“With California’s passage of Proposition 1A, the High-Speed Train Bond Act of 2008, we are the state most capable of putting federal high speed rail stimulus dollars to work,” Bass said. “Passage of the bond measure shows our collective vision and continued commitment for building the nation’s first high-speed rail system.
“Now is the time to attract businesses to California by announcing to the private sector that California is the state most capable of putting federal high-speed rail stimulus dollars to work for a $33 billion dollar Public-Private Partnership,” stated Galgiani, author of AB 3034. “It’s time to put Californians back to work.”
California’s July 10th pre-application will provide the High-Speed Rail Authority and Caltrans with the opportunity to present the universe of projects and programs that could qualify for ARRA funding, while work continues on development of the final applications with the Department of Transportation and local rail agencies for federal stimulus funds, including all preconstruction work, engineering, design, environmental clearance work and related planning functions.
Six corridors along the High-Speed Rail System meet the conditions required for “Track 1” funding for preliminary engineering and environmental work: Los Angeles to San Diego, Los Angeles to Palmdale, Palmdale to Bakersfield, Merced to San Jose, Sacramento to Merced, and the Altamont.
Three corridors are capable of qualifying for “Track 2” funding with construction completion by September 30, 2017: Los Angeles to Anaheim, Merced to Bakersfield, and San Francisco to San Jose. Each of these corridors can be operational as individual segments, and are at various stages of the project level environmental review and preliminary engineering development. Track 2 ARRA grants provide 100% federal funding for preliminary engineering, project-level environmental work, mitigation, final design and construction.
“While California faces a declining economy and families are struggling to make ends meet, bringing high-speed rail to California provides a much needed jobs package to put people to work immediately,” Bass said. “For every $1 billion spent on infrastructure projects, jobs are created for 18,000 Californians. Furthermore, every dollar spent on infrastructure projects comes back to the state’s economy 6-fold.”
“Now we need to encourage the President to recognize how prepared California is to put high-speed rail into action and put California’s economy back on track toward a high speed recovery,” stated Galgiani.
The Federal Railroad Administration is moving forward with an accelerated schedule, with the first round of grants anticipated in mid-September of this year. California’s full application can be submitted as early as August 24th. The state will be competing for as many categories of funding as possible for design work, engineering, and construction. California’s package will focus on segments that can be operational and producing revenue while waiting for completion of the entire train system.
California’s electrically-powered, steel-wheel-on-steel-rail, 220 mile per hour high-speed train will help relieve 70 million passenger trips a year that now clog California's highways and airports. The train will run from San Francisco to Anaheim, to the Inland Empire, and San Diego. The train network will alleviate the need to build – at a cost of $100 billion – approximately 3,000 miles of new freeway, plus five new airport runways and 90 departure gates over the next 20 years.
Ten years of study and planning have gone into preparing for construction, financing and operation of a California high-speed train network modeled on popular, reliable and successful systems in Europe and Asia. California’s original High-Speed Train Bond Act was written by then Senator, now Congressmember Jim Costa. |
