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Beginning to take intercity rail seriously

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From top to bottom: HSR in Japan, Taiwan, Germany.

From Reuters:

The U.S. Department of Transportation put out a request for proposals on Monday to build 11 high-speed rail lines across the country, taking a step that is rare in the United States by including the private sector in a major national infrastructure project.

The deadline for receiving the proposals is September 2009, and commissions of “stakeholders” such as the national rail company Amtrak, will evaluate them before passing them on to the U.S. Congress by April 2010, according to the statement. The first proposals considered will be for a route between Washington, D.C., and New York

From the Federal Register:

Section 502 of the Passenger Rail Investment and Improvement Act of 2008, Public Law 110-432 (October 16, 2008), requires the Secretary of Transportation to “issue a request for proposals for projects for the financing, design, construction, operation, and maintenance of a high-speed intercity passenger rail system operating within” either the Northeast Corridor or a Federally designated high-speed rail (HSR) corridor. To satisfy this requirement, the FRA is soliciting and encouraging the submission of Expressions of Interest for potential projects to finance, design, construct, operate, and maintain an improved HSR intercity passenger system in the Northeast Corridor or in one of ten Federally designated corridors.

The results of these reviews will be summarized in one or more reports to Congress, which will make recommendations for further action regarding no more than one project concept for each corridor. FRA envisions this as the first phase of a qualification process that Congress may follow with more specific actions regarding particular proposals in one or more corridors.

Although authorized, no funds have been appropriated to support implementation of HSR under this program, and the availability of such funds in the future is not known.

Obviously, before we build anything we’ve got to plan it. Why Congress feels the need to have the private sector do public planning is unclear, but semantics aside, this is an exciting step forward in what will be a long and difficult process.

Here is a map of the 11 Federally-designated HSR corridors:

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As you can see, “corridor” is rather loosely defined.

December 16th, 2008 | Permalink
Tags: government, transportation



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