In the White House’s High-Speed Rail Chase, a First Likely Winner: Florida

The prediction that Rep. John Mica (R-FL) backtracked on last month is starting to come true: President Obama is headed for Florida on Thursday, and the state is all but certain that he's coming with $2.6 billion in federal stimulus funding for a new high-speed rail link between Tampa and Orlando.

(Photo: FL High-Speed Rail)

The state envisions an 85-mile Tampa-Orlando link as the first phase in a network of bullet trains that would eventually reach as far south as Miami (see picture at left).

And the state's dream is years in the making; an environmental impact study of the Tampa-Orlando route was completed in 2005, and Florida has already acquired a dedicated right-of-way along the I-4 corridor with an estimated worth of $100 billion.

Even Orlando's resident corporate giant, Disney, came out in favor of the rail plan last fall.

As railroad expert and veteran reporter Mark Reutter notes in a highly readable high-speed rail briefing paper [PDF] for the Progressive Policy Institute:

The state's planned route would include stops in the Lakeland area and the Orlando airport, according to the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, with trains expected to begin running by 2014. In addition to the anticipated federal contribution, private investors are being wooed for an extra $1 billion, putting the total cost of Florida's first high-speed rail project at about $3.5 billion.

Politically speaking, the White House's decision to bestow rail money on a swing state -- and one where legislators have fought intense partisan battles over new high-speed trains -- is a sound one. As the Herald-Tribune notes, there also may be a slight side benefit for the state's marquee Senate race if Gov. Charlie Crist (R), facing a conservative primary challenger, ends up a no-show at Thursday's announcement.

A $2.5 billion grant to Florida also leaves $8 billion left for the Obama team to apportion to other promising rail proposals, including those in the midwest and California. (Last year's economic stimulus law approved the first $8 billion for bullet trains, with another $2.5 billion added by Congress in December.)

But as Yonah Freemark observed in July, the price of Florida's high-speed rail victory may be paid over time by residents of the Tampa-Orlando area. Without a link to downtown Orlando, the rail network's potential to promote dense, mixed-use development near its various stations could be significantly diminished.