Posted on 04/14/2009 6:23:44 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Obama administration is expected to unveil its plans on Thursday for accelerating development of high-speed rail, a concept that in the past has had mixed political support and little public funding.
"It will be broad and strategic," Karen Rae, acting head of the Federal Railroad Administration, told Reuters in an interview on Tuesday about the initiative described by officials as President Barack Obama's top transportation priority.
"It's going to talk about how we begin to create this new vision for high-speed and intercity rail," Rae said.
White House and transportation officials have spent the past several weeks weighing plans for developing at least six high-speed corridors.
High-speed rail initiatives are in various planning stages in California, Florida, Nevada, the Carolinas and the Northeast. States are already formulating how to use the large appropriation for high-speed rail projects in the economic stimulus act.
"Some of these plans are 20 years old," said Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood in an interview this week with Reuters Financial Television.
In February, Congress included $8 billion for rail development in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and Obama has included another $5 billion for the efforts in the White House's proposed budget.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
“how many tens of billions will taxpayers subsidize this each year?”
Just look at Amtrak for a good example. Over $30 billion dollars in taxpayer subsidies since 1971 and the route that is the best is only at 47% capacity.
The figure that freaked me out when I saw it was that Amtrak is federally subsidized to the tune of 210 dollars per passenger compared with 6 dollars for commercial airlines.
No need, no demand, nobody wants it, nobody will ride it.
In other words, it’s a perfect “shovel ready” project for the government.
Our Lords & Masters will force us to ride it by raising gasoline taxes to $4/gallon.
A review of the property rolls for the land adjoining the proposed rights-of-way would doubtless prove instructive: case in point, H. Reid & Sons, Inc. and the $8 billion LAX-LAS "bullet train."
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