Rail

Long-delayed efforts to restore train service on the Dumbarton Rail Corridor, which links the mid-Peninsula to the East Bay, could get a boost as Facebook looks to add housing and offices along the tracks in Menlo Park.

"California High Speed Rail will forever need an operating subsidy." That is the latest claim from an anti-HSR group called the Community Coalition on High Speed Rail.

All eyes are on Texas Gov. Rick Perry these days, the faraway frontrunner in the Republican race. But as the primary goes on (and on and on) more Republicans might take note of the fact that in a matchup with President Obama, only one candidate stands a chance of winning: former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.

Rep. Corrine Brown (D-FL), the top Democrat on the Railroads Subcommittee, began her remarks at yesterday’s Transportation Committee hearing like this:

The idyllic cross-country train trips that many Americans still take could get derailed by today’s “slash and burn” federal budget policies. Meanwhile, fears for the safety of rail passengers in the post-bin Laden era are drumming up political support for costly security measures and raising, once again, questions about why the federal government funds rail routes without any promise of profitability.

Though most of the California political class celebrated the groundbreaking of the new Transbay Transit Center with U.S. DOT Secretary Ray LaHood in San Francisco yesterday, significant questions remain for funding a national high-speed rail network through the federal transportation act.

Federal Transit Administration (FTA) chief Peter Rogoff today mounted a defense of the White House’s transit safety plan, assuring some skeptical members of Congress that he does not want to “replicate” inter-city rail safety rules that have taken flak for impeding the development of viable U.S. train networks. As of last year, D.C.’s Metro had … Continued

The freight rail industry yesterday claimed the top three awards in the Obama administration's competition for $1.5 billion in TIGER stimulus grants, with Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood singling out train shippers for an online shout-out:

In a fiscal year 2011 budget that proposes to increase spending on several core transportation priorities, the White House also aims to eliminate a few infrastructure programs that may prove popular with lawmakers.