Iowa Global Warming

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
February 13, 2009

Recovery Act Invests $9.3 Billion to Expand High-Speed Rail in America

The final version of the Economic Recovery and Reinvestment Act now before Congress includes an unprecedented $8 billion investment in high-speed rail. In addition, Amtrak will receive $1.3 billion to rebuild trains and improve its capacity.

“We commend President Obama and Congress for helping to get America moving again with modern trains,” said Howard Learner, Executive Director of the Environmental Law & Policy Center. “Investing in high-speed rail projects will put people to work quickly, create new economic opportunities, increase mobility and reduce traffic congestion and pollution.”

The $8 billion made available through the Economic Recovery and Reinvestment Act will be awarded competitively to states to improve passenger rail service, primarily on those corridors where 110 mph service is proposed. Funds can also be used on conventional rail projects that relieve congestion. The Midwest is very well positioned, with federally designated high-speed rail corridors radiating out in a hub-and-spoke network from Chicago to St. Louis, Cleveland, Detroit, Milwaukee, Madison and the Twin Cities.

“The Environmental Law & Policy Center has long called for the development of a Midwest high-speed rail network. Governors and state Departments of Transportation have embraced high-speed rail as modern, fast, comfortable and convenient. We have done the homework and prep work. These projects are now ready to build,” said Learner. “We look forward to working with the states to meet Congress’s challenge to rebuild America with cleaner transportation.”

“Congress has moved on the right track toward economic recovery,” said Learner. “Investing in modern, high-speed rail is an important down payment on America’s transportation future.”

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NOTE: Due to very high web traffic, the bill itself is difficult to download from Congress’s
website. ELPC has made the documents available on its website at: http://elpc.org/american-recovery-and-reinvestment-information

The Environmental Law and Policy Center is the Midwest’s leading public interest environmental legal advocacy and eco-business innovation organization.

www.elpc.org

NPR ran a great radio story about the stimulus package last week, particularly, how the bill will allocate $30 billion towards mass transit and rail projects. Featuring 1988 presidential candidate Michael Dukakis. Listen here

Sun Rail, the $615 million proposed passenger rail service across central Florida, is one of many similar projects cropping up around the nation this year. Florida Governor Charlie Crist, along with transportation officials and state lawmakers, announced yesterday that a bill supporting the initiative will be put before the legislature this year, and if passed, will connect Deland to Poinciana, via Orlando.

“It helps the economy, it helps transportation, it helps people have the opportunity to move around in a way that is more clean, less gas emissions and less carbon emissions,” said Crist. “To un-congest our interstates and our roadways… is one of the most important things that we can do.”

Read more here

Let’s be honest: Trains are an easy sell. The public seems to be falling in love with trains again – and for good reason. They’re graceful, powerful, simple and nearly as American as Apple Pie itself. They’re an iconic aspect of our culture; rooted in our hearts by scenes of bittersweet goodbyes on the station platform and adventurous travels out west. Despite being overshadowed by jet planes and electric cars in recent decades, our fascination seems to remain endless, manifesting itself to this day with hobbyists and children alike. After years of being relinquished to our subconscious, however, I think its time we reconsidered them – as the face of a transportation revolution that could lift our ailing economy and forever improve our dated transportation sector.

Trains have come a long way since Leeland Stanford drove the Golden Spike in Salt Lake City one hundred and fifty years ago. They’re three times more efficient than cars, six times more efficient than airplanes, often the fastest and almost always the most hassle-free way to travel. And we’re working to bring them back in a big way. To get involved, just send me an email or give us a call!

Rep. Jerald Nadler of New York headed up a bill that will add $3 billion dollars in government subsidies to commuter and passenger rail projects across the country, the Wall Street Journal reported yesterday. Adding to the already massive economic recovery plan, the additional $3 billion dollars will chalk the transit total up to $12 Billion, with roads and bridges now receiving a heft $30 billion.

Deron Lovaas, a representative for the Natural Resource Defense Council, says the extra money “will go a long way to improve our rail systems and maintain the jobs needed to keep them running.”

Read more here: (Wall Street Journal)

Washington, D.C.: Governor Doyle (Wis.) spoke to congress today about Wisconsin’s share of the proposed $825 billion dollar bail-out plan and the importance of supporting passenger rail with those funds. Wisconsin, which hopes to receive $2.5 billion for general purposes and another $500 million specifically for transportation, already has more than $137 million in proposed railway construction projects ready to go. For more, read about it here (msnbc), here (wispolitics.com), and here (thetransportpolitic)

Federal economic stimulus money could be used to build a Midwestern high-speed passenger rail system that would link Chicago to Minneapolis with stops at Milwaukee, Madison and even Green Bay, Gov. Jim Doyle told Milwaukee business leaders today.

Doyle made the comments while laying out to the Greater Milwaukee Committee some of his priorities for the billions in federal money likely to be approved by Congress to help revive the struggling economy. He said that the economic crisis presented an “opportunity to do some things that we’ve dreamed about doing for years.” A Midwest high-speed train system is one such project, he said.

“Imagine a high-speed train from Chicago to Milwaukee to Madison to the Twin Cities, with a spur that goes to Green Bay, and that connects up with other major population centers in the Midwest. We’ve sat around and talked about this for decades. But now we may well have the opportunity, somewhat depending on how this federal legislation is structured, to be able to make that kind of big-time investment,” Doyle said.

Asked in an interview after the meeting whether there was evidence enough travelers would use such a system, Doyle said he believes they will if it’s designed to save them the time and hassle of existing forms of transportation.

“If you could get from the Twin Cities to Chicago in equal the time it takes you to go to the airports and fight through everything and you can end up in downtown Twin Cities or downtown Chicago and it’s on a good, new high-speed comfortable train, then I think you’re going to see a lot of demand for it – particularly as it comes through Madison and Milwaukee,” Doyle said.

Doyle said he hoped such a system could be profitable, but said it might require government subsidies to operate.

“Just as we heavily subsidize our road transportation system,” Doyle said. “We subsidize heavily our air transportation system. I don’t think people should say rail is somehow not subject to subsidy when the others are.”

Read the full story here

Federal economic stimulus money could be used to build a Midwestern high-speed passenger rail system that would link Chicago to Minneapolis with stops at Milwaukee, Madison and even Green Bay, Gov. Jim Doyle told Milwaukee business leaders today.

Doyle made the comments while laying out to the Greater Milwaukee Committee some of his priorities for the billions in federal money likely to be approved by Congress to help revive the struggling economy. He said that the economic crisis presented an “opportunity to do some things that we’ve dreamed about doing for years.” A Midwest high-speed train system is one such project, he said.

“Imagine a high-speed train from Chicago to Milwaukee to Madison to the Twin Cities, with a spur that goes to Green Bay, and that connects up with other major population centers in the Midwest. We’ve sat around and talked about this for decades. But now we may well have the opportunity, somewhat depending on how this federal legislation is structured, to be able to make that kind of big-time investment,” Doyle said.

Asked in an interview after the meeting whether there was evidence enough travelers would use such a system, Doyle said he believes they will if it’s designed to save them the time and hassle of existing forms of transportation.

“If you could get from the Twin Cities to Chicago in equal the time it takes you to go to the airports and fight through everything and you can end up in downtown Twin Cities or downtown Chicago and it’s on a good, new high-speed comfortable train, then I think you’re going to see a lot of demand for it – particularly as it comes through Madison and Milwaukee,” Doyle said.

Read the full story here

There’s much to like in Obama’s plan. But there are two important ways he may have to go further. Most economists agree that what finally pulled the U.S. out of the Great Depression was military spending for World War II. Some liberals argue that if the Roosevelt administration had not abandoned a Keynesian stimulus strategy in 1937-38, the U.S. might have gotten out of the depression without a war. But in 1936, unemployment was still at 16.9 percent; by 1942, after two years of war spending, it was 4.7 percent, strongly indicating that it was war spending that did it. I am not suggesting that the United States start a world war in order to solve the world’s economic problem. But I am suggesting a strategy that could be called the fiscal equivalent of war.

It would consist not merely of updating or repairing the nation’s infrastructure, but in undertaking massive new investments that would expand the scope of American industry, and address other urgent problems in the process: global warming, over-reliance on petroleum, and the need to revive America’s domestic manufacturing capabilities–not just to provide jobs, but also to provide tradeable goods that can reduce the country’s current account deficit.

One area that is ripe for such investment–and that is not, from what I have seen, a declared priority of the Obama administration–is high-speed rail. Amtrak’s Acela trains–the closest thing we have to one–average less than 100 mph between Washington D.C. and Boston, whereas trains in Western Europe and Japan go more than twice as fast. Many of them also run on electricity. They would be the most energy-efficient and quickest means of getting between places like Boston and New York, or Los Angeles and San Francisco. But they would require a massive investment. For instance, installing high-speed rail in the Northeast corridor could cost about $32 billion, while California’s high-speed rail system would require up to $40 billion. A system that would address the other areas of the country could easily raise the cost to the hundreds of billions. The House transportation and infrastructure committee has currently proposed $5 billion in stimulus funds for intercity rail–not even a down payment on what it would cost to convert the U.S. to high-speed rail.

Investing in high-speed rails would be very expensive, but unlike tax cuts–the benefits of which can be siphoned off in the purchase of imported goods–the money spent would go directly to reviving American industry and improving the country’s trade balance. That doesn’t just mean jobs creating dedicated tracks or new rail stations: Though the U.S. abandoned train manufacturing decades ago to the French, Germans, Canadians, and Japanese, this kind of production could be undertaken by our ailing auto companies or aircraft companies–if the federal and state governments were to place orders. And building trains that would run on electricity would be a paradigmatic example of the “green jobs” that Obama often touts.

Excerpt from a larger article – read the full story here

In a week focused on the fate of the auto industry and the naming of an auto czar, Iowa politicians and state representatives are turning their attention to the rails.

Iowans assisted Amtrak in setting a record number of riders this year – 64,260 passengers used Amtrak trains at six Iowa stations in a 12-month period ending in September, a 3 percent increase over last year’s count. The number of Iowa passengers taking to the trains that year was the highest passenger load Amtrak has seen since it was established in 1971. Across the nation, 28.7 million people rode the rails, signaling the sixth-consecutive year of record passenger levels. The increase in train travel is encouraging optimism around Iowa regarding the possibility of a potential expansion of rail service.

In April of this year, a study released by Amtrak found that rail service from Iowa City to the Quad Cities would have the support of both citizens and legislators. Such a route would require a contract splitting the annual costs among Chicago, the Quad Cities, and Iowa City, each contributing around $6 million. However, recent economic hardships may hinder progress as state representatives wrestle with available capital to subsidize new routes.

The Department of Transportation will offer a proposal to the Legislature in an attempt to secure funding for such an undertaking. Federal matching funds will also serve as an option to financially support the project. If the route uses the Iowa Interstate Railroad, the project could be quite a bargain. The Iowa Interstate Railroad bought the Iowa portion of the Rock Island line, which provided rail service to Iowa City until the early 1970s.

Read the full article here