On Friday, the Business Alliance for Northeast Mobility sent a letter to the Honorable Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood and other transportation officials supporting the package of applications submitted by Amtrak, eight Northeastern States, and the District of Columbia, in response to the U.S. DOT's Notice of Funding Availability published on March 11, 2011. These 22 applications are seeking a portion of the funds that Florida returned for high-speed and intercity passenger rail projects on the mainline Northeast Corridor (NEC), as well as four of its branch lines, including the Keystone, Empire, Downeaster, and New Haven-Hartford-Springfield Corridors, which serve as feeder routes for the NEC.
The application deadline was April 8th and the amount of funding the Federal Railroad Administration was originally going to redirect was roughly $2.4 billion. However, four days later Congress finally passed the 2011 Federal Budget, which rescinded $400 million from the fiscal year 2010 High-Speed Intercity Passenger Rail Program appropriations budget, bringing the total amount to be redirected to $2 billion. This makes competition for these limited funds even fiercer than it already was (virtually half of the country applied for five times the amount available).
Download the letter to Secretary LaHood. (PDF)
Download a list of the NOFA applications that were submitted to the FRA from around the country. (XLS)
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