(The following appeared on The Journal of Commerce website on February 18, 2011.)
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood is giving Florida lawmakers one week to see if they can salvage a high-speed rail project that Gov. Rick Scott vowed to kill, or he could soon redistribute $2.4 billion in rail project grants to other states.
The deadline would give backers of the project until Feb. 25 to see if they can keep the Tampa-Orlando project going to build the nation’s first truly high-speed rail line in its own dedicated corridor.
If the salvage efforts fail, Florida’s piece of the federal passenger rail program funding could head to California, which is developing the only other bullet train service in the U.S., and to states like Washington and New York that are expanding intercity rail operations in corridors shared with and usually owned by freight railroads.
The full story appears on the Progressive Railroading website.