General US High Speed Rail Discussion

"improvements to the Albany-Rensselaer station"

What improvents are needed to the Albany station? Its brand new.

drewh wrote:"improvements to the Albany-Rensselaer station"

What improvents are needed to the Albany station? Its bad new.

It will get a fourth station track.

drewh wrote:"improvements to the Albany-Rensselaer station"

What improvents are needed to the Albany station? Its bad new.

The $58.1 million awarded to the Empire corridor actually combine 3 project applications that were listed separately in a NY DOT press release:
$18.6 million for replacing 48 miles of Hudson signal system from Poughkeepsie to Albany
$35.4 for final phase 4th track construction at Albany-Rensselaer station including turnouts,
$4.1 million to complete the funding for building the new Schenectady station.

The Empire corridor has done ok in the multiple rounds of allocation of the stimulus and FY2010 funding with a number of improvements to be completed over the next several years.

And no money to fix the Turboliners.... (sigh)

Whatever happened to doubling the track between Renssalaer and Schenectady? Major bottleneck there, too.

Rockingham Racer wrote:Whatever happened to doubling the track between Renssalaer and Schenectady? Major bottleneck there, too.

Funds have already been set aside for that (except for the bridge). However, little progress can be made without an agreement with CSX which owns the right-of-way. The deadline for reaching an agreement has already passed.

I've linked this topic onto our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/RailroadNet

We're trying to get 1,000 "likes" of our page, so if you haven't already, please "like" us, and "share" the page with your Facebook friends.

I have to say we have some of the most knowledgable members who can argue the merits of each project. I don't visit this forum nearly enough, and I actually need to since it lacks a moderator.

Keep up the great posts!

NBC Nightly News had a good report on HSR in the US tonight. The full video isn't available yet, but here is some web only content with LaHood.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032619/#43599507

Associated Press reports that Congress will eliminate any additional HSR fund for FY12. CBS Radio News also reported same during the 5AM CT hour Today:

Associated Press courtesy WRAL-TV

Brief passage:

• WASHINGTON — Congress is on the verge of killing funding for President Barack Obama's signature high-speed rail program, but it may have some life in it still.
  
  Republican lawmakers are claiming credit for killing the program. But billions of dollars still in the pipeline will ensure work will continue on some projects. And it's still possible money from another transportation grant program can be steered to high-speed trains.
  
  Obama had requested $8 billion in fiscal 2012 for the program, and $53 billion over six years. House and Senate negotiators agreed to a measure this week that eliminates any funding specifically for high-speed trains. Final passage of the bill, which funds day-to-day operations at the Transportation Department and several other agencies in fiscal 2012, is expected Thursday in the House and Friday in the Senate.

It appears that, although there will not be any general appropriation for HSR, there are other potential funding sources to be tapped. further, there are unexpanded appropriations for HSR, so by no means will any activity developing HSR come to a stop. For example, the "roundly" Merced to "roundly" Bakserfield California HSR route has been funded. The projects under ARRA '09 for which States have agreed to participate as called for under the law, will also move forth.

Amtrak apparently holds high on its wish list forty additional Acela cars, which presumably would be Coaches. This is a program for which if there is anything Amtrak has that could be attractive to the private sector to enter into a "risk-reward' venture (as distinct from the usual cost plus "government contract' arrangement), this would be it. True, there are many areas in which Amtrak and its private sector partner could find contentious, i.e. who pays for the necessary additions to the three Acela car barns?, what disproportionate share of the profits arising from the forty additional cars can Amtrak retain because they developed the 'franchise" into an unquestioned commercial success? But if an effort is made to work witha partner, Amtrak's standing with those in Congress, such as Rep. John Mica (R-FL7) who have held that these should be private sector involvement in rail passenger service, can only be enhanced.

Yes, and there is always the chance of funding returning in 2013. Plus Congress is not exactly popular with the people now (9% approval rate), <redacted due to ad hominem attack>.

Remember that with any project; money has to come from somewhere. Money is not an unlimited resource; we need only look at Greece to understand how money treated as an unlimited resource can be a disaster.

Obama had requested $8 billion in fiscal 2012 for the program, and $53 billion over six years. House and Senate negotiators agreed to a measure this week that eliminates any funding specifically for high-speed trains.

We can still expect to see some quality and important work done that is needed and remain within our financial means.

we need only look at Greece to understand how money treated as an unlimited resource can be a disaster.

Yes, quite. To put things in perspective $53 billion over six years is 11% of the total cost of the Afghanistan War to date. Hopefully that won't be a disaster, despite Russia and Britain's experience...

kaitoku wrote:

we need only look at Greece to understand how money treated as an unlimited resource can be a disaster.

Yes, quite. To put things in perspective $53 billion over six years is 11% of the total cost of the Afghanistan War to date. Hopefully that won't be a disaster, despite Russia and Britain's experience...

I'm going to put a little background in here because I think you have the wrong idea about some of us here who might not be in favor of this because of the budget reasoning.

There really are two types of Republicans. There are the moral majority, war hawk religious right Republicans, and there are the fiscally conservative social libertarians. There is a big difference between these two groups. Groups like the Tea Party are the emergence of the second group.

So keep in mind not everyone who is a Republican supports wars; and not everyone who is a Democrat opposes wars.

I think discussing the wars is outside of the realm of high speed rail and the funding for it as much as I would like to go there; I have to follow the rules as much as everyone else.

As one of the most-committed and longer-participaticg conservatives here, I'd like to add to Mr. Primrose's observations. The split within the national conservative spectrum, which owes much of its resurgence to the efforts of the late William Buckley and his magazine National Review, actually began as an offshoot to the unrest of the late 1960's, particularly on univesity campuses of the day. It has ebbed and flowed between those, like myself, concerned primarily with the advocacy of freer markets and those wedded primarily to nationalistic and religious doctrines, but almost all of us who characterize ourselves as conservative share a distrust of the further concentration of Federal power, and with the exception of some environmental and NIMBY splinter groups, the intensification of Federal oversight is a value shared by almost all the prominente within the current Administration.

The development of any highly capital-intensive project such as the "true" HSR systems advocated by many of the younger participants here was, regrettably, portrayed as the centerpiece in a broad-based agenda of radical "change" in the heady days when the Democrats rolled into Washington; that, in turn, made it a very prominent target for conservatives. And the workings of the free interplay of supply and demand, fueled by the daily decisions of millions of people, naturally tend to work against the concentration of power (government represents nothing more than a recognized monopoly on the power to coerce in the name of "common or greater good").

There is another, better way.

The increasing scarcity of petroleum --- the primary component for the growth in material prosperity sought by an increasing proportion of the globe's population --- can neither be ignored nor addressed by those obsessed with state power. What it can do, if the entrepreneurs who adjust to the pressures cited in the paragraph above are allowed, is to formulate the framework for the next round of econmomic adjustment. We have the technology both to upgrade our present passenger rail system into one reaching further into the exurbs and potential corridors while simulltaneously venturing into the huge potential market for freight moving shorter distances. The problem is that we cannot do both when an HSR advocacy geared primarlily to a statist mentality depicts a private industry which rehabilitated itself with a relatively modest amout of Federally-infused capital as the villain.