and are undocumented, but they excel and do really well in school, there's a path to citizenship for them. Even though they're undocumented, if they're in school and really high achievers, then they can possibly get a permanent residence card. And don't we want the best and brightest in this country? If we see children who are excelling, why would we cut ourselves off from the opportunity of not having the best future for this country? So I think the DREAM Act would be a wonderful thing, a great support mechanism for children who were born here, who maybe have never lived in Central and South America or Mexico because they were either born here or came here when they were little, they have no real connection with the country they're from and we just deport them back and deport them to what?

One boy I met along the way was 19, he was just deported. He had never lived in Mexico his entire life. He was not documented here, but he was born and raised here. He's never been in Mexico in his entire life! We met him in a shelter and he didn't even know anybody. I mean this is insane. Again, you cannot paint people with one brush. And these policies do that.

And think about it this way: If people are given a legal means to come, where are they gonna put their money when they travel? Are they going to get on a bus, get on a plane legally? Or are they gonna pay three to four thousand dollars to a smuggler and die in the desert? A by-product of these current policies--that aren't really functional--is that people make desperate decisions and that the people that benefit are the smuggling networks. Money that could go to an airline or to a bus carrier instead goes into a network that smuggles people.

After 9/11, the U.S.-Mexico border was in lock-down. The by-product of this lockdown are these people who have migrated to the US now just wouldn't leave. And so now there's a break in circularity. So another humane practical law that could be enacted would be a guest worker program. I think if people are allowed to come legally, work for a certain amount of time and then go home, they would. And look, they wanna go home; they'd probably rather be with their family. And I think that at least that would help families reunite and not keep families separated for years on end.

It's easy for people in this country to overlook the Latino community--especially those with what are considered more menial jobs--and not take into consideration and appreciate the incredible circumstances from which they came that led them here. Talk about your experience with families and the difference between those with and those without relatives in the US.

Back in 2006, I made a trip to El Salvador because I wanted to see the difference between families who have relatives in the US and families who don't have relatives in the US. And so I was taken to one family that lived very simply and they had their own store--they had a means of livelihood, a tienda in town. Well the money to build that tienda and keep it going was being supplemented and supported by a family member in the United States. And then I wanted to see a family without relatives in the US. So we walk along these railroad tracks--these long railroad tracks--where no trains travel through anymore. And there are these houses along the tracks, so we went in to see a family. And I went in and it was pitch black, a lot of shade. I go in and there's about eight people in the room and the woman tells me, this is a family without anyone in the United States. I saw two people, other than children just sitting on mats, I saw a woman in her fifties laying in bed who was dying of breast cancer--there was no money for treatment. But right next to her was this very sunken-in man in his twenties, coughing and hacking. And so I thought, "Oh my God, he must have TB or something." No, he had AIDS. And he was wasting away. So I asked this woman, why is this woman with terminal breast cancer lying in here and why is this man coughing and hacking his lungs out right next to her not getting any treatment? And she looked at me and just said, "They don't have the money." So they're basically gonna die here. So the mother's laying in bed just waiting to die out and there's the son in worse condition. So lemme tell you, if that was my brother and my mother, my ass would be on a freight train going North to try and help them. I wanted that to very much appear in the film, but it took the story in a whole other direction. But what we wanna do is take extra footage from the film and put it on the site so people can get a much more in-depth understanding of what's going on. I wish this was a whole series. And that's why I really want people to go the website, because if you watch this for five to ten minutes, you'll get it. You'll get it.

Finally, what do you hope people will gain from this incredible documentary?

Awareness. Awareness about how dangerous this journey really is for those migrants who continue to take the trip north. I think the U.S. public-at-large is greatly uninformed about what migrants suffer to get here, a country whose entire modern history was created by the migrant experience. I hope the young subjects of the film reminds us of why our own ancestors came, and ultimately, I hope the film spreads compassion for "our neighbors from the South", who are in great need.

Which Way Home airs on HBO, August 24th at 8pm. For more information on the film and how to take action, go to WhichWayHome.Net.

I-70 Won't See "Substantive Improvements" Until At Least 2015: Frisco Town Manager

2009-08-20T18:57:47Z

You can see some of the Federal stimulus dollars at work on Highway 9, I-70, and the Summit County Maintenance shop, but what else is happening on I-70? Well, the I-70 Coalition and our members have been continuing to stay busy over the last several months. Much of the early part of the year was spent working on legislation to ensure an ongoing and stable funding source for transportation financing. A reliable statewide funding stream is necessary for anything to happen on I-70.

Many of the I-70 members are also involved in the Rocky Mountain Rail Authority (RMRA) which is nearing completion of a study showing that it is feasible to develop a high speed rail solution between DIA and the Eagle County Airport, as well as from Fort Collins to Pueblo. This was a very high level study, but one which will ultimately tie in with the I-70 Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement. For those of you wondering about costs, we're talking in the neighborhood of $15 billion for the DIA to Eagle County Airport route and more than $5 billion for the north-south route.

Graham Hill: Train Replacing Plane: It's Not Insane

2009-08-05T08:21:44Z

Well-developed high-speed trains could take a lot of domestic travel out of the hands of airlines.

Which has the airlines crying, "That's insane."

British Airlines expressed its skepticism in a Guardian article: "High-speed rail cannot be a complete substitute for flying," the company said. "There are relatively few destinations in continental Europe to which it would be practical to travel and return by rail in a day. Therefore flying will always remain the preferred form of transport for millions of travelers."

We don't need train to be a "complete" substitute. The simplified check-in, security, and city-center to city-center service provided by trains will naturally cause many people to switch.

James Howard Kunstler says Obama's notion for U.S. high-speed rail is trying to sustain the unsustainable, and we should concentrate on fixing the rail system we already have.

Why not do both? Fix the rail we have, plan for more high-speed rail. Lester Brown notes a long list of benefits, the most important one being a move away from the car-centric system that has given us so many woes.

The International Aviation Transport Association (IATA) said that the country (Britain) that took decades to plan a contested third runway at Heathrow would probably take just as long to build a good high-speed net. More reason to start now.

As more people understand the CO2, congestion, and other pollution burdens of flying and driving, it seems that the populace will be willing to trade some time-savings for some climate saving.

Japan has the world's most high-speed rail lines, with France a distant second. And guess which country is the biggest surprise in the high-speed sweepstakes? Spain, once a country reviled for its backward, slow-moving rail system, now has a fabulous Barcelona-Madrid fast train connection, 1,594 kilometers of high-speed rail already built and a whopping 2,219 kilometers under construction.

China has only 394 kilometers currently built but an astounding 3,404 kilometers under construction. If building for high-speed trains was so insane, would China be investing in it?

Read more about high-speed rail at TreeHugger and Planet Green
::5 High Speed Trains That Are Changing the Face of Rail
::Air Travel and Climate Change: Take the Train
::Travel Green and Save Money Without Giving Up Anything (But Your CO2 Footprint)
::Is High-Speed Rail the Answer?
::High-Speed Rail: Richard Florida Weighs In

For more articles by Graham Hill click here.

Governors Holding Midwest High Speed Rail Summit, Sign Pact

2009-07-26T15:08:17Z

CHICAGO (AP) -- Midwest governors met in Chicago on Monday in a show of unity as they push for an eight-state, high-speed rail network - agreeing to set up a group that will coordinate the states' bid for a share of $8 billion in federal stimulus cash for such projects.

The one-day gathering, billed as a Midwest High Speed Rail Summit, otherwise offered few new details, including how much it could cost to build the system that would connect 12 metropolitan areas with Chicago as its hub.

Governors from eight states - Illinois, Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Michigan, Indiana and Ohio - had already pledged to work together to build the network, saying it would help reduce road congestion and lower greenhouse gas emissions.

A memorandum signed Monday in Chicago by Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn and four other governors sets up the Midwest Rail Steering Group, which will coordinate applications and lobbying for federal stimulus money.

In addition to Quinn, Govs. Jim Doyle of Wisconsin, Chet Culver of Iowa, Jennifer Granholm of Michigan and Ted Strickland of Ohio also attended, as did Chicago Mayor Richard Daley.

The governors of Minnesota, Missouri and Indiana signed the memorandum earlier and did not attend the gathering.

The document does not include a price tag for the Midwest network, though some estimates say it will cost at least $10 billion. At a news conference in Chicago, governors also couldn't say just how big a slice of the federal stimulus pie they hoped to receive.

"We'd like all $8 billion" of the available stimulus funds, Doyle joked. Wisconsin's governor added that up to $19 billion in federal money from other sources could also be made available over the next several years.

Some have criticized the governors for being unclear about costs.

"They don't want the price tag out there when everyone's talking fiscal restraint," said John Tillman, head of the conservative Illinois Policy Institute. After costs of construction, Tillman said, operating expenses could soar into the billions of dollars over several years.

Tillman also raised doubts about whether any such network would reduce either road congestion or emissions, saying it's not clear whether enough drivers would abandon their cars for high-speed trains.

Competition for a slice of the federal stimulus money will be stiff.

The Midwest plan and a high-speed rail plan from California appear to be among the front-runners for stimulus cash, but 40 states have submitted 278 plans totaling $102 billion for federal rail funding, officials have said.

The Midwest project foresees an initial push to upgrade three routes: Chicago-St. Louis; Chicago-Madison, Wis., via Milwaukee; and Chicago-Pontiac, Mich., through Detroit. Work would extend later to other lines, including St. Louis-Kansas City, Mo. The upgrades would enable trains to travel up to 110 mph; currently, the top speed of trains is usually under 80 mph.

The project, which could take 10 to 20 years to complete, would create 15,000 construction jobs and 57,000 permanent jobs, Granholm said.

-ASSOCIATED PRESS

The committee's memorandum of understanding:

Memorandum Of Understanding -

The press release announcing the plans:

Midwest High Speed Rail Summit Press Release -

Big Cash Infusion Could Ease Chicago's Snarling Train Traffic

2009-07-17T20:15:04Z

CHICAGO (AP) -- When a train screeches to a halt in Chicago, freight and passenger trains from as far away as Baltimore or Los Angeles are sometimes forced to apply their brakes as well - which can result in costly gridlock throughout the nation's 140,000-mile rail network.

But a fresh injection of cash, including a generous slice of a new $10 billion state capital plan, means a long-languishing, $1.5 billion project to ease train traffic jams in the nation's most important rail hub by building new overpasses and modernizing signals can begin in earnest.

The unofficial motto of the congestion-reduction project, widely considered one of the most vital to the long-term financial health of some of the nation's biggest railroad companies, is "Keeping the 'go' in Chicago."

As it is now, it's often no go.

The 500 freight trains that pass through Chicago each day compete for access to tracks with 700 daily commuter trains in the region. This means trains hauling everything from coal to grocery items can take more than a day to wind their way through Chicago.

The Illinois bill sets aside $320 million for the project - money that will be pooled with more than $200 million raised earlier.

"This is a very big deal - the largest single amount of money awarded to this project," Earl Wacker, a recently retired rail executive and an authority on rail congestion, said Friday. "Earlier, I wasn't confident this would get done. Now, I'm extremely confident it will."

Six of the seven largest railroads operating in the United States run trains through or to Chicago. All have contributed money to the project, dubbed the Chicago Region Environmental and Transportation Efficiency program, or CREATE.

"There are projects of importance to different railroads, but this brings so many railroads together. That's historic," said Holly Arthur, a spokeswoman for the Association of American Railroads. She calls the money Illinois put up "a tremendous milestone."

Proponents say long-standing support from President Barack Obama should help efforts to secure the remaining costs.

At least $300 million in federal stimulus money could soon be approved for CREATE, which was first drawn up in 2003. A separate transportation reauthorization bill working its way through Congress could set aside $500 million or more.

Advocates say taking steps to solve Chicago logjams should also greatly boost Illinois' bid for a cut of $8 billion in federal stimulus money marked for high-speed rail. Illinois and neighboring states want a Midwest high-speed network with Chicago as its hub.

"CREATE and high-speed rail for the Midwest are inextricably linked," said Kevin Brubaker, deputy director of the Environmental Law & Policy Center in Chicago. "To make high-speed rail work, we need to clear up congestion in Chicago."

CREATE is comprised of nearly 80 separate projects, from 25 roadway overpasses or underpasses that would divert cars above or below busy tracks to viaduct improvements and upgrades of track switches and signals.

The project says on its Web site that its price tag is $1.5 billion. But the cost of completing all the projects by 2020 probably will be closer to $2.5 billion because of rising construction costs, said Larry Wilson, an Illinois Department of Transportation official.

The sharp economic downturn and a 20 percent dip in freight train traffic this year compared to last has eased congestion in parts of the country - with empty trains idled for months on sidetracks in some places.

But congestion in the network's main bottleneck of Chicago remains a daily headache, delaying freight as well as commuter and Amtrak passengers. And despite current slowdowns, the U.S. Department of Transportation still expects demand for rail freight to double over the next 25 years.

In recent years, about 40 percent of all U.S. rail freight has come through Chicago on more than 150,000 trains a year. Nearly all the major routes of the rail freight system come through one or more of the region's 80 rail yards. It's why a single delayed train here can force those thousands of miles away to stop or slow down.

---

On the Net:

Chicago CREATE congestion plan: http://www.createprogram.org

Association of American Railroads: http://www.aar.org

-ASSOCIATED PRESS

Anis Shivani: The End of the Age of Oil: Will It Be a Soft or Hard Landing?

2009-07-15T17:00:12Z

$20 PER GALLON: HOW THE INEVITABLE RISE IN THE PRICE OF GASOLINE WILL CHANGE OUR LIVES FOR THE BETTER
By Christopher Steiner
Grand Central, 276 pages. $24.99

Forbes magazine writer Christopher Steiner has set up a useful heuristic device--the escalation of the price of oil in two-dollar increments, from $4 to $20--to speculate about the changes in our lifestyle we might see at each stage of the price increase. At $4, some of the tougher choices might still be unpalatable, but with the continuing increase in price, more radical changes will become necessities, if we are to survive as a civilization at all.

Others have written much in the last few years about peak oil scenarios; the most persuasive such analyst has been James Howard Kunstler, particularly in The Long Emergency: Surviving the End of Oil, Climate Change and Other Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century (Atlantic Monthly, 2005). Kunstler wrote before $4 and $5 gas at the pumps was a reality; as time goes by, his projections about a winding-down of mechanistic civilization as we know it, driven by oil in every aspect of our existence, appear more and more prescient, and even reasonable-sounding. There has been an undoubted element of glee in Kunstler's analysis; he, for one, would be glad to see the return of smallness, locality, and manual survival skills allowed to lapse in the machine age.

Steiner's book agrees on the basic premise, that the end of oil is bound to come sooner rather than later (we can disagree on the exact date oil extraction peaked, but its arrival at some point is indisputable) and that we had better prepare for the day of reckoning.

Reading $20 Per Gallon makes us realize how contingent our way of life is, and how uncertain its future prospects are. Connecting each phase of the price increase with a particular form of reliance, Steiner tries to move us from denial to acceptance. We will not be able to live the way we have been for the last century, driven by the stored excess energy of oil, built up over millennia. No new form of energy currently on the horizon competes with oil for its cheapness, efficiency, ease of use, and broadness of applicability. At the same time, cheap oil has engendered a variety of grotesque behaviors, from the way we eat our food to how we move products around the world, that make no sense in the absence of underpriced oil.

Steiner wishes to posit a rational transition, driven by market signals, as consumers, businesses, and governments make appropriate choices. For Kunstler, social and political unrest of the highest magnitude is bound to come with the end of oil. The reader can decide, based on the following arenas of choice, which is more likely.

At $4, we will begin to accept that there remains little easy-to-get oil.

At $6, the SUV will be dead, America's motoring habits will change, and we will become healthier as we get around more on foot.

At $8, the "skies will empty," as airline travel will again become a luxury, and the major American "dinosaur" airlines will go out of business: "Southwest and JetBlue will become the dominant domestic airlines in an age of $8 gasoline," thriving on their flexibility. Families will concentrate closer together, and Las Vegas as we know it will "go bust."

At $10, after a period of experimentation with hybrid cars, the electric car, 100 years after it first came on the scene, will rule our thinning traffic. Electric cars still face a lot of technical problems, and Steiner discusses Israeli entrepreneur Shai Agassi's company Better Place, in the forefront of thinking about the infrastructure necessary to make electric cars a reality. At the $10 price signal, plastics made from organic sources--of the kind MIT's Dr. Oliver Peoples is pioneering--will start making sense.

At $12, the suburbs will lose their charm, and cities will become magnets for fleeing householders. Urban density, such as New York's, will become the model for less dense cities around the country. South Korea's New Songdo City is an example of a sustainable dense urban conglomeration, likely to become a model around the world.

At $14, Wal-Mart will end, Main Street in small towns will revive, and American manufacturing (defeated for so long by the ease of container trade) will return to prominence. We will use materials more sensibly; lacking asphalt, a byproduct of oil, which we use for rooftops and to pave our highways, we will turn to metal and concrete.

At $16, the way we eat will fundamentally change. Farms will go local. Steiner points out that having long ago exhausted the natural fertility of our soil, what we essentially eat is oil, since fertilizer consists partly of the hydrogen molecule stripped from hydrocarbons.

At $18, high-speed rail will connect America's cities, and the pernicious effects of policies biased in favor of the heavily subsidized auto industry will finally cease.

At $20, the alternative energy choices will be stark and irrefutable--nuclear power will stand out as the most viable option.

In essence, Steiner is talking about piece-by-piece rebuilding of existing infrastructure in every realm of activity, to smoothly incorporate new non-fossil-fuel-based technologies. It perhaps stretches faith in our capabilities to allow for such a rational transition. The shift Steiner is discussing is akin to Kunstler's small-scale, local, manual economy, even if Steiner doesn't want to let go of the idea of cars and planes and international trade and differentiated cuisine.

It is revealing that Steiner stops at $20. If the end of oil becomes discernible to everyone, most likely the shift up in prices will not be incremental, but abrupt and exponential. And it doesn't have to stop at $20. Oil is the most precious commodity we possess, if we are bent on maintaining our current form of life. Even at $20 it would be close to free, based on its actual value. What happens when oil is at $50 or $100 or $1,000 a gallon? Obviously, rationality is out the door then, and a more gruesome survivalism sets in, the kind Steiner stops short of discussing.

We can't lose our oil and yet benefit from its applications, in a more beautiful version of what we have now, only somewhat modified. Kunstler went at the problem bluntly, presenting a scenario so horrific (and so inevitable-seeming) that the mind still has difficulty grappling with it. It takes fossil fuels to power newer technologies; Kunstler addresses this problem head-on, and finds no solution within our existing scientific capabilities. Most of the alternatives bandied about, as both Kunstler and Steiner agree, are not realistic, or can only meet a small proportion of our energy needs, even at a drastically reduced level of consumption. For Steiner, nuclear energy will be the savior; it's a huge bet to place, on a technology with its own well-known problems.

Steiner hopes that policy choices will mitigate the inevitable crash. His timely warning is all the more poignant for the degree of human wisdom it seems to call upon.

Plan Calls For Midwest High Speed Rail Running At 220 MPH

2009-06-30T18:29:00Z

CHICAGO (AP) -- When it comes to trains, there's fast and then there's really, really fast.

Advocates on Tuesday unveiled an $11.5 billion plan for a Chicago-St. Louis high-speed line that could cut travel times to two hours from the current five. If built, it would be among the fastest U.S. lines and would rival high-tech systems already in place in Europe and Asia.

Under the proposal, electric-powered trains would zoom the nearly 300 miles between Chicago and St. Louis at up to 220 mph - more than 100 mph faster than diesel-powered trains under a comparatively modest plan already advocated by eight Midwestern governors.

The newer plan is generating excitement among rail enthusiasts, some of whom pooh-pooh the gubernatorial proposal - which envisions trains that reach top speeds of 110 mph - as too conservative.

Tuesday's proposal - the focus of a study released by the non-profit Midwest High Speed Rail Association - would require upgrading tracks and bridges as well as electrifying the line. The estimated price tag doesn't include costs of new trains or maintenance.

With backing from Illinois officials, the ambitious project could be done in time for the 2016 Summer Olympics, which Chicago is bidding to host, said Rick Harnish, the association's executive director. A deadline seven years away, he said, is ambitious but doable.

"You sometimes need an audacious goal," he said. "We also need to catch up to the rest of the world."

The proposal for a 220-mph service is intended to complement, not replace, the governors' plan, Harnish said. The 110 mph trains would serve more communities and make more stops en route, something Harnish and his Chicago-based group supports.

Pluses of the newly proposed electric-train line would include helping to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, Harnish said.

Backers want Illinois to apply for $10 million in federal stimulus funds for further analysis they hope could lead to a detailed plan. Harnish conceded money to foot the total bill of the project may have to come from new taxes or fees.

"But I think the public will accept a new funding stream if it includes paying for new ways of travel," he said.

Skeptics question whether any benefits would justify the cost.

"This is a classic case of a nice idea - but one where the government will end up misallocating dollars," said John Tillman, head of the conservative Illinois Policy Institute. "This would be subsidized travel when there are already ways to get to and from St. Louis and Chicago."

The $11.5 billion would be better spent, he said, on buying 1 million fuel-efficient cars. He also questioned whether electric trains would be more environmentally friendly given that they would likely rely on energy generated by coal-burning plants.

The estimated $10 billion proposal backed by the Midwest governors would join 12 metropolitan areas, including Chicago and St. Louis, in a network with Chicago as its hub. Upgrading existing tracks would enable trains to travel up to 110 mph, according to the plan.

Currently, the top speed of trains running between Chicago and St. Louis, Bloomington and Springfield is just under 80 mph.

The Midwest governors' plan and a California proposal are front runners in the race for $8 billion in federal stimulus cash set aside for high-speed rail. California wants to build 800 miles of high-speed track connecting the San Francisco-San Jose area with Los Angeles and Anaheim.

The only rail service that currently qualifies as high-speed - that is, where trains travel at more than 90 mph - is Amtrak's Acela Express connecting Boston to Washington, D.C.

-ASSOCIATED PRESS

Phoenix's Light Rail Has 60% More Riders Than Expected

2009-06-18T14:44:17Z

he sprawling city of Phoenix, of all places, is showing us how light rail should be done. They just opened a 20 mile line with 28 stops last December, and ridership statistics are beating all forecasts (evidence that the same might be true in other cities where they are afraid to invest because their forecasts are too low) with 40,000 weekly riders instead of the 25,000 expected.

Administration Releases High-Speed Rail Funding Info, Edge To Midwest And California

2009-06-17T18:13:07Z

CHICAGO — High-speed rail plans in California and the Midwest appear to be front runners in the race for $8 billion in stimulus cash based on federal criteria released Wednesday that favor projects with established revenue sources and multistate cooperation.

California voters last November approved nearly $10 billion in state bonds that could be combined with federal money to build 800 miles of high-speed track. Eight Midwest states have cooperated closely to promote a network, with Chicago as its hub, that would join 12 metropolitan areas within 400 miles.

Michael Likosky: A Call for Excellent Public-Private-Partnerships

2009-06-17T03:39:41Z

Former Governor Howard Dean and Former Mayor Stephen Goldsmith, both now affiliated with the international law firm McKenna Long & Aldridge LLP, just launched the Council of Project Finance Advisors.

The idea is to promote excellent partnerships between government and the private sector in order to answer President Obama's call "to lay a new foundation for growth." This Council will have a big umbrella, including many thought-leaders and interest groups. It will sort out best partnership practices for laying our new roads and high speed rails, creating a clean energy economy, building new schools, ensuring clean drinking water, and producing many other vital public goods.

The McKenna press release includes a call by Goldsmith to learn lessons from successful domestic and international experience with partnerships. McKenna lauds Goldsmith's own experience with public-private-partnerships: "conducting more than 80 public-private competitions which resulted in savings of more than $400 million and investment in infrastructure of more than $1 billion as mayor of Indianapolis." The Council will identify successes so that we can get on with rebuilding our infrastructure through partnerships. This is all very welcome; It will be instructive to learn who is on the Council and which projects are good models.

At the same time, one of the great things about infrastructure and public-private partnerships is that most of us are ourselves often in the best position to judge whether models are successes. People around the world, from Texas to Kuala Lumpur, from Hungary to Nairobi, from Chile to the United Kingdom have first-hand experience with partnership projects.

We can definitely help one another.

What have been the very best partnerships for delivering affordable efficient roads and rails? Living wage construction jobs? Accountability and transparent tendering? Clean drinking water?

UK rail partnerships, for instance, are promoted by many thought-leaders within the US as one of these excellent models. How are these rails to ride?

And, since we are moving away from a sub-prime mortgage-backed economy and toward a drinking water-backed one, we might also talk about which models to avoid or to learn constructive lessons from. Lessons can be learned from our collective experience with public-private-partnerships or P3s: nineteenth century railroads from the US to Mexico, toll roads from Malaysia to Hungary, and water and energy from Bolivia to Tbilisi.

The Best US Transit Systems You Never Knew Existed

2009-06-15T12:24:59Z

When it comes to public transit in the U.S., there are certain predictable all-stars: the Metro in Washington, D.C., is convenient, efficient, and clean. The anthropomorphically nicknamed El and BART in Chicago and San Francisco are legendary. And everyone knows it's easier to navigate New York City without a car than with one.

But what about the rest of the country? As cities big and small rethink how their residents get around, new systems are taking shape--and as gas prices and paychecks fluctuate, riders are responding in droves. While the current economic crunch is forcing many cities to hike fares and cut back on service, innovations continue, and the tracks are laid for a bright future.

Read more: Trains, Mass Transit, Vacation, Travel, Green News

Susan J. Demas: Commerce Secretary Locke: Rail Can Revive Auto Industry

2009-06-05T12:20:43Z

During last year's Michigan presidential primary, John McCain made the mistake of saying that the hundreds of thousands of lost auto jobs weren't coming back. Mitt Romney then blathered something about the triumph of the American spirit and promptly pulled off a 9-point win.

A little more than a year later, with Chrysler and GM in bankruptcy, no one could credibly claim that jobs will be flooding back to the industry.

So what now for the Rust Belt?

On Wednesday, U.S. Commerce Gary Locke was at a town hall in Holt, Michigan. That day, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood and Vice President Joe Biden were busy meeting with Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm in Washington about a Detroit-Pontiac-Chicago high-speed rail line. So I asked Locke if rail was an area for the auto industry to expand into.

He gave his enthusiastic endorsement.

"Oh, yeah," he told me. "As you see more construction of rail cars, high-speed cars, it's going to require new engineering, new products and services and that's the natural fit and extension for automotive dealers and suppliers and manufacturers."

Six hundred miles away in Washington, Granholm was on the same page.

"We have lots of capacity in Michigan and workers who know how to make things," she said.

It's a bit of an ironic partnership, sure, since GM killed Detroit's street cars in the 1950s and is a key reason why it is the only one in the top 20 cities lacking a decent transit system. But the days of Charles Erwin Wilson musing that "for years I thought what was good for the country was good for General Motors and vice versa" are long gone.

Linking up with rail makes perfect sense for a contracting industry, at a time when environmental and economic factors make expanding public transit a necessity.

Former U.S. Rep. Joe Schwarz (R-Battle Creek), who has been in the running for a White House job, is perhaps Michigan's foremost authority on railroads. He could be the logical person to help spearhead the autos' transition to rail. He notes the United States is behind the curve on high-speed rail, with countries like France, Italy, Germany, Spain and Japan establishing lines decades ago. But he said even with a White House push, it's still an uphill battle.

"It will take a real will on the part of the states and the Congress to get it done. Members of Congress from non-high-speed rail states will fight it," Schwarz predicted.

Light-rail would particularly benefit New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Washington, D.C., Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, Texas, California, Washington, Oregon and Missouri, he said.

If the feds do subsidize the Detroit-Chicago line, Schwarz said, it will be a massive undertaking, but an opportunity to create a lot of jobs in construction and manufacturing. The project will require ballast, tie, track repair and replacement, regrading some curves to accommodate higher speed trains, modern signaling equipment, emergency stop capability for trains that miss signals, dedicated high-speed right of way, new passenger car with special wheels and brakes and new locomotives capable of 135 mph and above. New stations will be required in some cities, as well.

"This is a multi-multi billion dollar two decade project that should have been done long ago," Schwarz said.