Top 100 Infrastructure Projects worth $465 billion

From the Journal of Commerce, a list of the Top 100 Infrastructure Projects. There is some obvious good news, if any of the rail projects are ever constructed. There is a lamentable over-indulgence and pandering to highway and trucking interests. The entire story in the Journal of Commerce is worth a good long hard look.

High speed rail networks in California and the Northeast topped the list, in terms of value, with price tags of $45 billion and $32 billion. Those rail projects would create more than a million jobs.

At $30 billion, the expansion of I-69 in Texas, a plan formerly called the “Trans-Texas Corridor,” tops the list of surface transportation projects. It would create 600,000 jobs, says CG/LA.

Altogether, the 100 projects would create the equivalent of 10 million full-time jobs over the next five years.

Filed under: Passenger Rail Transportatio Policy, Regional USA Passenger Rail, United States High Speed Rail

Kansas City-Fort Worth link advances

Topeka’s Capitol Journal reports some movement at the close of the legislative session.

Ron Kaufman, a spokesman for the Kansas Department of Transportation, has issued a report called a “Kansas Passenger Rail Update,” in which he notes there were signs of support for the idea in the session of the Kansas Legislature that just ended.

He credited that to strong grassroots support from a group called the Northern Flyer Alliance.

Filed under: Amtrak, Passenger Rail Politics, Regional USA Passenger Rail

South Central High Sped Rail Corridor

My spies tell me it was a big weekend down in Marshall, Texas. Generally good developments. Two links to some useful information are included below.

The summit ended with the signing of an additional Memorandum of Understanding between local COG’s to work to expand passenger rail linking the D/FW area with East Texas, Southern
Arkansas, western Louisiana and now Eastern Louisiana. At this point there is political common understanding and direction from south of the D/FW Metroplex east into East Texas, then north to Little Rock, Arkansas and now on to Memphis, Tennessee, and from East
Texas all the way across Louisiana to the outskirts of Vicksburg, MS.

The map.

East Texas Corridor Council web site

Filed under: Passenger Rail Transportatio Policy, Regional USA Passenger Rail, United States High Speed Rail