$1.25 billion for Florida’s Tampa-Orlando corridor, $1.2 billion of HSR/Amtrak funding for the Northeast (of which the high-speed grant was just $485 million), $1.1 billion for Chicago-St. Louis-Kansas City, $823 million for Chicago-Milwaukee-Madison-Twin Cities, $620 million for Charlotte-Raleigh-Richmond-Washington, $598 million for the Pacific Northwest, $400 million for Ohio, $244 million for Chicago-Detroit-Pontiac, $17 million for Iowa, and $4 million for Texas. The list quite rightly hones in on the known priority corridors: Florida, but also the Midwest routes that are planned to feed into Chicago, which were awarded a total sum just shy of California’s (albeit distributed for use by several states).
California has been especially excited by the opportunity to obtain much-needed federal money to add to the portfolio of funds that will be used to build California’s high-speed rail project. California was in fact so eager that the State applied for $4.7 billion, over half of the nation’s total allocation.
California’s piece of the stimulus pie, meanwhile, includes the $2.25 billion to be used to complete various projects along four high-speed segments (San Francisco-San Jose, Merced-Fresno, Fresno-Bakersfield, and Los Angeles-Anaheim), including environmental review, engineering, stations, track, signaling, and right-of-way acquisition. California also received $99 million to be used on smaller Capitol Corridor, San Joaquin, and Pacific Surfliner projects. That funding was awarded to both the High-Speed Rail Authority and Caltrans, and it does not appear that more specific project-level (or even corridor-level) allocations were announced by the federal government for the bulk of the funds. Of particular interest is the fate of the $400 million request put in for the Transbay Transit Center’s train box
Interestingly, the main CA “people flow” is from the San Diego/LA area to the Sacramento/SF/San Jose area.
The present bottle neck is the missing rail link from Bakersfield to Los Angeles. At present you have to get on an Amtrak coach at Bakersfield for a 100 mile trip South to LA.
I notice this large gap in where people actually want to go hasn't been addressed...:^)