In honor of President Obama’s announcement of Florida’s high speed rail grant money, I thought I would share what real high speed rail looks like. This is the JR Maglev, developed by the Japanese Railway company. Reaching maximum speeds of 581 kph - that’s 361 mph – this isn’t some sissy Amtrack 200 mph stuff. [...]
Posts under ‘High Speed Rail’
Sun-Rail & Florida’s High-Speed Rail Future
I took a trip up to Orlando this weekend, and couldn’t help but think of how much more pleasant the trip would have been if I didn’t have to play road warrior to get there. At about 230 miles away, Orlando is not very far in high speed rail talk, considering that the base speed [...]
News Roundup
Changing tides: Mayoral aspirant Regalado’s developer contributions increase (according to the Herald because of Miami 21.)
Slots are almost in South Florida…I wonder what the redevelopment of the Flagler dogtrack will do to the neighborhood. Maybe they can use their increased profit to develop something nice on their huge, empty parking lot.
Transit advocates and local officials [...]
Florida Makes Its High-Speed Rail Bid
The State of Florida is moving forward with high-speed rail plans, this time with the full support of the governor. In its bid, the state is asking for $2.53 billion, just over a quarter of what the feds have set aside for such initiatives. While we, and others, have reported some skepticism on Florida’s ability [...]
News Roundup
Go Tom! DCA Director Tom Pelham says that SB360 doesn’t apply to large metropolitan areas (like Miami):
According to Pelham’s interpretation, issued last week, SB 360 cannot override local governments’ home-rule authority, granted in state law. He cites this provision in the bill:
“The designation of a transportation concurrency exception area does not limit a local government’s [...]
News Roundup
Florida is applying for money allocated for high-speed rail.
Palm Beach Congressman Ron Klein (D-Fla) has been meeting with FEC representatives in a push for commuter rail along the FEC corridor.
Atlantic Railyards Stadium shenanigans: The MTA is allowing New Jersey Nets owner Bruce Ratner to pay off $100 million over 22 years for the right to [...]
Florida In Running for High Speed, Not Likely To Receive Funding
Alfonso Chardy of the Miami Herald writes that Florida transportation officials are “reviewing interim guidelines issued by the Federal Railroad Administration with a view to applying for a share of $8 billion in federal stimulus money for high speed rail.” However according to Florida Today, the Sunshine State is not a likely candidate. Instead, California [...]
Obama Administration Unveils High-Speed Rail Plan
In a moment rail advocates around the country have been waiting for, the Obama administration unveiled its plans for American High Speed Rail.
Amen.
While many advocates say the plan does not go far enough, the so called $8 billion “down payment” will jump start the process, with another $5 billion paid over the next five years. [...]
Stimulus Dream
Peter Calthorpe, an urban planner working on the California high speed rail project, wrote a very good piece in the San Francisco Chronicle on the lack of transit funds in the current form of the economic stimulus. Check it out—it sounds like something we would say here. We definitely agree that there is not enough [...]
Metro Tuesday: Acela
Running a day behind, today’s metro (Monday) attempts to illustrate just how fast our “High Speed” Rail system is. Imaging one of these suckers crossing the state to Jacksonville, Orlando, Tampa, and Tallahassee. Certainly makes more sense than funding more road projects…
Last year, Amtrak’s high-speed Acela Express train carried a record 593,000 passengers from [...]
Holiday Travel
Like many on their Thanksgiving holiday, I had the arduous task of traveling in order to meet up with the family. Only this time I decided to travel to Tampa, Fl by train rather than car. The Amtrak experience was more interesting than what I thought. For starters the Miami station was a bit of [...]
Metro Monday: Berlin’s Hauptbahnhof
The last time I was in Berlin the new Hauptbahnhof was still under construction and a year or so away from the May 2006 grand opening. The Berlin Hauptbahnhof now handles over 1,800 trains and 350,000 passengers per day. This digital representation provides a good example of what Europe’s largest train station is [...]
Transitography 16
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Acela || 28mm Wide angle / Minolta X-570, originally uploaded by gossammer9.
Ridership on the passenger rail system is up 6% so far this year, the biggest jump since the late 1970s. On the [...]
Falling Behind, Quickly
I may have gone a little picture happy below. But, I’ve come across a bunch of stunning pictures of two major up and coming transit systems on complete opposite sides of the globe. The first two are of the Porto, Portugal brand new Urban Transit Rail system. Mind you, this is a city of 1.5 [...]
