Welcome to the Transportation Roundup, an occasional series I’m going to write on transportation. Hey, something has to break up the now-tedious back-and-forth morass of diaries all about the primary (that was partially a joke.)
Anyway, for the first diary, this basically is just going to be links and a short paragraph to interesting transportation news that’s occurred recently. I hope you enjoy.
FRA is soliciting and encouraging the submission of proposals to finance, design, construct, operate, and maintain a high-speed rail (HSR) system. Section 11308 of the Fixing America’s Surface Transportation (FAST) Act, Public Law 114-94 (December 4, 2015), requires the Department of Transportation to “issue a request for proposals for projects for the financing, design, construction, operation, and maintenance of a high-speed passenger rail system operating within a high-speed rail corridor.” The Federal Railroad Administration is encouraging interested parties to submit proposals that meet the requirements outlined in this request for proposals (RFP). Based on the proposals received, the Department of Transportation may establish commissions to further review and develop proposals. No Federal funding is associated with this provision and Congress prohibited in the FAST Act any Federal agency from taking subsequent actions to further “implement, establish, facilitate, or otherwise act upon any proposals” submitted under this RFP – other than the actions described in this notice – without “explicit statutory authority” to be subsequently provided by Congress
Even though it seems like high-speed rail is dead (and, well, on the part of 49 of the 50 state governments and the Federal government, it mostly is) at the moment, there are still groups who want this to happen. This is their chance to do so. Like these people, in the Pacific Northwest for Oregon and Washington (their state governments’ complete and total disinterest is very interesting), and these people in Texas (who are 100% a private effort). The RFP is open to any and all sources. Maybe even you could cook something up on your own. Instructions and directions are at the link. RFP’s are due by 5pm, August 31, 2016.
- Speaking of Texas Central, the state legislature is skeptical that the state of Texas won’t end up on the hook for the proposed Shinkansen-style train the railway would like to build between Dallas and Houston. Actually, they’re probably just anti passenger-rail to begin with, and Southwest Airlines successfully scuttled an effort there in the 1990s. But there’s some support from the counties along the route (and a lot of, yes, hostility too. For one thing, the train has only 2 stops: Dallas, and then Houston.) Also this group wants to go private so they can buy bullet-trains from Japan. FRA’s regulations don’t allow this otherwise (Buy America, and the fact that the high speed train the US had developed to meet FRA’s incredibly byzantine requirements was not that high speed.) Anyway I hope they succeed, Texas state government quits being a butt (LOL!), and the airline industry gets some serious competition on the Dallas-Houston route.
- This was a great article and it showed why if a national high speed rail network ever gets underway, it will be slowly built and done with a whole lot of bickering. It’s a shame Christie canceled ARC. Even if the project would not have benefited Amtrak directly, all of the NJ Transit trains would have their own right-of-way instead of sharing one with Amtrak, and then Amtrak could repair the Hudson tubes with minimal delays. Now? LOL.
- The US, of course, is just not willing to pay for good public transportation (and when it is, and this is just my opinion, it sets money on fire catering to a small subset of 30 to 40 year old moderately wealthy white urban dwellers.)
That’s it for this roundup! If you’ve got anything to add, feel free to share in the comments.