Local Transportation Leaders Head to Washington, D.C. to Lobby for $2.19 Billion for L.A. to Anaheim High Speed Train
Officials to emphasize that the regional corridor is the furthest along in development than any one of its kind in the country. Project could create nearly 54,000 jobs.
A cadre of prominent Southern California leaders are heading to Washington, D.C. Tuesday to urge the U.S. Department of Transportation to give the region its fair share of $8.9 billion in available federal stimulus funding to launch the state’s very first high speed train corridor that would link Los Angeles and Anaheim.
Transportation officials representing the Los Angeles and Orange County regions include: Curt Pringle, Mayor of Anaheim and Chair of the California High Speed Rail Authority (CHSRA); Richard Katz, CHSRA and Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) Board Member; Will Kempton, Orange County Transportation Authority CEO; Ara Najarian, MTA Board Chair, and; Art Leahy, the agency’s CEO.
Together, they will recommend that the L.A. to Anaheim high speed train project be funded at $2.19 billion -- approximately half of the total $4.7 billion bid submitted by the State of California to secure American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) funds.
The high speed train connection would link two of the densest urban populations on the West Coast in under 20 minutes, and would provide the backbone of a burgeoning statewide high speed train network.
“The L.A. to Anaheim high speed train corridor is simply the most “shovel-ready” high speed train project of its kind in the nation,” said Art Leahy. “It deserves to be fully funded so that we can move more quickly to create enhanced regional mobility options, jobs and economic activity that the Obama Administration has envisioned for ARRA-funded projects.”
The L.A. to Anaheim corridor has already undergone its preliminary environmental reviews. CHSRA is in the process of developing the segment’s Draft Environmental Impact Report/Environmental Impact Study, which could be released next spring.
The project would include high-speed train facilities at Los Angeles Union Station, an optional station in Norwalk/Santa Fe Springs, and the Anaheim Regional Transportation Intermodal Center (ARTIC), and, among others, right-of-way acquisition, grade-separations, guideway structures, tunneling, and track work.
Construction could begin as early as 2012 and the line could open in 2018. The five-year construction period and ongoing operation of the service would create 53,700 regional jobs while establishing a new centralized high speed transportation alternative that is also safe, reliable and environmentally friendly.
The federal government is expected to select nationwide high speed train projects for funding in early 2010. ARRA allocates $13 billion over a five-year period to jumpstart high-speed rail corridors throughout the United States to create jobs, reduce pollution and make the nation’s transportation system much more efficient.