Upon taking his place in the White House in January 2009, President Barack Obama made public transportation, in particular a “National Rail Network,” a large part of his plan to jumpstart the economy, via his American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA). From part of that plan stemmed the High-Speed Intercity Passenger Rail (HSIPR) program, which saw the Obama Administration and Congress provide $10.1 billion and annual appropriations to provide rail access to new communities and improve the reliability, speed and frequency of existing lines.

The plan provided transportation options to more than 135 million Americans, or 44% of the population, with investments being made in a three-tiered passenger rail network that would strategically lay the groundwork for achieving the President’s vision of providing 80% of Americans with access to high-speed rail within 25 years:

  • Core Express services operating frequent trains at 125 mph to 250-plus mph in the nation’s densest and most populous regions.
  •  Regional services providing 90 mph to 125 mph service between mid-sized and large cities.
  • Emerging services (up to 90 mph) connecting communities to the passenger rail network and providing a foundation for future corridor development.

Much has happened since the HSIPR program was announced in the spring of 2009, with much of it being positive. However, the program has also been used in a new political climate as a rallying cry for wasteful spending and empty promises. METRO Magazine spoke to experts in the high-speed rail industry to get their perspective on what has happened over the last three years and what they believe will happen down the road.

New political climate
Obama’s HSIPR plan is the grandest transportation program since President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s Interstate Highway System in the 1950s. Much has changed since then, though, including a growing new political movement that endorses reduced government spending, cutting taxes, and reduction of the national debt and federal budget deficit. In fact, the Tea Party movement had an immediate impact in Wisconsin and Florida, which led to the governors in those respective states’ rejection of HSIPR funding.

“There were other more wasteful programs in their states they did not cancel or send federal money back for, but once they figured out they had a hot topic they could draw a lot of media attention to by taking this stand, they went for it and built momentum,” says Petra Todorovich, director of America 2050, a national advocacy initiative. “And, that is part of the story of this program’s persecution in the national media.”

The negative perceptions of the program seemed to immediately take hold, especially with the climate in Congress being more contentious than it ever has been. Todorovich adds that the program was open to criticism and the negative press it received because of the Administration’s failure to properly communicate that the HSIPR program was really about more than just high-speed rail such as those systems already in place in Europe and Asia.

“For expedience sake, President Obama and Secretary of Transportation [Ray] LaHood would just call it the high-speed rail program when talking about it, so that opened them up for criticism that they were making these investments in the Chicago-to-St. Louis line, for instance, which is not a high-speed rail corridor, but still a very valuable investment,” she explains. “People felt the investments were being oversold or represented as something that they were not. That was a communications challenge that was not successfully met, and as a result, there was a lot of confusion and some mistrust about what the federal government was trying to do.”

Todorovich continues that perhaps breaking HSIPR into two separate programs — a high-speed rail program and a passenger rail improvement program that just provided grants for incremental upgrades, repairs and maintenance — would have been a more beneficial approach. The communications problem, she says, looks like it’s on the way to being fixed.

“In the new Senate MAP-21 bill, the references to the rail program call it ‘high performance rail.’ So, I think the policymakers in Congress, at least, are moving from this High-Speed Intercity Passenger Rail program name toward one that is meant to encompass both true high-speed rail and upgrades to create better performing rail services throughout the U.S.,” Todorovich explains.

In California where the wheels remain in motion on the only “true” high-speed rail system in the nation, both the local and national conservative factions have teamed with local opponents to fight against the building of the 520-mile, $68.4 billion high-speed line that will eventually run from Los Angeles to San Francisco.

“The best way of explaining it is the perception is distorted. It’s not based on facts, it’s based on politics and who will prevail, the conservatives or the liberals,” says Rod Diridon Sr., executive director of the Mineta Transportation Institute and former chair of the California High-Speed Rail Authority. “Rather than relying on the [negative] media, it’s better to rely on the facts generated by empirical research by the engineers, designers and the other researchers who are working on the project. [People] need to evaluate that data and come up with a conclusion.”

Diridon explains while the project has been on a roller coaster since its late 1990s inception, there has never been as concerted an effort against the project as there is now, thanks in part to the Tea Party’s ability to organize all of the opponents under one roof, so to speak.

“The Tea Party was successful in ending projects in a couple of states, and now, they are focusing on killing the project in California, because it is so tightly associated with Obama,” he says. “They are not basing their opinions on merit; all they want is to use it as a lever in the upcoming presidential election.”[PAGEBREAK]

Photo Courtesy: Midwest High Speed Rail Association

Photo Courtesy: Midwest High Speed Rail Association


Can’t stop progress
ven with the negative attention in the mainstream media and partisan fighting both locally and federally, work on rail projects around the nation continues to make progress, although it may not be the earth-shaking step forward some may have been expecting.

“It’s clearly evolved since all the excitement and interest a couple of years ago with the announcement of the high-speed rail grants,” says Peter Gertler, chair, high-speed rail services, at HNTB. “There is about $10 billion in federal grant money that has been distributed and those monies are now being spent and used in ways to advance and progress some of the programs that were put forward at that time.”

Five projects outside of California that continue making major progress include:

1. Seattle to Portland: New stations, daily trains and faster service are under development on one of the most established corridors in the U.S.

2. Chicago to St. Louis: Construction is under way to bring 110 mph service and enhanced stations, which will help cut travel times and improve frequencies.

3. Chicago to Detroit: Improvements are under way to bring a 30-minute reduction in trip time, 110 mph service and enhanced stations.

4. Northeast Corridor (NEC): Connecting Washington, D.C., New York and Boston, improvements are being looked at to allow speeds of 160 mph between Philadelphia and N.Y., as well as other State of Good Repair work along the entire corridor.

5. Charlotte, N.C. to Washington, D.C.: Investments will add new daily trains and decrease travel times on one of the fastest-growing corridors in the nation.

“Starting with the NEC, that’s a project in which we have 100-year-old rail infrastructure, so there are vital improvements that are needed along the length of the corridor, including replacing a dozen bridges that are over 100 years old and some of these movable bridges that sometimes slow down or stop traffic on the corridor,” says Todorovich. “A lot of those improvements fall into the category of state of good repair, so when you own an asset as critical to mobility in the largest megaregion in the U.S., there’s no question those investments need to be made.”

Todorovich also points out many of the investments that are being made in corridors around the country have enjoyed great success when they’ve made investments in the past in improving the reliability and frequency of service, resulting in better on-time performance and increased ridership. A good example of those successes that she cites is Amtrak’s Capitol Corridor, which links Sacramento, Calif., with the Bay Area, where ridership and frequencies have climbed hand-in-hand.

“The overall strategy at the federal level is not just to focus on those really expensive investments in dedicated high-speed rail, which will serve the very populous regions like California and the Northeast, but also to make more cost-effective, incremental investments in existing rail lines so you can get service that will attract more passengers and get more of the American public riding the rails,” Todorovich explains. “The hope is that will then build support for continuing investments, so the program can grow and we can begin to ratchet up the level of ambition in which we’re investing in these different rail corridors throughout the country.”

Even as it continues to be maligned, there remains optimism the California project will be successful as it continues to make forward progress despite the hurdles.

“It faces a lot more controversy, but that is all to be expected and comes with the territory of a project of that magnitude,” says Gertler. “If you look at precedent from around the world, every other major high-speed rail program like it has run into exactly the same kind of issues, but there’s still quite a bit of confidence, and we’re very bullish that the California program will progress.”

As of press time, the California project was waiting for the state’s legislature to approve the sale of $2.7 billion of the Proposition 1A bonds voters approved to pay for the project, with work on the first leg of the project slated to start by early 2013.

Diridon likens the California project’s popularity at this point to that of the Golden Gate Bridge, which was also maligned as unnecessary by opponents. When asked about the possibility that the project will be completed, Diridon says he is highly optimistic.

“Based on need and merit, we need the project in terms of jobs and mobility for the future. California is rapidly approaching terminal gridlock. We have three of the top 10 worst congested metropolitan areas in the U.S. That is really telling us something,” he says. “As we continue to grow, especially in California, we’re going to have to have additional mobility. We can’t build more freeways; we don’t have any more dirt. This project is just the right thing to do.”[PAGEBREAK]

Photo Courtesy:Talgo

Photo Courtesy:Talgo

Optimistic outlook
Essentially, Diridon believes the California project will move forward because, in fiscal terms, it’s a no-brainer for the state, since the $9 billion in low interest bonds will be paid back over 30 years and the federal government and private industry will be making significant investments in the project as well.

“For California, it’s the best bargain you’ve ever seen, and gradually, that’s beginning to be seen,” he says. “The legislature sees it now, so they don’t argue any more about the impact on the budget; there’s no impact on the current budget. There won’t be any impact for two years, and by that time, the tens of thousands of people who will be working on the project in the Central Valley will be paying more in taxes than the state will be paying out to amortize that debt over 30 years.”

With approximately 150,000 job years predicted for the first phase of the project and well over one million job years of work over the full life of the project, Diridon adds that high-speed rail in California may ultimately hinge on labor organizations in the state making it a bottom line issue.
Meanwhile, the fiscal benefits are something that, as a whole, makes sense for the U.S., according to Todorovich.

“Sometimes people complain about how much improvement a billion dollars in rail investment gets you, and sometimes, it seems like it’s hard to measure or it doesn’t stack up well in terms of dollars per minutes saved on your trip time,” she says. “It’s important to point out that these investments last for 100 years in some cases. In the Northeast Corridor, for example, we are still using rail investments that were made over 100 years ago and they are underpinning the economic competitiveness of the entire Northeast megaregion. So, these are really long-term investments, that unfortunately, are a little slow and cumbersome to realize, but they really have lasting value.”

Gertler feels the Administration’s goal to be prepared for the large population growth expected over the next 30-plus years coupled with rising environmental concerns are reason enough for the HSIPR investments, especially those in so-called megaregions like California and the NEC, to continue taking steps forward.

“The complexities, cost and environmental impacts associated with expanding our highways or airports are so significant that those aren’t really reasonable options to accommodate the future population and growth projections in those regions,” he says. “There is also the whole issue of our dependency on fossil fuels, and the ability to move people more efficiently in more environmentally sensitive methods. Clearly, 1,200 people riding on a train compared to those same people driving or traveling by airplane is much more environmentally efficient in terms of use of fossil fuels and, also, carbon emissions.”

So, as opposition puts pressure on California’s project and the Administration’s HSIPR program as a whole, has the lack of “big box” change to the nation’s rail system really been a failure?

“Rather than looking at it as if the program has been a failure, I see it as evolving and maturing,” says Gertler. “Those areas where it’s needed and is most critical has continued to persevere, and I’m confident we’ll see some development and implementation of a [high-speed rail] system in our near future.”

When asked where she would like to see the program in five years, Todorovich is optimistic.

“I very much hope we will have 120 miles of track built in California and it will be moving ahead with a successful funding request for the next phase and that all the other investments funded in the Obama years will have been completed,” she says. “In addition, Amtrak ridership, which was 30.2 million last year, will be up to 33 or 35 million in five years, and you will have more people supporting and enjoying the benefits of rail in the U.S.”

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