# HSIPR FY2010 Awards made public



## afigg (Oct 25, 2010)

The FY2010 HSIPR grants were made public today with letters sent to Congress, although the official US DOT press release with the full details won't be posted until later this week. Most of the funds went to the two true HSR projects with $902 million for California with $715 million for the Merced to Bakerfield segment and $800 million to Florida.

But there were grants that will expand and improve existing Amtrak service:

Chicago-Iowa City corridor got pretty much fully funded at $230 million - http://www.press-citizen.com/article/20101025/NEWS01/101025016/1079.

New Haven - Springfield corridor partially funded at $121 million with $260 million of CT bond funds already allocated:

http://www.courant.com/news/breaking/hc-ct-federal-rail-funds-1025,0,404894.story

Should be enough to get much of the route and bridges restored and upgraded.

Chicago-Detroit got $150.9 million of their $308 million application granted for acquiring and upgrading the NS line from Kalamazoo to Dearborn: http://www.detnews.com/article/20101025/METRO05/10250393/Michigan-awarded-$150M-for-high-speed-rail-route.

Virginia got $45 million for Preliminary Engineering and NEPA to get to a Tier II EIS for the DC to Richmond corridor. This would match the Tier II EIS almost completed for the Richmond to Petersburg to Raleigh part of the SE HSR corridor. http://www2.timesdispatch.com/news/2010/oct/25/railgat25-ar-585455/. With this much money, hope they would look at a more aggressive approach that just adding a 3rd track to the RF&P line. What should be looked at is a 2 track line dedicated for passenger rail, separate from the 2 track freight corridor with complete grade separation (except for Ashland if they stick with that route), some ROW realignment, and eventual electrification.

Oregon got $9 million for design studies for upgrades to the Cascades corridor and renovating the Portland station.

New York State got some funds, but have not seen a complete summary yet. Some of the CA awards were for PE for current corridor projects, looks to be mostly the Surfliner route. There are presumably a number of smaller project and planning grants that will be announced or have been covered in local papers.

Among the other larger applications, looks like the $250 million application for the FEC corridor in Florida did not funded this year. But still a lot of good news for Amtrak in these grants.


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## abcnews (Oct 25, 2010)

So is the old Seaboard mainline - from Petersburg to Raleigh to be restored? Or is this just money to study and draw engineering plans?


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## j653 (Oct 25, 2010)

And where's the money for the NEC -- where states actually accept HSR money without trying to send it back -- and where people actually ride the trains.


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## afigg (Oct 25, 2010)

abcnews said:


> So is the old Seaboard mainline - from Petersburg to Raleigh to be restored? Or is this just money to study and draw engineering plans?


You can't build construction projects until you have completed the engineering design plans. The drawings, routes and options for the planned SE HSR line from Richmond to Petersburg to Raleigh which would use the abandoned S-Line can be found at http://www.sehsr.org/deis/deis.html. Impressive plan calling for complete grade separation and a lot of ROW realignments. Once the Tier 2 FEIS report is done, then VA and NC can apply for funding to get going on that part of the SE HSR corridor.


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## MattW (Oct 26, 2010)

I think Georgia also got 4.1M (yea, I know  ) for yet another Atlanta to Charlotte study. There SERIOUSLY has to be a way to cut through all these worthless stupid "studies" faster than the current morons allow!


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## John Bredin (Oct 26, 2010)

Chicago-Quad Cities-Iowa City service is projected to begin in 2015, according to the article linked in the OP. It really shouldn't take over three years to get a service running when:

1) The majority of the route, from Chicago to Wyanet Junction, is the multi-track BNSF main line that already supports multiple Amtrak trains daily: Carl Sandburg, California Zephyr, Southwest Chief, and Illinois Zephyr; and

2) it requires only three new stations, Geneseo, Moline, and Iowa City.

Is there something I'm missing?


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## afigg (Oct 26, 2010)

j653 said:


> And where's the money for the NEC -- where states actually accept HSR money without trying to send it back -- and where people actually ride the trains.


The NEC did receive a $10 million multi-state grant for the 12 states from Maine to VA and DC "to study the role that intercity and high-speed passenger rail can play in helping improve the region’s transportation network, expand capacity, relieve highway and aviation congestion and stimulate sustainable economic growth along the Northeast Corridor."

The FRA and DOT thinking may be that while they will fund specific critical NEC maintenance / improvement projects - Portal bridge replacement for example - and let Amtrak & contributing commuter operators use part of their capital budgets for NEC projects, they don't want to drain the limited HSIPR funds for the NEC until the states have a detailed master plan with the EIS's all filled in. The NEC did get some important engineering studies funded in the HSIPR stimulus awards earlier this year such as $60 million for the B&P tunnel replacement in Baltimore, $38 million for the Portal bridge replacement, $9.4 million for the BWI airport station and adding a 4th track, and $2.9 million for an initial study for replacing or upgrading the Long Bridge across the Potomac River in DC(although the Long Bridge is several miles south of the end of the NEC).

Most of the discussion on these awards is going to involve projects with a direct effect on Amtrak service and which are not true HSR. Even a good chunk of the California awards went to engineering studies for various projects on the Surfliner corridor. Don't see why the thread should be moved to the High Speed Rail forum if the California and Florida HSR projects are discussed in separate threds.


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