Obama has $10 billion earmarked for rail projects will go to Illinois

 Congress Kills Obama’s High-Speed Rail Program
Congress delivered a sharp rebuke to President Barack Obama by voting on Thursday to shut down funding for his signature high-speed rail program.
The House voted 298-121 to approve a $182 billion spending bill aimed at averting a government shutdown. The measure eliminates any funding for high-speed trains. The Senate later approved the bill.
Obama had requested $8 billion in fiscal 2012 for the trains, and $53 billion over six years.
The bill signals “an end to the president’s misguided high-speed rail program, but it is not the end of American high-speed rail,” said Rep. Bill Shuster, R-Pa., chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee’s railroad subcommittee.
He said the future of high-speed rail in America will be in the Northeast rail corridor connecting Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Washington, rather than the national network envisioned by Obama.
Supporters of high-speed rail, however, insist that the vote in Congress has not completely derailed the program. It’s possible that money from other transportation programs could be steered to high-speed rail.
“If you think we are giving up that easily, you got another think coming,” Rep. Louise Slaughter, D-N.Y., told the Buffalo News.
Slaughter has led the fight for high-speed rail in upstate New York, but the loss of funding means a planned high-speed line between Buffalo and Albany will get no new money in the coming year.
Since Obama took office, his administration has steered more than $10 billion to rail projects around the country.
The biggest project is in California — a proposed high-speed line between San Francisco and the Los Angeles area. The project was originally estimated to cost $45 billion and to be completed by 2020, but new estimates put the price tag at nearly $100 billion, with a completion date of 2034.
Also, the one-way fare between the two cities was originally predicted to be $55, making it cheaper than flying. But ticket price estimates rose to $105 by April, observed Adam B. Summers, a policy analyst at the Reason Foundation.
He pointed out that ridership estimates are projected as high as 117 million passengers per year. Yet the entire Amtrak system, which includes more than 500 destinations and 21,000 miles of track, serves just 27 million passengers a year.
Some of the $10 billion already earmarked for rail projects will go to Illinois, which is spending more than $3 billion to add three trains daily to the current five between Chicago and St. Louis. As the Insider Report disclosed earlier this year, the project will increase the average speed of trains on the line from 51.6 miles per hour to 56.8 mph, saving travelers just 30 minutes on the current 5 1/2-hour trip.
And Washington State is spending $700 million to add two trains per day to the current three between Seattle and Portland, Ore., and boost speeds from 53.4 mph to 56.1 mph. That will save travelers 10 minutes on the current 3 1/2-hour trip