Following last month’s announcement of billions to beef up rail projects along the Northeast Corridor, the White House has announced $8.2 billion more in new funding for ten more passenger rail projects, including $6 billion for high-speed rail projects in the West.
The high-speed money is nearly equally split between two projects: Brightline’s Los Angeles to Las Vegas line, estimated to cost $12 billion in total, and the State of California’s ‘bullet train’ project that aims to eventually link LA and San Francisco at speeds up to 220 miles per hour. The funds will go toward completing the central section of the line, which is now massively over-budget and behind schedule.
Other projects in the mix include $1 billion for new Amtrak service between Raleigh, North Carolina, and Richmond, Virginia, and new funding for rail lines, bridges and other infrastructure improvements across the country.
Other recently announced rail projects, coming from a $66 billion pool of rail money that was allocated in the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Act, include major new routes in Ohio, connecting Cincinnati-Dayton-Columbus-Cleveland, Cleveland-Toledo-Detroit and Chicago-Fort Wayne, Indiana-Columbus-Pittsburgh, with additional connector service to several more cities.
