edited from TheHill.com :-
In an interview he gave
with the Huffington Post as he prepares to leave office,
Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said the
U.S. has not invested enough in high-speed rail development because the
Obama administration’s efforts have been stymied by congressional
Republicans.
“Look, we are behind on high speed rail,” LaHood
said, though he added that he was confident his eventual successor would
continue pushing for rail funding. LaHood said high speed rail has come
a long way, and that, “as long as President Obama is in the White
House, whoever sits in this chair will have high speed rail as one of
their top priorities.”
The Obama administration allocated $8
billion in the 2009 economic stimulus package to award to states to
develop high speed rail. In 2011 governors in Florida, Ohio and
Wisconsin, who argued high-speed rail was a waste of taxpayer money,
rejected the funds.
LaHood said Florida Governor Rick Scott’s
rejection of the money was particularly galling. The Obama
administration had offered more money to Florida than any other state
aside from California for a high-speed line between Tampa and Orlando it
hoped would be a centerpiece of a nationwide network of trains. The
amount of money rejected by Scott was $2.4 billion, or 90 percent of the
estimated construction costs. Scott argued shortly after taking office
that the railroad would not generate enough revenue to cover its
operations once it was built. However, Scott did approve the SunRail
commuter rail line in the Orlando area.
LaHood, the only
Republican in Obama’s cabinet, said he still disagreed with Scott’s
diagnosis of the situation. “My thought was there is only one person in
Florida who doesn’t want this money,” LaHood said of the Florida
rejection. “He is a governor without a vision when it comes to
transportation.”
“For the first time since people have been
looking at infrastructure, America is behind,” LaHood said. “We are
behind other countries because other countries are making the
investments that we used to make. We got a two-year [highway] bill
because they could only find $109 billion. We need to do better and we
need to make sure that America does not fall further behind when it
comes to infrastructure.”
"As members of Congress understand that the people are way, way ahead of
them on this — they are way ahead of most members, certainly on the
Republican side, when it comes to high-speed rail, or walking and biking
paths, or livable, sustainable communities, green energy — the people
are so far ahead of the politicians on this — eventually it will catch
up with them," he said.
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