Until last year all passenger rail in the US had a very bad reputation — slow, late, run-down, money-losing, doesn’t go where you want to go or when you want to go there… The public and the politicians had mostly given up on rail, and we seemed to be reaching the end of the line.

Then it all changed. Team Obama dangled a modest $8 Billion out there and incited a kind of feeding frenzy. Two dozen states rushed to ask for money for HSR routes and another dozen asked for funds to study rail improvements.

The entire conversation has changed. The media and the people are talking about fast trains for the future, instead of chewing over Amtrak’s past failures. State agencies that used to be honestly named the Department of Highways found themselves instructed by the governors to actually act like Departments of Transportation and get serious about rail. Politicians now see valid proposals about what could be done in their states and they’ll be working to see how they can help to get it done. (If you could get a Nobel Prize just for changing the direction of national policy discussions …)

In our sometimes clumsy federal system, today the proposals for improving rail are coming bottom up, from the various states, not top down from D.C., and building support closer to the grass roots As the states put forward their bids, we are getting a better idea of what is doable, which states are really committed, what’s a realistic timeframe and budget for projects, etc. Most of all, it’s beginning to dawn on the politicians and the public that fast trains may be a very good idea, but getting them will not be easy or cheap.

So the needs and the opportunities are becoming clearer. Priorities are emerging from the fog. When the $8 Billion carrot is sliced and diced and spread equitably across the four regions — Northeast, Southeast, Midwest, and West — clearly many worthy projects will be left unfunded. At that point the pressure will be on Congress to put serious money behind better passenger rail. Then we’ll start to move.

They should also streamline the high speed rail construciton and work on it one high speed rail line at a time such as instead of nibbling at the railroad projects very slowlly they should do it all in several high speed eletric railroad adavices starting out from the Northeast Corridor. Such as the NEC has eletric powered trains then they should kick off the natonal high speed rail up grades with a eletric catenary adaince towards Chaicgo from Harrsionburg PA. Or they could extend the eletric lines thoguh New York too.They should also do a high speed eletric catenary adanicement south from Washingtion DC down to link up with Florida’s high speed rail. Calforinia could start it’s eletric catenary and high speed rail advaincement right away too scince it is going to act as it’s own eletric catenary system with no known planned links to the other eletric catenary rail systems. Maybe they could pay for this with one on one speical foucsed stumius pakages that are custem made for each state’s rail plans.

Looking at it from a distance I see the basic benefit of rail being ignored. I see few justifications for any sort of high speed rail within a single state’s borders and little likely co-operation between states.

I can only assume the result will be many half-baked attempts at under-funded improvements and a lot of money wasted.

Rail is just not going to work piecemeal.

Patrick – I am very familiar with HSR. I’m suggesting there is more than one way to skin a cat.
Are you familiar with the current cost of Maglev? – Are the funds available enough to even be considering current Maglev? I seriously doubt it.

What I see here is a total budget which will fail to accomplish any worthwhile goals further hampered by dividing it up and handing it out to a bunch of toy-shoppers and politicians.

Without a clear goal there will be a failure to reach any goal.

The states in the US are hardly larger than farms back where I come from. Even then – we can’t get HSR without Federal direction even though they only need to traverse 3 states to go transcontinental.

Direction = goal + funds + project management.

I don’t see any definitions (HSR) Goals – ???
and I certainly see no direction.
I predict the result will be similar to sending a bunch of boys to different toy shops with a vague suggestion about trains – when they come back and you try to put it together it’s only use will be a jigsaw puzzle.

If the goal is to dump as much cash into someone’s economy who knows where then you’re right on track for that. HSR shouldn’t even be being used in the conversation without a disclaimer. (HSR = anything that moves)

On a national level nothing will be achieved.

Best of luck. The US will need it.

If HSR is the measure of America’s future I’ll be selling my US dollars.

The NC EIS does have three potential alignments, but in many places the alignments are not far from each other. At one point, I believe the study area ballooned out to about a half-mile, but mostly the three tracks are reasonably close and represent different levels of aggressiveness in reducing curvature.

In short, the three alignments are being covered by the single Tier 2 EIS.

AARP has this link

http://www.vermonttoday.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20091005/RBJ/910059969

Rutland Business Journal
Getting on track: Vermont seeks rail funds
October 5, 2009
By SARA WIDNESS
“Vermont … application for $125 million … to rebuild its eastern and western corridor railroad network.
…
“The main goal is to accomplish rail service for Vermont’s entire western corridor by bringing the Ethan Allen Express from Albany, NY, which currently provides service as far north as Rutland, up to Burlington.

“… by improving the track from Rutland through Middlebury and into Burlington. Service would be further enhanced through additional track upgrades from Rutland into Manchester and through North Bennington and back into New York. …”

The three alternatives for Raleigh-Richmond are all basically along the existing (partly abandoned) CSX S-line. The alternatives depart from the existing RoW in slightly different ways, smoothing curves, mostly. There’s a potential environmental impact to creating RoW where RoW wasn’t before; there’s more cost to acquiring RoW where RoW wasn’t before; but straighter, smoother RoW will run better, faster, cheaper. So the decision between them isn’t straightforward. Still, everyone expects a Raleigh-Richmond locally preferred alternative early next year. Given that $$ won’t actually be available much before that, it’s reasonable for NC to submit the application. Although at $3.7B for Raleigh-S. Collier, I doubt FRA will fund it this go round.

From that News Observer article linked by Bruce Sicelof @ 24 above:
“The 168-mile path to Petersburg would have a single track with passing sidings and 100 new highway bridges to run the track over or under every road. The state DOT has finished 30 percent of the engineering plans for three alternate routes to Petersburg.”

I expect that you’re ready to go with the NCRR section. It’s the new section toward Richmond that isn’t quite.

And with three alternate routes still being considered I didn’t think there’d be three environment surveys completed.