The MT Position

Posted by Fred Jandt
Mass Transit editor

Matthew Broderick once famously said as Ferris Bueller, “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” The same goes for transit. If you don’t stop and take a look around at the transit landscape once in a while, you could miss it — which is what happened with several states in the recent round of federal railroad funding.

It was inevitable when President Obama unveiled the $8 billion in federal stimulus funds for high-speed railroads that somebody would get left out. The administration hit 31 states with funding, but that still left 19 without. Surprisingly one of the biggest states — Texas — received very little funding, which led to much grumbling from the Lone Star residents.

Not having any of that, the Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood, replied with the equivalent to a verbal smack in the chops, “If Texas had had its act together, it would have gotten some high-speed rail money.”

In this era of political correctness, pointing fingers across the aisle and apologizing for just about everything, it’s refreshing to have something so plainly stated. LaHood didn’t dance around the issue and talk about infrastructure or political will or any other nonsense. He made his feelings clear — get your act together or you won’t get funding.

I love it.

Wisconsin got a little more than $800 million in the rail stimulus sweepstakes. Of course, its governor put the state’s money where its mouth is last year by spending nearly $50 million to purchase trains for the local Amtrak Hiawatha Line, which he hoped would be extended via the stimulus. And look what happened, his plan paid off.

Now Wisconsin not only sits with the money to put in the Hiawatha extension, but the trains to run on those tracks — built in Milwaukee no less — and an option to add more trains if they need them.

The secretary is correct. States need to get their act together. Not just for federal funds, but to make transit work for them, both locally and regionally. Otherwise the train is going to pass them by — literally.

Just ask Georgia.

Thanks for reading the MT Position updated every Friday,

Fred
fred.jandt@cygnusb2b.com
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This entry was posted on Friday, February 5th, 2010 at 8:27 am and is filed under MT Position. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.