Metro Jacksonville

Didn't see this posted yet...didn't realize the history in the paragraph I highlighted into brown. 

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How Flaws Undid Obama’s Hope for High-Speed Rail in Florida
Plans for a high-speed rail route along Interstate 4 in Florida.

By MICHAEL COOPER
Published: March 11, 2011


The rest of the world calls them bullet trains because they go so fast. But in the United States, the nickname is apt for a different reason: They keep getting shot down.

The nation’s first true high-speed railroad was supposed to leave the station in 2015, a sleek Tomorrowland-worthy train that would have whisked riders between Orlando and Tampa at speeds of up to 168 miles an hour.

The federal government had agreed to pay $2.4 billion of its estimated $2.6 billion in construction costs, railroad companies were vying to build and operate it, and state transportation planners had even dummied up proposed timetables: Train 7092 would depart Tampa at 8:10 a.m. and arrive in Orlando at 9:04 a.m.

The fast train was sought, and won, by Florida’s former Republican governor, Charlie Crist. But it was killed last month by his successor, Rick Scott, who joined several other Republican governors in spurning federally financed train projects over fears that their states could be on the hook for future costs. The final nail in its coffin came last week when a Florida court ruled that the new governor could not be forced to accept the federal money and start building it.

The demise of the Florida line is different, though. It will delay the country’s first bullet train ride by years, if not longer, and deprive the Obama administration of what it had hoped would be a showpiece that would sell the rest of the nation on high-speed rail.

The administration said Friday that it would give Florida’s $2.4 billion to rail projects elsewhere and invited other states to apply for the money.

The story of the line’s rise and fall shows how it was ultimately undone by a tradeoff that was made when the route was first selected.

The Tampa-to-Orlando route had obvious drawbacks: It would have linked two cities that are virtually unnavigable without cars, and that are so close that the new train would have been little faster than driving. But the Obama administration chose it anyway because it was seen as the line that could be built first. Florida had already done much of the planning, gotten many of the necessary permits and owned most of the land that would be needed.

In the end, though, the state’s new governor decided not to build it at all, worried that those very drawbacks would ultimately make it a boondoggle.

White House Seeks a Legacy

When the Obama administration chose Florida to get a large chunk of stimulus money to build the nation’s first high-speed rail line, some Republicans in Washington worried privately that the project might prove too popular. It was, after all, a multibillion-dollar federal project being lavished on Florida, an important swing state that President Obama had won in the last election, with the money focused squarely on the Interstate 4 corridor between Tampa and Orlando, the home of one of the most crucial blocs of independent voters in the state.

Things did not work out that way.

President Obama announced the selection of Florida in 2010 in the most visible possible setting: his State of the Union address. “Tomorrow, I’ll visit Tampa, Fla., where workers will soon break ground on a new high-speed railroad,” he said, before flying to Florida the next day to promote the project in a town-hall-style meeting.

“There is no reason why other countries can build high-speed rail lines and we can’t,” Mr. Obama told a cheering crowd. “And that’s what’s about to happen right here in Tampa.”

In 2009, it had been the Obama administration that had pushed to bring high-speed rail to the United States. The vehicle was the $787 billion stimulus package, which, though it was originally sold as a public works program, devoted more money to tax cuts and aid to states than to infrastructure. With much of the construction money in the stimulus ending up paying for prosaic things like repaving roads, the administration decided to make sure that some of it would leave a lasting legacy: it devoted $8 billion to railroads and high-speed rail.

To the Obama administration, the benefits seemed obvious. The money offered a chance to put people to work designing and building railroads. High-speed trains would lure riders who would otherwise drive or fly, reducing congestion, pollution and the nation’s dependence on foreign oil. And simply building new futuristic trains zipping around at more than 150 miles an hour would be an accomplishment in itself, one that could lift the spirits of a recession-battered nation.

State Lobbies for a Bullet Train

It was Governor Crist â€" who had been considered a possible Republican vice presidential candidate in 2008, and who already had his eye on a run for the Unites States Senate â€" who had lobbied vigorously to win some of that stimulus money to build a high-speed train in a state reeling from the downturn. “Florida is the state that can turn imagination into reality for world-class high-speed rail in the United States faster than anywhere else in the nation,” he wrote to Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood in the fall of 2009.

His boast was probably true. Florida had long flirted with the idea of building high-speed rail: its voters had once passed a constitutional amendment requiring the state to build it, only to repeal it later over cost concerns. As a result, the state had already done much of the necessary planning work, gotten crucial environmental approvals and, perhaps most important, owned most of the land for the tracks, which would run along the median of Interstate 4.

The 21-mile leg between Orlando International Airport and Walt Disney World, which agreed to donate land for a stop, had the potential to attract lots of riders, and revenue â€" though such a short distance would be better served by a conventional train, or perhaps a monorail.

A Route Is Seen as Too Short

Florida’s route had some glaring imperfections, though.

Tampa and Orlando are only 84 miles apart, generally considered too close for high-speed rail to make sense. The train trip, with many stops along the way, would have shaved only around a half-hour off the drive. Since there are no commercial flights between the two cities, the new line would not have lured away fliers or freed up landing slots at the busy airports. And neither Tampa nor Orlando has many public transportation options. So the question arose: Could riders be persuaded to leave their cars behind and buy tickets to places where they would still probably need cars?

The state wanted to build the project so badly, though, that after Mr. LaHood hinted that Florida should do something about its lackluster commuter rail service if it wanted a shot at winning the federal rail money, Mr. Crist complied in December 2009 by calling a special session of the Legislature. The state agreed to build a new commuter train in central Florida, and to beef up its struggling line in south Florida.

It worked. When the high-speed rail grants were announced a month later, Florida was a big winner.

The Department of Transportation did not have that many options. Only two states, Florida and California, were deemed far enough along in their planning to receive money for building actual bullet trains â€" trains that can travel more than 150 miles an hour, on tracks of their own that are not shared with other trains.

The California line â€" linking Los Angeles and San Francisco with trains that would go up to 220 miles an hour â€" was expected to cost at least of $42 billion, and could not open before 2020 in the most optimistic projection. The Tampa-to-Orlando line, by contrast, was expected to cost around $2.6 billion and had a shot at opening by 2015.

Both states became big winners of the rail money, which grew to more than $10.5 billion after Congress devoted more money to railroads in the federal budget. The rest of the money was used to build or improve conventional train service: most of the states got at least some of it.

Florida stood out: it was on track to open the first bullet train on its own dedicated tracks in the United States. It would have been a demonstration project, visible to the millions of tourists who descend on the Orlando theme parks each year.

Still, it was probably not the line most people would have chosen if they were starting from scratch. When America 2050, a planning group, ranked potential routes in a report called “Where High-Speed Rail Works Best,” the Tampa-to-Orlando route was not even included because the cities are too close together.

Although the state’s plan called for eventually extending the line down to Miami, making the train an attractive alternative to short-hop flights or long drives, the extension would have required more time and planning and much more money to build. When the planning group considered a route linking Tampa, Orlando and Miami, it ranked it 100th among potential high-speed rail routes in the United States, far behind likelier choices like the Northeast Corridor. (The Acela trains running between Boston and Washington can reach speeds of up to 150 miles an hour, but average around half that because they share their curvy tracks with other trains.)

G.O.P. Opposition Mounts

Then things began to fall apart. As the 2010 midterm elections heated up, Republicans began running against the federal largess states have traditionally sought.

Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, a Republican, killed a long-planned commuter train tunnel under the Hudson River. Scott Walker, the new Republican governor of Wisconsin, killed a new conventional passenger train line that was to be built between Milwaukee and Madison, and paid for with $810 million in federal stimulus money. The new governor of Ohio, John R. Kasich, killed a $400 million federally financed line that would have linked Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati. When President Obama called for expanding the nation’s rail program in this year’s State of the Union address, Sarah Palin took to her Facebook page to denounce it as “a bullet train to bankruptcy.”

With Florida’s new governor, Mr. Scott, expressing reservations about the plan, the Obama administration moved quickly to award $342 million of the forfeited money from the Midwest to Florida. That brought the federal commitment to Florida to roughly $2.4 billion, almost enough to cover the projected $2.6 billion cost.

But the backlash was strong in Florida. In his race for the United States Senate last year, Mr. Crist found his success at winning stimulus money for Florida turned into a liability. Conservatives, and a newly powerful Tea Party movement, saw the federal spending as a problem, not as a solution to the state’s high unemployment rate. Mr. Crist ended up leaving the Republican Party and running, unsuccessfully, as an independent.

Last month, Mr. Scott decided to scuttle the project after reading a report by the Reason Foundation that questioned its ridership estimates. The foundation is a prominent libertarian policy research organization that employs several respected transportation analysts, but it gets some of its funding from donors with ties to the oil industry, including foundations related to Koch Industries, which owns oil refineries.

“The truth is that this project would be far too costly to taxpayers, and I believe the risk far outweighs the benefits,” Mr. Scott said.

But a state-sponsored ridership study, which was released this week, concluded that the proposed line would actually have been a money-maker from the start.

Other Prospects Remain

Obama administration officials are still pushing ahead with their goal of winning a $53 billion commitment to railroads over the next six years, and say that other states are clamoring for the money rejected by Florida.

Transportation advocates are continuing their push, too; this week the U.S. Public Interest Research Group released a video with two actors from “Mad Men,” in character, expressing their certainty that America would build bullet trains. (“I read a piece that said that in 40 years, gas is going to cost almost a dollar a gallon,” one says.) And Representative John L. Mica of Florida, the new Republican chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, supports high-speed rail, but would like to see efforts focused on the Northeast Corridor linking Boston, Washington and New York, the nation’s most successful rail route. But any effort to make that a true high-speed line is years â€" if not decades â€" away.

Now, with the collapse of the Florida route, it looks as if the nation’s first segment of true high-speed rail will be in an even unlikelier place â€" linking Fresno and Bakersfield, in California’s Central Valley, and scheduled to end construction in 2017.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/12/us/12rail.html?pagewanted=1&hp

American money will more likely use rail to link Baghdad to it' surrounding communities first. Oh wait American money already did that sorry old news.

QuoteThe Tampa-to-Orlando route had obvious drawbacks:It would have linked two cities that are virtually unnavigable without cars, and that are so close that the new train would have been little faster than driving. But the Obama administration chose it anyway because it was seen as the line that could be built first.

The 21-mile leg between Orlando International Airport and Walt Disney World, which agreed to donate land for a stop, had the potential to attract lots of riders, and revenue â€" though such a short distance would be better served by a conventional train, or perhaps a monorail.

A Route Is Seen as Too Short

Florida’s route had some glaring imperfections, though.

Tampa and Orlando are only 84 miles apart, generally considered too close for high-speed rail to make sense. The train trip, with many stops along the way, would have shaved only around a half-hour off the drive. Since there are no commercial flights between the two cities...

(FOR THE SAME COMMERCIAL REASON THAT NOBODY WANTS TO GO FROM THE ORLANDO AIRPORT TO TAMPA BUT MAGICALLY THE TRAIN WILL ATTRACT ABOUT A BILLION PASSENGERS A YEAR! OCK)

Quote...the new line would not have lured away fliers or freed up landing slots at the busy airports. And neither Tampa nor Orlando has many public transportation options. So the question arose: Could riders be persuaded to leave their cars behind and buy tickets to places where they would still probably need cars?

(BECAUSE THE STATE HAS LITTLE TO NO HISTORY OF SUPPORTING PASSENGER RAIL WITH ITS EVER SHRINKING INTRASTATE AMTRAK NETWORK. OCK)

QuoteAlthough the state’s plan called for eventually extending the line down to Miami, making the train an attractive alternative to short-hop flights or long drives, the extension would have required more time and planning and much more money to build. When the planning group considered a route linking Tampa, Orlando and Miami, it ranked it 100th among potential high-speed rail routes in the United States, far behind likelier choices...
SOURCE:  http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/12/us/12rail.html?pagewanted=1&hp

Can the Tampa-Orlando route simply be instituted the regular rail line in place now??

No.

to expand on Lake's comment, any rail line with speeds greater than 105mph (I think) has to be completely grade-separated....there are literally hundreds of at grade crossings along the CSX route from Tampa to orlando...heck the route basically runs along streets in several towns, including downtown Lakeland...

then there's the issue of curvature....in several places, the track is too sharp for high speed trains...even ones that can tilt like the Acela.  

finally, new track would need to be laid...and whether that can fit in the existing ROW is questionable at best...bottom line, it would likely cost much more to build HSR along the existing CSX route than along I-4

The Fed seems very motivated to win in Florida. I wonder if they would consider bending the terms here to be a higher speed enhanced corridor service like the FEC proposal and call it HSR. We could do the whole state for that and they could have trains running all over Scott's territory.

the big hangup w/ that idea is CSX has been very clear that they are opposed to increased passenger rail on their tracks between Tampa and Lakeland....so agin, I think we'll have to lay more track (which may or may not fit in the ROW)

Quote from: tufsu1 on March 12, 2011, 08:45:14 PM
to expand on Lake's comment, any rail line with speeds greater than 105mph (I think) has to be completely grade-separated....there are literally hundreds of at grade crossings along the CSX route from Tampa to orlando...heck the route basically runs along streets in several towns, including downtown Lakeland...

The rule is 125 MPH, thus the FEC route would be qualified under the lowest of the HSR categories.

Quotethen there's the issue of curvature....in several places, the track is too sharp for high speed trains...even ones that can tilt like the Acela.

When we're talking about a time savings of only a few minutes - and that happens only if you happen to magically appear at the train platform - a few more minutes for restricted curves wouldn't amount to a dimes difference to a passenger.  This thing isn't about what is needed or what will work, it's all about WE WANT IT...and brother are we about to get it!

Quotefinally, new track would need to be laid...and whether that can fit in the existing ROW is questionable at best...bottom line, it would likely cost much more to build HSR along the existing CSX route than along I-4

Like new track WON'T be needed on I-4? What are you whining about TU, road trains?  That CSX right of way is generally 100-200' feet wide, a standard train is 10' wide, and the pillars on the stupid elevated section are no more then 20' wide...do the math. Why is it going to cost more to build a bridge over Haines City then it does over I-4 when those "hundreds of crossings" could be used as access points? The fact is somebody in Disney, Tallahassee, Dockery's office, Tampa or Orlando, remembers the model of EPOCT city and said, "Oh cool, that's what we want" so get out there and make a case for it!  End of thought process...  In the end who pays? Scott has that part right + You can toss in the future of the HSR industry in America!

OCKLAWAHA

Ock...please show me the 100-200' ROW in downtown Lakeland

The CSX ROW through DT Lakeland is 100'.  It drops to 60' in width east of the Amtrak station.

Quote from: thelakelander on March 13, 2011, 09:47:32 AM
The CSX ROW through DT Lakeland is 100'.  It drops to 60' in width east of the Amtrak station.

exactly...in fact, I think it drops just before the station (east of at Mass Ave)...and there are several other areas along the route where the ROW is less than 100'...seems like we would need at least 3 distinct tracks (maybe 4)...how does that fit in a 60 foot ROW?

You would have to acquire additional ROW along the corridor. I'd have to look at the corridor in closer detail but that could be a significant expense if it impacts existing industry. For example, Coca Cola, Florida Distillery, Sysco, FMC are all significant Polk manufacturing operations with structures right on that ROW.

Quote from: tufsu1 on March 13, 2011, 09:34:11 AM
Ock...please show me the 100-200' ROW in downtown Lakeland

Quote from: tufsu1 on March 13, 2011, 07:00:23 PM

Quote from: thelakelander on March 13, 2011, 09:47:32 AM
The CSX ROW through DT Lakeland is 100'.  It drops to 60' in width east of the Amtrak station.

exactly...in fact, I think it drops just before the station (east of at Mass Ave)...and there are several other areas along the route where the ROW is less than 100'...seems like we would need at least 3 distinct tracks (maybe 4)...how does that fit in a 60 foot ROW?

TU, we are talking about HSR, or a hybrid of HrSR and HSR as I visualize. ANY congested area you simply use the right of way to get up and over, and yeah, that includes 17-92 or any other likely candidate or combination, You can have grade crossings up to 125 MPH, but of course they would be very rare, many consolidated and funneled up and over, or under, but however you do it you keep the thing in the actual corridor, and not 5 miles above it.

We quit choosing from the right hand side of the menu, and for once in history, get something right... it might cost more, maybe way more, but in the end you have a workable railroad that actually does what the current crop of nut cases claims the I-4 line will do. As Lake said, Polk has XXX residents, how many of them on any given day are going to need a train ride? How many to Disney? And how about farmer John? I don't see him hanging around the airport in ORLANDO. My sister lives in Haines City, and trust me, she NEVER drives 6 miles north to I-4 at US-27 in order to get to Auburndale, and she isn't going to drive to the Polk County Parkway in order to get to the Orlando Airport.

I'll say it again, this project has more chicanery then a Pentecostal Tent Meeting has Shekinahery and somebody is going to make a fortune on inflated overstuffed numbers, whence they'll take the money and run.

OCKLAWAHA

Would your sis drive 6 miles up US 27 to take a train ride to the airport if a local train stopped at Posner Center? I'm not going to lie, the corridor is better suited for commuter rail. However, I do believe commuter rail can be accommodated if you can get the infrastructure in. As for Polk residents and Disney, the rat is one of their largest employers. A couple of thousand Polk residents make the trip daily. When I was down there, Disney employed over 55,000 Central Florida residents.

Absolutely commute and HrSR=REGIONAL territory and not wide open running like HSR is supposed to be, IE Cali has it right and we don't, simple as that.

Just in broad swipes take your 55,000 employees and divide by the 4 possible directions (though the lions share probably live in the Orlando Metro, which isn't even touched market wise by this thing), and you get about 13,750 daily going in each direction to and from the parks. If HSR really can attract 5% of this market, (and it won't even get close to that...maybe .50) that would mean 687.5 passengers a day each way, so calling that 688 minus around 28% to account for 5 day work weeks, so at 71% of the total on any given day and your ridership drops to about 488 a day or 178,000 (rounded) a year. Toss in the 800,000 from the airport per year (another number they'll never see) and they would actually get 978,000 annual passengers. Somewhat shy of the 3.3 million riders the first year, though the first year will probably be the strongest then ridership will tumble about 33% and stabilize.

I'm not writing this crap because I want to stop rail, hell no, I want it to work. Actually I have no problem with Disney or OIA as long as Disney is at one end of the LRT and OIA on the other, the Sligh Avenue Amtrak station has all the room in the world in the yard, but isn't exactly placed in the middle of anything... Church Street or Lynx, or Florida Hospital or Winter Park, all have EXCELLENT locations for an easy trip from any corner of the metro west along the corridor. I'd even buy into a route that took the line through the airport but not "to the airport" in other words, we'd stop at OIA on the way to downtown, metro-north, pull away from Sanford, and not look back until we blew through Titusville, if that's what they want to do.

I say Titusville because with very little effort and a wad of cash, such a line with the ability for mixed traffic - perhaps freight at night, could also serve the largest railroadless port that I know of in the States, Port Canaveral. They have been clamoring for rail for years. Sanford-Titusville would also allow the use of large parts of existing right-of-way (abandoned FEC) to both Titusville and points south as well as New Smyrna and points north thereof with a split in "historic" Maytown!

I would expect that line to serve in conjunction with the FEC route to Miami, but for the most part I would build for the Port, both freight and passenger. The FEC north to Jax is supeior in every way to the CSX line (sorry Lunican) so running from Orlando to New Smyrna and hence north to Jax would be quite fast.

The Orlando-Titusville-Miami segment would be available but short lived as a through route on my system, as I'd reopen the Plant City-Mulberry-West Lake Wales-Sebring-Okeechobee-West Palm-Miami segment as a 90-110 mph railroad. At 110 mph, it will beat TU's 200 mph train to Miami because of the short haul. We ought to draw up an article with all three of us pulling resources and create a "system map" with segment details.

OCKLAWAHA