It saw ridership grow during the $4/gallon gas spike, as did every transit system in the country, bus or rail; but has not sustained that ridership, and more importantly, unlike good light rail starts in Houston and Dallas and elsewhere, has not motivated the public to support it with tax dollars.

It’s the wrong line in the wrong place – it would have been better to wait 10 more years to run on the FEC corridor than to have spent all this money and have nothing but the current state to show for it.

There’s currently a plan to build a new Tri-Rail line from Downtown Miami at Government Center to Downtown Fort Lauderdale.

1) It would establish the precedent that new rail starts should get the same kind of proportion of federal money as new highway starts.

2) It would fast track true high speed rail, hopefully creating an “I want one too” effect among other states.

3) It would be a wakeup call for Amtrak to get its act together, quite explicitly bypassing the company where a more incremental approach would have brought them front-and-center.

4) It would be a wakeup call for state and local politicians whose approach to rail has been definitely from the school of half-measures

5) It would help to lock in the California scheme, which I think is extremely vulnerable due to the state’s financial situation.

Less predictable is what kind of political dynamic this degree of concentration of the grants would create. Hopefully, item 2 above would take hold; I wouldn’t want other states to get discouraged. I think, therefore, that it’s also important for a substantial grant to go to an incremental project, such as in the Midwest, that would deliver a major improvement on an existing route. Let’s say funding the equipment purchases and infrastructure upgrades to enable Chicago-Milwaukee to speed up from its current 90 minutes to an even hour and to increase frequency to hourly or half-hourly, and maybe bringing in Madison as a feeder route to Milwaukee and/or Metra’s UP-NW service direct to Chicago.

Tampa will benefit sooo much more from this as a city b/c of the urban development. They’ll learn the lesson eventually, I hope.

I really think Florida might walk away with all the money they ask for. I really don’t think this is a bad thing either for 3 reasons.

1) It is the fourth most populated state.

2) There is a lot of people who can’t drive there. Think of all the elderly people. Florida has the highest percentage of people over 65 of any state with 17.6% of the total state population.

3) This is the best possible marketing opportunity to sell the general public on on investing in true HSR. I say this because it would be the quickest project probably to get up and running which would allow the word to get out quicker. Also it is a huge tourist destination for the domestic tourists. Many people will visit the state and end up riding it. They will no doubt be impressed and go home asking their state for the same.

That being said I would never want to live in Florida. However, I feel like it is inherently unfair to give into all of their request with so many great projects out there.

That is, until the U.S. Congress expands its commitment to high-speed rail by dedicating $1 billion or more for the mode in the annual transportation appropriations process, a decision expected to be made early next year with the support of strong majorities in both houses.

Don’t forget too that the House 2009 appropriations bill had $4 billion for HSR this year (versus $1.2bn in the senate). If they keep that amount in the omnibus appropriations bill that will have to be passed in the next few weeks, then it would probably give DOT and FRA even more incentive to fully fund CA and FL HSR since there’d still be a good chunk left over ($4.7 bn) to spread out across the country. This would even leave enough money to fund say half of the midwest and southeast proposals.