Tampa to be linked with rest of state via high-speed rail

High-speed rail is a fairly modern advancement on rail travel that has been widely adopted in the modern world as the best form of overland mass transit. Highly developed countries like Japan, the UK, France, Italy, Germany and Spain have adopted high-speed rail extensively.

Spain has 1,600 kilometers of high-speed railway in operation, making it one of the most widespread relative to its size, with a further 2,000 kilometers under construction, while China is the world leader with 4,326 kilometers in operation and over 6,000 under construction.

In the United States, there is currently just one railway defined by the US Department of Transportation as high-speed, it runs from Washington, D.C to Boston on the east coast in the Northeast Corridor. However, there are several states and regions considering investment in high-speed rail following advancement in technology and changes to the economic landscape of the country that have made the initiative more feasible.

Fuel prices in the US have traditionally been considerably lower than other developed countries, which has supported a demand for cars rather than mass-transit, however, with fuel prices increasing and air travel becoming more expensive and time-consuming, as well as increasingly securitised following the 9/11 attacks, there is a growing interest in over-land transport.

The Florida High Speed Corridor is the result of this change and is one of the many high-speed rail corridors being considered in the US. The Florida Rail Enterprise is the government department established to oversee the planning of the system and its eventual construction, though the Florida Department of Transportation is the ultimate local authority in charge of the project.

The first phase of the corridor will see the construction of a high-speed rail link between Tampa and Orlando, two of the biggest cities in the state, with plans to eventually extend the railway to Miami, creating a route that looks vaguely like an upside down L on a map of Florida. The plans have been in place since 2001, but were given impetus in 2009 by a US $1.3 billion federal grant that would pay in large part for the construction of the link between Tampa and Orlando.

The grant to Florida for the construction of the Tampa-Orlando high-speed rail link is part of a much larger spending plan by the federal government that will see the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act inject US$ 8 billion as well as up to US $5 billion over five years from the federal budget into high-speed rail initiatives across the country.

The line between Tampa and Orlando will be 88 miles in length and will reduce travelling time between the two cities to less than half an hour. The high-speed rail line, which is expected to see construction start in 2011, has been attacked by critics as another example of over-spending by the federal government, while supporters point out the job creation and wider investment it will engender.

According to Tampa news media, the Federal Railroad Administration has established a set of strict guidelines and principles for the use of the federal funding, which stipulates that foreign corporations may be contracted in cases where technical expertise and materials cannot reasonably be supplied from within the country, but that those foreign corporations must re-invest in the US economy.

This is a theme that has been observed by Tampa news media at recent press and promotional events to do with the potential link between Tampa and Orlando, which is expected to be complete in 2015.

Around 40 companies from around the world, from Spain to China, have expressed an interest in getting involved in the Tampa-Orlando High-Speed Railway. Siemens, the largest engineering conglomerate in Europe, is one of these companies. The German-based corporation wants to see its Valero high-speed trains shooting back and forth between Tampa and Orlando and, in-line with the guidelines set out by the Federal Railroad Administration, the company has explained its expansion intentions within the US economy.

Siemens already have a large presence in Sacramento where they have been building light-rail trains for more than 25 years and they reportedly plan to establish a presence in Tampa that will grow with the Florida High-Speed Corridor.

The reliance on foreign companies and foreign expertise in the bidding process is understandable, given the almost non-existent nature of high-speed rail in America, compared to countries like the UK, Germany, Spain, China and Japan, where several decades of experience is held within the high-speed rail sector of the economy.

A potential 27,000 jobs could be created in Florida alone, while the eventual three-and-a-half-hour travelling time between Tampa and Miami, when the line extension is complete in 2018, is expected to change the nature of intra-state travel.