Alabama agrees to fund New Orleans-Atlanta high-speed rail study
March 26, 2009 at 11:13 am by Thomas Wheatley in News
The study is needed to tap federal funding for a high-speed rail line connecting Atlanta and New Orleans.
From the Birmingham News:
In a turnaround, Alabama has agreed to pay its dues in the Southern High-Speed Rail Commission.
The state owes $120,000 in commission dues for 2008 and 2009.
Alabama Department of Economic and Community Affairs Director Bill Johnson said the state stopped paying because his agency was not in the transportation business.
As the News reported last week, Georgia is not a member of the commission conducting the study. Can the state jump on board?
(Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)
March 26th, 2009 at 12:27 pm
Thx for the update. Are we talking high-speed rail similar to the acela service that’s pictured? Or is it something different? Any idea how long a trip from the atl to the big easy would take?
March 26th, 2009 at 1:03 pm
@BTI,
I used the photo of the Acela to convey what the service might look like. It’s not written in stone. Also, no idea on how long the entire trip could take.
March 26th, 2009 at 1:10 pm
We can put an upper bound on the trip time. The current Southern Crescent run from ATL to NOLA is 12 hours!
March 28th, 2009 at 10:29 pm
110 mph diesel with perhaps tilt technology. Should cut ALT to NOL trip times to eight or nine hours if track capacity is upgraded sufficiently to accommodate both heavy freight traffic as well as higher speed passenger trains . The trainset show is the Acela which runs in the electrified and fully grade separated Northeast Corridor. Although capable of 165 mph it only runs a relatively short stretch at 150 and generally around 135.
However, it will be a long, long time before electrification and grade separation will happen between ATL and NOL. And, to bring things into perspective, it would take all of the money committed and proposed for passenger rail in this country over the next five years to upgrade ATL to NOL for 110 mph service and ten years to get it built. Also, keep in mind that there are around 12 designated corridors, plus other proposed projects, with their hands out. If we give out a hundred million here and four hundred million there, pretty soon all of the money will be gone and at the end of five years there will be nothing tangible to show for it. For example, pour two hundred or so million into ALT to NOL and the trip time will still be twelve hours.
In order to demonstrate that higher-speed trains will work in the US we need to invest the stimulus funds in those corridors that are the most advanced and with the best chances for success. These include California, Oregon, Washington, Michigan, Illinois, North Carolina and Virginia. Not only is planning and engineering already advanced, but these states have already invested heavily in bricks and mortar and most already own and/or operate their own passenger trains. Any state asking for money at this point, when there is relatively little to go around, should be asking, what have we already put on the table? If the answer is nothing, or only thousands for dues and promotions, then they should back away.
Let the states that have been leading continue to lead. Those few that have the best chances of producing tangible results within five years should get the majority of the money (some of it will go to the Northeast Corridor and other preordained projects). Then, when the next round of funding comes up (probably first year of Obama’s second term — if reelected) there should be enough positive examples to justify an even greater level of funding. Then those states that over the previous four or five years have been investing their own monies in improved grade crossing protection, grade separations, new or restored station programs (or MMTCs), the operation of state sponsored passenger trains, etc., can start asking for a piece of the pie.