Proponents of a high-speed rail system in Oregon gathered in force Tuesday at Lane Community College for an all-day program titled, “Northwest Corridor Rail Summit 2010: From Vision to Reality.”
The nine-hour conference featured 15 lectures from politicians, transportation administrators, engineers and commercial lenders, all with the explicit intention of constructing a high-speed rail system in the Northwest and winning future bids for federal stimulus money designated to that end.
Kelly Taylor, administrator for the Oregon Department of Transportation Rail Division and guest speaker at the summit, said the gathering represents a key step in achieving the reality of a new rail system here in the Northwest.
“The states have been struggling, little by little, here and there, with little bits of string,” she said. “Now federal funding and the potential of Obama’s program is awakening, and it’s starting to help focus what people have been studying for decades.”
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, the $787 billion stimulus bill signed into law by President Barack Obama last spring, allocated $8 billion for high-speed rail projects across the country with the stated goal of creating jobs and revitalizing the American manufacturing sector.
This excited the interest of states with major, intercity rail corridors.
According to the Federal Rail Association Web site, the stimulus bill considered 31 states with 11 existing rail corridors for the project money. This included the 466-mile stretch between Eugene and Vancouver, B.C., dubbed the Northwest Corridor.
Oregon and Washington made a joint bid last summer for $2.1 billion of the stimulus high-speed rail project money, and both states were awarded federal money, albeit less than they wanted.
Washington received $590 million and Oregon $8 million for “upgrading Portland’s Union Station, and engineering and environmental work for track and signaling projects that will increase service and reliability and reduce congestion.”
Taylor acknowledged that Oregon is behind other states in putting together fleshed-out project proposals for the stimulus money.
“We’re not ready for it yet, ” Taylor said. “We need to do some of the preliminary engineering and some environmental work. That’s the step before construction, and that’s why (Washington) got money and we didn’t, because they have done those and we haven’t.”
According to a document released by the Office of the Secretary of Transportation, Obama has designated another $1 billion per year for the next five years to support the construction of high-speed railways around the country, and Taylor said she is optimisitic that Oregon can procure money through future bids.
“You’re probably gonna see us apply, and Washington apply, for subsequent rounds of funding,” she said. “And then you’ll see more of that construction here in Oregon.”
Presenters at the summit addressed a litany of logistical concerns, including whether the high-speed passanger train will run along Union Pacific or Oregon Electric’s lines.
Because high-speed trains cannot run on tracks with any substantial curves, plans for a Northwest high-speed train require the new trains to share straight tracks that are currently used by freight trains.
Two other major concerns addressed at the summit were the railroad bottleneck in north Portland, caused by the Columbia River crossing; and accessibility to train stations to make high-speed rail a viable alternative to highway travel.
Rod Diridon, executive director of Mineta Transportation Institute, said Portland has a considerable head start on the accessibility issue, which will help Oregon in its high-speed rail proposals for federal money.
“Portland is the poster child for the world as far as integrated light rail construction,” Diridon said. “It’s a wonderful thing — remember that high-speed rail won’t work unless you have a very good feeder-distribution system.”
Critics of the high-speed rail project maintain that it is an expensive way to achieve a novelty improvement of existing railroad networks.
Mark Robynowitz, was one of two attendees to frame the projects through the lens of peak oil projections, said he believed the federal money would probably only be enough to fix up existing wear and tear, and less highway- and automobile-related expenditures to fund the project should be considered.
“One of the ways that we could afford to improve the trains is to transfer funds from widening (Interstate 5), which the state has to spend billions on, towards fixing the rail … The Amtrak Cascade is capable of going a 120 miles per hour, but it can barely go half that on most of the routes because the rail network is decrepit.”
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