Non-Subscriber ExtractIs HSR another boondoggle? |
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By Alison Tucker
05 February 2010
President Barack Obama last week announced the allocation of USD8 billion in federal grants to jump-start high-speed rail (HSR) projects across the US, part of an effort to boost America's sagging labour market while improving the country's infrastructure.
The funding was earmarked last April as part of the administration's USD787 billion economic stimulus package under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA).
Thirteen high-speed rail corridors and 31 states have been selected for funding, with the bulk of the money available going to projects in California, Florida and Illinois in America's Midwest, where a hub network is planned, centring around Obama's hometown of Chicago.
The Federal Railway Administration (FRA) said that over USD57 billion in requests were submitted in total for rail funding, far exceeding the USD8 billion available.
The allocation of awards has met a mixed response. While rail proponents have applauded Washington's support for high-speed operations in the US, there has been criticism from some quarters about the number of projects to which federal funds are being donated. Allocating larger sums of money to a small number of key projects that could act, essentially, as test cases for further HSR operations, would have been a better use of funds, say critics, than spreading smaller sums around a greater amount of projects, something that many view as a vote-chasing tactic.