ODOT eyes high speed rail
Oklahoma can already brag that it leads the nation in spending its federal stimulus dollars allocated for road and bridge projects.
Now state transportation officials could be going after another pot of federal dollars. High speed rail. Oklahoma is included in one of ten proposed high speed rail corriders. The South Central corrider would begin in Tulsa and connect Oklahomans to existing rail routes in San Antonio. Another spur would veer east toward Arkansas and connect passengers to trains that run out of Chicago at Little Rock. It’s a plan that hold promise. However, the plan currently only has $8 billion in funding.
Oklahoma’s Transportation Director Gary Ridley estimates would could cost more than a $1 billion just to improve the track between Oklahoma City and Tulsa for high speed rail use.
State officials must decide by July 10 if they want to compete for rail funding. The national project is ambitious, but if executed it could change the way the nation’s transportation system works. It would conserve fuel as well, something the Obama administration has made a priority.
But naysayers might say that our current rail system is already propped by federal subsidies, and this would just create more of burden. It’s an interesting concept. And wouldn’t be nice to get on a train in Oklahoma City and get to San Antonio or link up with the vast network of lines that radiate from Chicago’s Amtrak station?
I’ve traveled cross country by train only once, going from Chicago to Spokane, Wash. It was a beautiful trip going through the plains and mountains and Americana in between. But it also took nearly two days and cost just as much as an airplane ticket, if not more.
For a rail system to really work, those are obstacles that would have to be addressed before the American public sees the value.
For more information on the project go to: http://www.fra.dot.gov/us/content/31
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Comments
One 75-foot wide highspeed rail corridor can handle as much traffic in each direction as 16 lanes of interstate highway, and costs 1/20th as much to maintain. Its just a matter of talking the tea-totaling minority party to join the 21st century. Check out the bipartisan Surface Transportation Authorization Act of 2009 – I think congress should send this bill to Obama’s desk, and I think we should get out congressmen and senators to make it happen. Who’s with me?
when i was a kid, dad took us on one of the last trains on the route to Kansas City. we rode to Bartlesville, had breakfast and caught the return train.
a few years later, i rode one of the last passenger trains from OKC to Tulsa. actually, it was a passenger car on a freight train.
in 1989 and 1991, my trips to Europe relied on trains for intra-continental travels. their trains are reliable, comfortable and a real value.
we need to think of the trains in our future as the backbone of a real mass transit system. in france, we rented a car because we wanted to go to the beach. biggest mistake we made on that trip. when we left the beach, there were 5 buses parked, ready to take people back into the city. we turned the opposite way and drove out to the coast. that road ended in a cul-de-sac in a small village, which was also a bus stop. we turned in our rental the next day.
i would actually prefer taking a train to Austin, Texas, to the dreary drive or the uncertainty of air. connections north could get me to the station in Detroit Lakes, Minnesota, and connections south could get me to Pensacola.
no, it wouldn’t help on most of my sales trips. but, hey, it’s not all about me.
If high-speed rail service is so great and so cost effective, then why hasn’t private industry taken up the cause? Please, tell me one thing that the government does that is cost effective. The government supplements Oklahoma’s Hartland Flier because there is not enough demand to cover the costs of operations. That means, you and I (assuming that you pay taxes) are paying some of the ticket price on behalf of each passenger. This is what is also being done with Amtrak since it has never covered its operating costs.
Do we need another subsidized business? Isn’t the new Government Motors (GM) enough for right now?
Well, its not rocket surgery. They have high speed rail in Turkey. It costs as much as a new divided highway. Maybe $20 million per mile between T-town and OKC. Its a lot, but we can certainly afford it. If you have to pay $10 million just to straighten out the existing track you might as well go all the way. With federal receipts in the 2700 billion per year range not even counting payroll and social security tax, $2 bil for a HSR to T-town isn’t even chump change.
But 900 miles to San Antonio? Sorry, but high speed rail works up to about 350 miles. After that, you might as well take the airplane. That’s what airports are for.