Free Republic

Supporters of a proposed maglev train from Pittsburgh International Airport to Greensburg wooed state representatives Friday with promises the project could create thousands of jobs in high-tech manufacturing, if the government could pay the $5.3 billion price tag. Building the 54-mile magnetic guideway between the airport, Downtown, Monroeville and Greensburg would create demand for an estimated 533,000 tons of steel and 712,000 cubic yards of concrete, and the precision-welding technology that would be used to turn the steel into the track could then be exported around the world, proponents told members of the state House Transportation Committee during a hearing...

TAMPA - Charlotte, N.C.'s mayor politely suggested Monday that the Tampa Bay area was behind its competition when it comes to the transportation networks necessary for job recruitment. Then Mayor Patrick McCrory shared with 300 community leaders the experiences that led to Charlotte's recent transit-oriented success. The strong turnout for the regional transportation session provided a further example the local transit movement is gaining momentum. Hillsborough County leaders are trying to get a 1-cent sales tax referendum for transit on the November 2010 ballot. "You are taking a very courageous political step," McCrory told elected officials advocating improved transit. "You...

Eight billion dollars isn’t enough — not nearly enough. It’s not often you’ll hear this newspaper make a statement like that. Usually we are urging fiscal restraint. But if this country truly wants high-speed rail, we’re going to have to get serious about the effort. Eight billion dollars won’t get us there. That’s the amount of federal stimulus money promised by the Obama administration for high-speed rail. Already the administration has received requests from 24 states for projects amounting to $50 billion in high-speed projects. It also has received $7 billion in requests from states wanting to improve rail travel...

The biggest change for Washington area drivers in coming years can be summed up in a single word. Tolls. Tolls on new roads. Higher tolls on existing roads. Tolls on new lanes. Higher tolls in rush hour. Local governments even plan to study a radical proposal to charge a toll every time you drive your car, even on a quick trip to the grocery store using side streets. (A GPS or other device would be used to calculate your bill.) Why is this happening? Mostly because we need new roads and politicians are scared to raise the gasoline tax to...

Maglev is environmentally friendly and eliminates the need for fossil fuels in transporting goods.Cal State Long Beach was awarded in September $245,000 by the U.S. Department of Transportation to support the engineering department for research on magnetic levitation technologies. Magnetic levitation, or maglev, is a form of transportation technology that eliminates the need for any type of fossil fuel because it uses electricity and a system of powerful magnets to lift and propel. The CSULB engineering department is working with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories to develop a maglev system to be used for moving goods and other cargo. This system...

ST. PETERSBURG, Russia—As an engineer pulls the throttle, villagers track side gawk at the bullet-shaped train as it gathers speed. Soon, forests and wooden shacks are a blur as a dashboard display reads 250 kilometers an hour (155 miles per hour). Ten years in the making, Russia's state-owned railway is testing eight aerodynamic trains that in December will rush travelers from here to Moscow in less than four hours. With fancy kitchens and leather seats in first class, the Sapsans (Russian for peregrine falcons) mark a change in Russia's egalitarian rail tradition. More broadly, though, Russia's new trains mirror a...

Express passenger trains linking America's major metropolises. It's an idea whose time has come and gone and, thankfully, come again. Just don't expect them to come to Utah any time soon. When the Federal Railroad Administration released its list of intercity rail corridors eligible for high-speed rail funding last spring, there was a hole the size of the Intermountain West on the map. It wasn't an oversight. When you start connecting the big-city dots in the Intermountain West, it's a long way between dots. Higher-density corridors in the Northeast, Southeast, Midwest and on the West Coast are more logical places...

PLATTSBURGH — High-speed rail service between Montreal and New York City is one key way to make North America's first green transportation corridor. Pierre Arcand, minister of international relations for the government of Quebec, said that was one of the topics of discussion when Quebec Premier Jean Charest and New York Gov. David Paterson met two weeks ago. Charest noted that former Montreal Mayor Jean Drapeau called for high-speed rail in the 1970s. High-speed rail between Buffalo and Albany is almost a certainty, Arcand said at a lunch sponsored by the Plattsburgh-North Country Chamber of Commerce and the Center for...

Federal efforts to clean up laker emissions are fueling a heated debate throughout the St. Lawrence Seaway. “It’s a threat to the economics of shipping on the Great Lakes,” Adolph Ojard, executive director of the Duluth Seaway Port Authority, said of rules recently proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency. The EPA wants to wean older lakers off their diet of inexpensive No. 6 “bunker” fuel to reduce sulfur levels 50 percent in 2012 and help prevent tens of thousands of premature deaths. The entire fleet would convert to low-sulfur marine diesel by 2015. But lake carriers say the effort could...

Eastern Jackson County, MO —      Jackson County Executive Mike Sanders says his $1.03 billion commuter rail proposal is a uniquely Kansas City solution for Kansas City’s unique situation. “It has the potential to transform the greater Kansas City area in the span of two years,” he says. Our fair metro is often described as the second busiest rail hub in the country. That means we have lots of trains using lots of tracks – but there are also many miles of unused or underused tracks.      Jim Terry, who worked for the Union Pacific for 32 years and has...

I am amazed that our candidates for governor, our representatives and the public's general discussion of transportation in Hampton Roads don't include building a "Junnel" under the James River for high-speed rail and commuting. Such would tie Southside to the Peninsula, Richmond, Washington, New York and points south and west together. As regards to the environment, it makes loads of sense and is something from which all concerns would benefit.

Forget the British… and the Americans for that matter… the French are coming! Without any direct stimulus money behind it, the Federal Railroad Administration recently called for proposals on high-speed rail lines in the United States.Over 80 groups showed interest, but one stood out in particular stood, thanks to an offer of more than 1,000 pages.It came from SCNF, the firm that runs France’s national railroad and made the TGV high-speed railroad that links Paris to the rest of Europe.Its American proposal details four major high-speed rail centers – one linking the major urban centers of California, another for Texas,...

Louisiana Republican Rep. Anh Cao (R) recently appeared with local Democrats at a press conference urging Gov. Bobby Jindal (R-LA) to reconsider his refusal to support a high-speed rail link between Baton Rouge and New Orleans. But it seems that Cao hasn't given up on prodding his fellow Republican. "I was thoroughly disappointed when my state failed to file a" final high-speed rail application by the Oct. 2 deadline, Cao said today at a hearing of the House transportation committee's railroads panel. Cao called the proposed rail link a potentially "huge economic boost to the region," adding: "We worked very...

On Nov. 3, ballots in communities throughout the country will address a wide array of topics. Land Line recently took a look at transportation-related initiatives on local ballots. Included here is a sampling of what was found.Voters in two northwest Indiana counties will participate in a state-mandated referendum on regional transportation. Ballots in Porter and St. Joseph counties are expected to include a question asking voters whether they support the creation of a four-county transportation district for a region-wide rail system and a bus transportation system, which are intended to help free up local roads. The district would have authority...

We’re in the season where private polls for candidates and parties are testing the pretext for candidacies. Will you be more or less likely to vote for a candidate with decades of experience in government? Would you find a political newcomer attractive? How appealing is a candidate with a military background? A woman? There are dozens of vocational, regional and demographic identities that fit most candidates, and we need to know which ones are most appealing to voters when we do a candidate rollout. ~~~SNIP~~~ There are two ripe opportunities these days for Republicans to go bipartisan without breaking the...

Traffic, congestion and related pollution in large cities could be problems of the past with the implementation of a futuristic, personal rapid transit system called SkyTran, according to the system’s designers.Unimodal Inc., the project’s overarching company, originally looked at ASU’s Polytechnic campus as a possible site for the first track, said Jon Fink, director of ASU’s Global Institute of Sustainability. The plan fell through because the details weren’t sorted out fast enough to meet the pending deadline for a federal grant Unimodal intended to apply for. “This summer, when stimulus fund grants became available from the U.S. Department of Transportation,...

Maglev trains could shorten the travel time between Tokyo and Osaka to 67 minutes from the 138 minutes it takes today's fastest bullet trains, Central Japan Railway Co. (JR Tokai) said Tuesday. The estimated time is for the shortest planned route of 438 km connecting Shinagawa Station in Tokyo and Shin-Osaka Station, which could cost ¥8.44 trillion to construct, the railway said. JR Tokai also provided estimates for two longer routes. The company plans to construct the Tokyo-Nagoya section of the Tokyo-Osaka maglev system with its own funds by 2025. But it has not decided on a construction schedule or...

Scientists Gordon Danby and James Powell worked at Brookhaven National Lab in Upton in the 1960s and are retired. But the technology they are working on now at a small company they started could make them key figures in Long Island's future. ~~~SNIP~~~ Danby and Powell may have an edge over others working maglev projects elsewhere in the country: They won patents - since expired - for maglev technologies in the '60s. ~~~SNIP~~~ Said Powell: "The country has become less of a risk-taker and less forward-looking. We used to do different things. In the '60s we went to the moon."...

Construction of the long-awaited rail network that will link the six members of the GCC is expected to start in 2010 or 2011. Abu Dhabi: The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries' proactive approach to building railroad networks, whose estimated cost is more than $60 billion (Dh220 billion), will help boost cross-border trade, cut freight costs and result in faster movement of cargo and passengers, experts have said. "Rail is safer, faster, cleaner and [a] more economical mode of transportation. Strong logistics networks encourage trade and provide industry with a competitive advantage," Hussain Al Nowais, chairman of the UAE's newly created...

Voters mixed on proposals for high-speed transportation The debate over which high-speed train would best serve Nevadans is a hot topic in the political arena, but a recent poll shows that, by a slim margin, most voters aren't overwhelmingly supportive of that particular mode of transportation. It's a showdown between a magnetic levitation train (maglev) and the steel-wheeled DesertXpress rail project. A poll conducted Tuesday through Thursday by Washington D.C.-based Mason-Dixon Polling & Research, Inc. showed that of 500 registered voters throughout the state, 42 percent supported the maglev train, which would ferry passengers from Las Vegas to Anaheim, Calif....

A video popped up on YouTube Thursday morning that is sure to get attention. It shows a nasty verbal fight between two women on board a Muni bus. After exchanging profanity-laced verbal insults, the fight turned physical. While male passengers stood and watched, women stepped up to break up the fight. One young woman put her body between the two ordering them to stop. The fight moved down the aisle as the two women struggled to claw and kick each other. It was unclear when the fight happened, but the video was uploaded to YouTube on Thursday. The person who...

Prince William County decided not to join Arlington County in its lawsuit against high-occupancy toll lanes on Interstates 95 and 395, citing what it characterizes as race-baiting and class warfare in the suit. The county considered joining the suit because it shared concerns about the HOT lanes’ proceeding without a proper environmental study and their effect on traffic, but Board Chairman Corey Stewart, R-At large, said the board unanimously agreed Arlington’s suit raised too many concerns. “The board had a closer look at the suit and there are allegations in there about Pierce Homer, the secretary of transportation, and about...

PHOENIX (AP) - Congestion in the skies and on the ground may pave the way for bullet train expansion to Phoenix and other western cities. Regional rail planners from Denver, Phoenix, Las Vegas, Reno and Salt Lake City have formed the Western High Speed Rail Alliance. The group says it's goal is to form a network of rapid intercity trains. Transportation officials plan to cite a study released by the Washington think tank the Brookings Institution. It's expected to show Phoenix to Los Angeles is the third-busiest short-hop air travel corridor, with a distance that would make high-speed rail competitive....

A new report out Thursday report warns of an air travel system in trouble. Ten percent of all flights now arrive at least two hours late, that's double the rate from 1990. Researchers say it's likely to get worse as the economy gets better. Adie Tomer, a Transportation Research Analyst, from the Brookings Institution sais, "We do expect that once the economy recovers, that air traffic will pick back up again and congestion will return to where it was before, if not be worse." Congestion, the report says, is not surprisingly a city problem. The six worst cities for delays...

Vegas the logical spot for such development, Brookings says A new analysis of air travel in the Intermountain West suggests Las Vegas would be an ideal hub for a high-speed rail network and — because of the heavy load of travelers between McCarran International Airport and Southern California — is primed for a high-speed rail link connecting the two regions. The report, prepared by the centrist Brookings Institution, points out that McCarran is one of the busiest short-haul airports in the country, shuttling millions of travelers to and from Los Angeles, Phoenix, Denver, Salt Lake City and other Western cities. About...

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration said Tuesday it has received applications from 24 states seeking $50 billion for high-speed rail projects, more than six times the money designated in the economic stimulus plan. A decision on which projects will receive funds will be made this winter, Joseph Szabo, head of the Federal Railroad Administration, said in a statement. "Our selections will be merit-based and will reflect President Obama's vision to remake America's transportation landscape," Szabo said. In August, the agency received 214 applications from 34 states totaling $7 billion for corridor planning and smaller projects, which would include trains traveling...

The Texas Department of Transportation is pulling the last plug on the Trans-Texas Corridor, Gov. Rick Perry's embattled plan to build a toll-road network across the state. The agency said earlier this year it was scaling down the project and dropping the name "Trans-Texas Corridor." Now, transportation officials say it's fully dead. Transportation Commissioner Bill Meadows told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram of the decision in a report posted online Tuesday. The news comes a day after Perry's Republican primary opponent, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, secured the coveted endorsement of the powerful Texas Farm Bureau — a vocal opponent of the...

HARRISBURG, Pa., Oct. 5 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Pennsylvania recently submitted applications to the federal government for $3.1 billion from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to make high-speed rail improvements, Governor Edward G. Rendell announced today. "The applications we've submitted prove that Pennsylvania stands ready to address transportation challenges with forward thinking and community support," Governor Rendell said. "Pennsylvanians want efficient transportation that reduces congestion and is better for the environment; high-speed rail is what we need to meet these demands." The $8 billion initiative in the Recovery Act is part of President Obama's proposal to invest in efficient, high-speed passenger...

Itanagar, October 3 (Agencies): Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Saturday said a Rs.125 billion trans-state highway in Arunachal Pradesh would be completed by 2013, a step that would boost infrastructure in the strategic northeastern state bordering China. “The Trans-Arunachal Highway, rail and air connectivity, and construction of two small hydro projects would meet the requirement of many remote areas, especially villages located on border areas, suffering from isolation,” Manmohan Singh said, addressing an election rally at Pasighat in East Siang district. “The highway would be completed by 2013 and would go a long way in boosting infrastructure in the region....

Metro, the city of Galveston and a third group are all pushing commuter service conceptsA political turf war has broken out to determine who will bring commuter rail to the Houston area. While actual trains are years in the future, the lobbying and jockeying have begun behind the scenes, spurred by stimulus money and the promise of future federal money for high-speed passenger trains. “If this thing gets built it's going to involve a lot of funding,” said Christof Spieler, a transportation analyst on the board of the Citizens' Transportation Coalition. “Every agency wants to be in charge of that...

LOS ANGELES, Oct. 2 (Xinhua) -- California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger announced on Friday that his state would build the first bullet train in the nation, a project that would provide a 10-billion-dollar economic boost to the state.     "I think it is disgraceful for America to be so far behind when it comes to infrastructure," Schwarzenegger told a press conference.     "In Europe and Asian countries, they're traveling now up to 300miles or 480 kilometers (per hour on bullet trains), while we're traveling on our trains at the same speed as 100 years ago. That is inexcusable. America must catch up," he...

ORLANDO (CBS4) ― Walt Disney World wants people to travel easily – with or without the help of pixie dust. The company offered a last-minute boost to Florida in the state's bit for federal money to build a high-speed train linking Orlando and Tampa. Disney says it will support a stop at the Orange County Convention Center and even donate up to 50 acres of free land for a station. Disney's backing is important; the largest and most visited recreational resort in the world could provide millions of riders to the system, helping to underwrite operation costs for the entire...

I have been reading about a fast-rail system from Anaheim, Calif., to Las Vegas for several decades, and I am convinced that this will not come about in my lifetime. It would be Third World mentality for the most technologically advanced country in the world to use 1960s bullet-train technology, as would be the case with the DesertXpress. And anyone who states that maglev is untried in this country without explaining why it works in another country (China) sounds uninformed. Twenty million miles logged by the Shanghai maglev seem like a good testament to the maglev system’s feasibility. As one...

Berlin, Germany (AHN) - Canadian firm Bombardier Transportation won a bid to build 80 high speed trains for China. The project was awarded to the firm's Chinese joint venture, Bombardier Sifang (Qingdao) Transportation Limited. The entire project is worth $4 billion; Bombardier Sifang gets half of the contract. Under the agreement, Bombardier will deliver the first train by 2012 and the last by 2014. The trains are capable of running up to 380 kilometers (236 miles) an hour, using Bombardier's next-generation Zefiro high speed rail technology. The orders will be built at Bombardier Sifang's facility in Qingdao. Engineering will be...

Fisker Automotive will receive a $529 million subsidy from the US government to build hybrid cars for the US market. This follows a previous subsidy award of $465 million to Tesla Motors to build electric cars. Both awards were made on the recommendation of international climate genius, former vice-president Al Gore. The models may seem a bit pricey for the average motorist with the Fisker vehicle going for an estimated $89,000 each and the Tesla for $109,000. Gore touted the subsidy as a “first step toward a completely green automotive future. While these vehicles may look expensive, they are really...

Blame it on Sam Marber. I have had a fascination with trains since I was a small boy growing up in a very tiny Las Vegas, a town that traced its roots to the need for a place to provide water for the trains moving from Salt Lake City to Los Angeles. Yep, water was plentiful in those days — at least for the trains. Sam was an older boy who lived across the street. His garage rarely had a car in it, at least not so any of us noticed. What it did have was a train setup that...

The French national railway SNCF has filed a detailed proposal with the Federal Railroad Administration stating an interest in operating high-speed rail in Texas. The route in question would run from DFW through Austin and into San Antonio. It would not be the Gulf Coast route that's been on the USDOT's official list of 10 prospective HSR corridors or the much-promoted Dallas-Houston link (including the Texas T-Bone). But Houston could be in the distance. From Yonah Freemark on the TransportPolitic blog: At $13.8 billion in construction costs, SNCF expects benefits to outweigh public infrastructure costs by 170% over a period...

WASHINGTON — Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood is joining a growing list of Obama administration officials who will travel to Denmark next week to support Chicago's Olympic bid. The International Olympic Committee is meeting in Copenhagen on Oct. 2 to choose a host city for the 2016 Summer Games. Chicago faces tough competition from Rio de Janeiro, Madrid and Tokyo.

Passenger rail, Amtrak in particular, has been a conservative whipping boy for decades. This point of view needs serious re-examination, because national transportation strategy is an issue of US national competitiveness, and passenger rail has a significant role to play. In short, the US has no transportation strategy, while the fragile air transportation network, decaying roads and bridges, crushing highway congestion, and wobbly urban transit systems only add cost and dysfunction to an already struggling economy. A major federal government role in building and maintaining significant national assets that make the country competitive is entirely consistent with conservative philosophy. The...

WASHINGTON — AUG 21, 2009 — The federal cash for clunkers Web site for dealers crashed for part of the afternoon because of the government’s efforts to increase online capacity during the final days of the program, a Transportation Department spokeswoman said. At 8:00 PM ET, the website was restored for most dealers. However, some dealers have been reporting sporadic outages.

Over the past 10 years, our state has competed in, and won, a national competition sponsored by the U.S. Department of Transportation to build the first 300 mph magnetic levitation (maglev) train in the Western Hemisphere, with a $45 million guarantee to the state of Nevada to complete final environmental approvals and start construction. Construction on the first segment of the maglev train -- the fastest train in the world -- can begin in 2010 and would be built entirely in Nevada by hard-working Nevadans. The backers of the high-speed, conventional-rail DesertXpress would like to "reprogram" this guaranteed $45 million...

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood had to be asked the same question seven times in Friday's House Budget Committee hearing before he would finally give a straight answer. Rep. Scott Garrett, R-N.J., was grilling LaHood about a letter he had sent Arizona's governor, after an Arizona Republican senator questioned the effectiveness of the stimulus package. The letter was widely viewed as a political threat in retaliation for criticism of the stimulus. On July 12, Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., had suggested in a television interview that the stimulus should be cancelled, with the remaining unspent funds returned to the Treasury.

After quietly toiling for nearly five years on an environmental study, the designers of a proposed high-tech, magnetically levitating train from Pittsburgh International Airport to Downtown, Monroeville and Greensburg are seeking more than a quarter of the federal stimulus money dedicated to high-speed rail across the country. Last week, the Pennsylvania High-Speed Maglev Project and PennDOT submitted a preliminary application for $2.3 billion to help design and build the train system, starting with the segment between the airport and Downtown. The final draft of the project's Environmental Impact Statement could be released to the public by late September or early...

The social and economic costs of lost productivity and wasted fuel from traffic-choked streets are estimated to be $87 billion a year, according to the Texas Transportation Institute’s 2009 Urban Mobility Report. So far, federal, state and local efforts — focused mostly on expanding road capacity — have been largely unsuccessful at slowing the growing congestion on U.S. roads. Transportation experts now advocate a different approach, changing the emphasis from increasing supply to reducing demand. To reinforce smart growth policies, plug mounting transportation funding gaps and achieve immediate traffic relief, London, Stockholm, Singapore, Milan and three cities in Norway have...

Sara was late for work. The alarm clock didn't alarm, the kids were unusually slow getting ready for school, and nothing went right. She finally got to her car -- a brand new 2020 Chevy Adventure. She touched the finger-print secured start button. Nothing. It wouldn't start. She touched it again. Nothing. Furious, she banged the steering wheel with her fist. Then she noticed the paper hanging from the receipt printer on the dash. "Your designated visa account rejected your Road Use Tax in the amount of $87.32 for the month of June, 2020. You must insert a valid account...

Virginia is trying to pull a fast one on motorists who live along the Interstate 95/395 corridor, and we all will be moving slower and paying more as a result...The latest plan effectively hands ownership of Interstate 95/395 to a foreign corporation for the next 80 years. Transurban Group, Melbourne, Australia, will lease the existing high-occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes for the 64-mile stretch between Spotsylvania, Va., and the Pentagon. Transurban will be responsible for building new access ramps and performing maintenance for the lanes. Drivers interested in a congestion-free ride can pay an expected $1 - or more - per...

To fight climate change, Washington wants you to take a bus. What is the appropriate response to Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood, who as General Motors prepared to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection declared that he wants to "coerce people out of their cars"? One might be inclined to dismiss these words as overkill -- except for recently introduced legislation by some congressional heavy-hitters that would take us down this road. First there was the "Federal Surface Transportation Policy and Planning Act of 2009," introduced in May by Jay Rockefeller (D., W.Va.), chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce,...

It is only $20 billion that will be borrowed from the Treasury’s general fund. To pay back the general fund the President supports a range of options, including “international tax enforcement proposals,” which were in the president’s fiscal 2010 budget request. Any bailout should be used to stabilize the trust fund. The administration wants the money to be used for other project interest.

Debated for years, finally hereFor those of us Pittsburghers with a half decent memory, the word “Maglev” can stir recollections of politically inspired empty promises and immensely fast bullet trains stoppable only by government funding quagmires fueled by a conservative citizenry understanding that mass transit, while sustainable, does not hold mass appeal.With President Obama now in the Whitehouse, it looks as though Pittsburgh will finally receive its own high-speed rail connector.  The Pittsburgh connecter represents one of two points in the Keystone Corridor, which is one of eleven transportation corridors identified by the congressional Transportation and Infrastructure committee as being...

... Q. President Obama has talked about his desire to wean Americans off automobiles. A. What we’ve talked about is getting to a concept that we call livable communities, where people don’t have to get in a car every day. You can use light rail, you can use buses, you can use walking paths, you can use your bike. Q. The conservative columnist George Will recently denounced you as the “secretary of behavior modification,” in reference to your plan to have Americans give up cars. A. When George came over here for lunch, I could tell from the tone of...