Understanding Government

As other states reject federal high-speed rail money, Illinois is asking for more. Gov. Pat Quinn, a Democrat, announced yesterday that the U.S. Dept. of Transportation will provide $685 million to begin construction April 5 on a high-speed rail track between Springfield and Joliet. Overall, the state is supposed to get $1.2 billion to build a track between Chicago and St. Louis — but Greg Hinz of Crain’s Chicago Business points out that Illinois could get more federal cash. (more…)

With states’ choices on high-speed rail, there will be winners and losers.  Some governors have said no to the expense of high-speed rail in spite of federal funding.  Others are taking a chance on building new transportation infrastructure to serve the public but face the risk of ridicule if the trains end up underused.   The principle of public spending is at stake, as is the ability of infrastructure to change a region’s investment climate and improve the standard of living.

As Ashley Halsey III writes in the Washington Post, states who have decided to build high-speed rail may now have more money to make it happen.  Ohio, Wisconsin, and Florida have all backed out of previous commitments to build high-speed rail lines, leaving $2.4 billion that states like Illinois, California, and Colorado can compete for.

If the Obama administration pushes forward with all the lines that states have agreed to fund, and if other governors — Democrat or Republican — stay the course and insist on modern rail infrastructure in their regions, states like Wisconsin, Ohio, and now Florida will live to regret their decisions rejecting these projects, and their residents will, sooner or later, demand that they get the same services that exist around the country.  (In Wisconsin, voters would have had to commit all of two cents per year per person to get their line built).  All this will happen if there are enough states and enough politicians in Washington willing to stand up for smart growth on a national scale (as well as on the local one).  And funds that were slated for states saying no to high-speed rail must be used for those states willing to move forward.

The Illinois Department of Transportation has negotiated an agreement with Amtrak and Union Pacific Railroad that will let the state release $1.1 billion in federal grants for a high-speed rail line from Chicago to St. Louis. (more…)

Sharp objections to high speed rail in Wisconsin and Ohio (which Ned Hodgman also looked at today) are paying dividends for California and ten other states.

The newly elected Republican governors in the two Midwestern states, who declined federal seed money to begin developing a Chicago-based fast train network reaching from Cleveland to Minneapolis and Kansas City, just inadvertently gave a $1.2 billion gift to less recalcitrant states, reports Dan Weikel of the Los Angeles Times.

The Federal Railroad Administration announced that it was pulling stimulus funding from Ohio and Wisconsin and rather than allowing the governors to repurpose the funding, will re-allocate it to states where high speed rail is wanted. (more…)