Is not a $75 billion 15 year expansion plan more than the $66 billion Congress allocated? Most, if not all, of that $66 billion is going to be spent with local transit - streetcars, light rail, metro rail - and Amtrak intercity services assocated with the Northeast corridor, There isn't going to be $1 billion left for intercity passenger train expansion located elsewhere than the Northeast with just a few exceptions for high speed trains in their own dedicated corridors - CAHSR, Brightlline West, and Texas Central. Studies will probably be approved, but nothing else will get funding for building. We'll have to wait for a future funding appropriation for other intercity services funding.
To many pundits get over excited when representatives and senators get funding for rail studies, many which will have new studies performed a decade from now because nothing gets done. Obamas infrastrucure building program studied many passenger corridors, I-35 in TX and MN, I-20 in TX,LA, and MS, and I-10 om FL, AL, and MS. Studies started over a decade ago, and not one has been built. the only Amtrak expansion being implemented by Amtrak after all those studies were in Vermont and and Virginia - both extension of existing Northeast Corridor trains. None were a brand new service. The New Orleans to Mobile train is close to being finished, but it is a shorter extension of what used to exist New Orleans to Jacksonville or Orlando. I am not so sure we should be celebrating getting less than half we used to have.
Other improvements to existing trains, like the potential Cascades higher frequencies, is just more of what we already have. More services being made available on a service with declining passenger counts? Worse yet, Washington state is not desiring more of what it already has, they want faster trains and are deeply studying HSR train corridors. But they are not going to get HSR trains in a dedicated corridor with this $66 billion allocation.
To many pundits get over excited when representatives and senators get funding for rail studies, many which will have new studies performed a decade from now because nothing gets done. Obamas infrastrucure building program studied many passenger corridors, I-35 in TX and MN, I-20 in TX,LA, and MS, and I-10 om FL, AL, and MS. Studies started over a decade ago, and not one has been built. the only Amtrak expansion being implemented by Amtrak after all those studies were in Vermont and and Virginia - both extension of existing Northeast Corridor trains. None were a brand new service. The New Orleans to Mobile train is close to being finished, but it is a shorter extension of what used to exist New Orleans to Jacksonville or Orlando. I am not so sure we should be celebrating getting less than half we used to have.
Other improvements to existing trains, like the potential Cascades higher frequencies, is just more of what we already have. More services being made available on a service with declining passenger counts? Worse yet, Washington state is not desiring more of what it already has, they want faster trains and are deeply studying HSR train corridors. But they are not going to get HSR trains in a dedicated corridor with this $66 billion allocation.