The California High-Speed Rail Authority on Wednesday approved an application for more than $4.5 billion in federal stimulus money to fund engineering, design and construction on its planned high-speed passenger train system.
California already submitted requests for $1.16 billion for an earlier round of stimulus grants targeted at funding incremental improvements to existing passenger rail systems.
The new application is being drawn up to meet the federal government’s Oct. 2 deadline to apply for stimulus money for large-scale high-speed rail corridor programs, such as California’s ambitious plan to build a new system with 200 m.p.h. trains linking San Francisco and Southern California.
Washington plan to dole out $8 billion for rail as part of the stimulus package.
California voters authorized $9.95 billion in general obligation bonds last year to seed construction of the new high-speed rail system.
“California is a leading contender for this federal funding because our true high-speed rail system is further along than any other project in the country,” the rail authority’s chairman, Curt Pringle, said in a statement. “Plus, we can double the value of the federal government’s dollars by matching them with state bond funds approved by California voters last year, we can break ground before the federal government’s deadline, and we can show that our early projects can stand alone as important improvements in their own right.”
