Wisconsin Department of Transportation A rendering of a high-speed intermodal rail station that had been planned for Milwaukee.
Representative John Mica of Florida, the senior Republican in line to take the reins of the House Transportation Committee in January, is unhappy with the way the Obama administration awarded $10 billion in federal stimulus funds for high-speed rail projects.
“I am a strong advocate of high-speed rail, but it has to be where it makes sense,” Mr. Mica told The Associated Press in a post-election interview. “The administration squandered the money, giving it to dozens and dozens of projects that were marginal at best to spend on slow-speed trains to nowhere.”
Mr. Mica said he would like to redirect the rail money to the Northeast corridor, which he described as possibly the only place in the country with enough population density to financially support high-speed train service.
As it turns out, he might just be in luck: several newly elected Republican governors from states that received rail funds have indicated that they don’t want the money. (Michael Cooper of The Times detailed Republican opposition to high-speed rail prior to the election.)
Scott Walker, the incoming governor of Wisconsin, for instance, vowed on Wednesday to carry out a campaign pledge to kill a proposed high-speed rail link between Milwaukee and Madison, part of a larger project to create a high-speed rail corridor across the upper Midwest, from Minneapolis to Chicago. The project was to be fully paid for with $810 million in federal stimulus funds.
Mr. Walker said he wanted the money spent on roads, although under the terms of the grants, such a use of the funds is prohibited.
The newly elected Republican governor of Ohio, John Kasich, who ousted Ted Strickland, a Democrat, has also reiterated a campaign pledge to kill a $400 million stimulus-funded rail project in his state.
“Passenger rail is not in Ohio’s future,” Mr. Kasich said at his first news conference after the election. “That train is dead.”
Mr. Kasich had previously called the high-speed rail project the “dumbest idea” he had ever heard, saying that there was too little demand to justify its construction and that the state could not afford to operate it. Like his Wisconsin counterpart, he also said the rail money should be spent on roads.
Instead, the funds will almost certainly revert to the federal government for reassignment elsewhere.