This is a long and detailed discussion of the direction Washington is taking in regard to Transportation investments generally, and high-speed rail in particular.
I have edited out a lot of non-HSR stuff in an endeavor to shorten it. You all should, however, read the entire brief.
Ken Orski's newsletter, Innovation NewsBriefs, is an invaluable source of information critical to our future in California in regard to our concerns about high-speed rail. It bears close reading.
While there is no direct reference to California's HSR project, we can infer from Orski's observations and comments that whatever the HSR project has already been awarded from ARRA funds in our state, is it. That is, there will be no more federal funding after that.
That leaves the Central Valley pretty much with the isolated, incomplete, non-high-speed-rail-usable and ridiculed "Train from Nowhere to Nowhere." No more funding for connecting it to either of the two population centers, north or south.
Well, California High Speed Rail Authority, that was a lot of fun. Thanks for nothing.
I must remind you that these indicators that Ken talks about are intentions at this time; not decisions or implementations. We must not "count our chickens. . . ." so to speak.
However, among other things, it should give our Peninsula Caltrain a heads-up about where their future lies, and it isn't with high-speed rail. It should also give my diverse colleagues, in diverse groups, with their diverse agendas, a clue to what they ought to be working on; that is, where the HSR action is: Washington.
A final word here. The Republicans are now in charge of the House agenda. The HSR funds have been distributed on political grounds. (Merit; schmerit!) We know full well that the DOT targeted one congressional district in the Central Valley to help re-elect a Democrat. California, a blue state, has received a generous portion of the ARRA stimulus dollars. That is quite likely to change now.
As you know, I have been hammering on the issue that high-speed rail is favored by Democrats and disliked by Republicans. To understand this project, you need to understand the politics. We will now see that play out.
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Innovation NewsBriefs
Vol. 22, No. 3
January 22, 2011
What Lies Ahead for Transportation in the 112th Congress?
As Congress gets down to business and awaits the President's State of the Union address and his Budget Message, here is how informed observers view the prospects for transportation in the days ahead. Our prognosis is based on published reports and informal conversations with members of the Washington transportation community, congressional sources and fellow journalists and reporters
Congressional action on transportation this year, including the shape of the next surface transportation bill, will be inevitably influenced by the changed political geography of the 112th Congress. Not only will the level of funding for transportation be dictated by new, fiscally conservative House majority , but the program priorities will be influenced by a newly elected GOP representation that largely hails from small-town and suburban America.
The freshly re-constituted House Transportation and Infrastructure (T&I) [John Mica's committee] Committee is comprised of 33 Republicans and 26 Democrats, a net decrease of 16 members. Of the 33 Republicans, 20 are newly elected House members and only 13 are committee veterans with transportation experience. A majority of the new GOP members come from the heartland and none of them represent big city transit-oriented districts. The closest to a major urbanized areas that any of the Republican members come from, are Oklahoma City and Charleston SC. The new chairman of the House Highways and Transit Subcommittee, John Duncan, represents Tennessee's conservative 2nd congressional district and the chairman of the House Transportation Appropriations subcommittee, Tom Latham, comes from a rural district of Iowa.
[edit.]
Transit is expected to maintain its customary share of total spending, although "New Starts," traditionally funded with general revenue, may receive a smaller allocation, given the increased influence of fiscal conservatives and a diminished presence of city-oriented transit advocates on the current T&I Committee.
Also likely to be curtailed will be support for high-speed rail (HSR), amid its cool reception in Wisconsin, Ohio, Iowa, Florida and other Republican-dominated state legislatures.
A proposal by the influential Republican Study Committee (RSC), a caucus of 165 conservative Republicans, would eliminate all future high-speed rail grants. Although House Transportation Committee chairman John Mica (R-FL) is generally supportive of rail and has talked of shifting more freight from roads to rail, he has been highly critical, along with Rep. Bill Shuster (R-PA) the new chairman of the subcommittee on Railroads, of the politicized way the Administration has handled the high-speed rail program. He is likely to reorder the passenger rail priorities and reallocate any unobligated rail money to where, in his words, "it makes sense." A likely beneficiary will be the Boston-to-Washington corridor. "Ignoring development of true high-speed rail in the Northeast Corridor would be a monumental failure," Congressman Mica wrote last year ("U.S. Musn't Squander High-Speed Rail Funds, The Hill, October 15, 2009.)
As of January 20, approximately $4.7 billion of the high-speed rail funds remained unobligated. This includes $2.4 billion allocated to Florida's Tampa-to-Orlando line and a number of smaller HSR projects that remain stalled in contentious negotiations with the affected Class 1 railroads. The fate of the Florida project remains uncertain. Gov. Scott awaits the results of a feasibility study, due in February, before making up his mind. Along with Rep. Mica and Florida Senate President Mike Haridopolos, he reportedly feels that any remaining project costs (estimated at $280 million or $1.5 billion depending on who is doing the estimating) should be covered by the private partners to the project. While several private consortia have expressed interest in building and operating the high-speed line, they have remained silent so far as to their willingness to underwrite any construction overruns and operating losses. Undoubtedly, they too, are conducting their own "due diligence" analysis of the project's construction costs and ridership estimates before committing themselves financially to the project.
[Edit.]
Chairman Mica's resolve to make passage of a multi-year authorization a top priority increases the likelihood that a transportation bill will be brought to the House floor and approved during the first session of the 112th Congress. Once the bill passes the House, it will also likely pass the Democrat-controlled Senate. Few of the 21 Democratic senators who are up for reelection in 2012 will not support legislation containing badly needed money for transportation. In the meantime, the short-term extension of the surface transportation program that expires March 4 will once again have to be extended. House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) will be authorized to set a ceiling on spending for the rest of the fiscal year "at or below the levels set in Fiscal Year 2008."
This, in essence, is how informed opinion appears to view the prospects for the federal-aid transportation program in the 112th Congress. While the next authorization will, by all accounts, be more modest in size and less ambitious in its reach than many in the transportation community had hoped, at least the 112th Congress will offer the states a promise of stable and predictable multi-year funding, necessary for long-term investment decisions.
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