Brightline bucks: Feds announce $368 million in grants for dozens of rail projects in Florida, elsewhere

The Biden administration will dole out $368 million in grants to improve passenger and freight rail around the country, including nearly $16 million in Florida to support a private effort to add passenger service between Orlando and Tampa.

All told, the rail grants will fund 46 projects in 32 states and the District of Columbia. They come as the Biden administration is trying to prepare the way for major expansions of passenger rail, while also clearing up delivery delays that have made some consumer goods hard to find.

“Americans deserve a world-class rail system that allows people and goods to get where they need to go more quickly and affordably, while reducing traffic and pollution on our roads,” said U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg in a statement. “We’re proud to award these grants to improve passenger rail for riders and strengthen the freight rail that makes our supply chains and our economy work.”

The Florida grant will help support the expansion of Brightline, a private passenger railroad that currently operates in south Florida, between Miami and West Palm Beach. Brightline is building a connection to the Orlando airport, but it is already working on further connections to the Tampa area along Interstate 4.

The Federal Railroad Administration will pay half the cost for engineering work on the 67-mile route.

“When it comes to this corridor we know that there’s a ridership level that exists there and a potential ridership level that exists there so that makes this project an exciting one for us,” FRA Administrator Amit Bose said, according to the Tampa Bay Times.

Passenger rail service in Florida has a contentious history. In 2000, voters approved a constitutional amendment requiring the development of a high-speed rail system that would link major urban areas. But voters removed the requirement from the Constitution in 2004 after a campaign backed by then-Gov. Jeb Bush, who argued the state could not afford it.

Former Gov. Rick Scott, now the state's junior U.S. senator, turned down $2.4 billion in federal funds for a Tampa-to-Orlando bullet train. That was shortly after taking office in 2011, when he cited cost overruns on rail projects in other states. He later sought proposals for a high-speed rail connection from Orlando to Tampa but said the new project would be privately funded. 

Federal money focused on rural areas

The latest grants were made through the federal Consolidated Rail Infrastructure and Safety Improvements program. About half of the money the Biden administration distributed went to projects in rural areas, twice the minimum required by law.

For instance, a Florida Panhandle Rural Capacity Expansion Project, which will provide up to $8.3 million in matching funds, will "replace approximately 70,000 ties, install approximately 14,300 new ties, rehabilitate 11 sidings, and makes repairs to 60 grade crossings between Jacksonville and Pensacola," an FRA worksheet shows. 

Railroads, states and local governments submitted $1.1 billion in grant requests for the year, far more than the funding provided by Congress.

FRA designated $87.6 million for projects designed to expand passenger rail. Besides Brightline in Florida, that includes:

• $58 million to help complete engineering work for passenger rail improvements between Richmond, Virginia, and Raleigh, North Carolina. The project “will eventually result in new intercity passenger rail service on a state-owned route that will access currently underserved and minority rural communities with rail service, as well as improve travel times on the existing Amtrak Silver Meteor service,” the FRA said. North Carolina, Virginia and Amtrak are also covering some of the project’s costs.
• $13.9 million to build a new station in Enfield, Connecticut. 
• $10 million for work to prepare for improvements along a 12-mile stretch in Washington state that could help to ready the segment for high-speed rail and improve commuter rail performance.
• Up to $7.5 million to prepare for grade separations in San Jose, California, that could also help roll out high-speed rail in the area.

The transportation secretary and Mitch Landrieu, who is overseeing the Biden administration’s rollout of the new federal infrastructure law, said the grants could help clear up bottlenecks that have delayed goods in recent years.

In southwest Michigan, the two wrote in an opinion piece for the Detroit Free Press, the tracks are in such bad condition trains sometimes have to slow to 5 mph and the state imposes weight restrictions on them. But the state and the West Michigan Railroad Company will receive $8.7 million to improve those tracks, as part of the latest round of grants.

“That investment will mean that Michigan businesses can move more products— from frozen foods to auto parts to construction materials — faster and more reliably. It means more jobs and more growth for the auto part manufacturer or the canning company that produces those goods. And it means jobs for businesses in cities across the country that rely on these companies for their products,” Buttigieg and Landrieu wrote.