• Improved Bike/Ped bridge for the Ohio River!

• Freight Rail Improvents in Appalachia!

Everyone's favorite stimulus program, the TIGER grants, have been released today. The grant process was very competitive, with $60 billion of requests for a scant $1.5 billion of funding. The great thing about TIGER is that the money is not pidgeon holed for a single mode of travel (e.g. roads), but rather competitive based on benefit/cost analysis across all modes. So you see freight rail projects competing with highway projects competing with sidewalk improvement projects.

Update: No, its not the Big 4 ... added fresh info on the Big 4 below the fold...

By combining a couple of transportation projects we've already built, and by uniting them with some on the drawing board, we can create an awesome new Southwest Louisville transportation corridor. You may have seen this graphic on the front page of USA Today last week:

How do we satisfy all these people without breaking the bank? Here are the pieces of the puzzle:

• Dixie Highway
• Downtown Multi Modal Station
• Riverwalk / Louisville Loop
• P&L Commuter Rail Line
• TARC #18 Bus
• P&L Commuter Bike Path
• AMTRAK Passenger Rail
• K&I Bike/Ped Bridge to New Albany

If you're viewing from the front page, click Read More to continue.

Cliff Kuhl, schedule planner at TARC, had enough fun on the inspection train to gin up some fictional schedules for a P&L commuter rail line. He writes:

I decided to try working up some schedule scenarios just for fun.  I'm not trying to put the [iron] horse ahead of the cart, but just looking at what could be done with the track infrastructure that is in place.  I've also come up with what I think would be a workable and reasonable fare structure.

All schedules assume a 50 miles per hour maximum speed from the NS crossing to the foot of Muldraugh Hill, and from the southern edge of Fort Knox to Cecilia, with reductions for curves as necessary.  I also assume speed of 25 miles per hour from the NS crossing to a riverfront terminal somewhere near the foot of 9th Street just north of Main Street in Louisville.  Speeds could be higher but there would be a cost for track improvement.

TARC is working on raising money to study the P&L / 31W corridor. Three alternatives will be examined:

1. Beefed up express TARC bus service along 31W
2. Commuter service via motor coach
3. Commuter Rail on the P&L tracks

In other words CART, Metro Council, PAL, Miller, TARC, and the cities and counties have gotten this ball rolling.

What we're demonstrating is the ability to run passenger trains like this one:

This is Nashville's Music City Star. The engine is a refurbished AMTRAK passenger engine, costing about $200,000 used. The two gallery cars each seat 150+ passengers, and are available for about $20,000 each used. So this train has the passenger capacity of about six city buses.

The other interesting thing about this trainset is it's not clear which way it is travelling. It can run "backwards" with an engineer atop the back gallery car, controlling the engine remotely, or "forwards" with the engineer in the engine. The other crewperson is a conductor.

To generate support for this idea, we secured the cooperation of the P&L Railway and Miller Trailways for a one-day, invitation-only event. Early on Saturday officials gathered for a press conference at TARC:

Saturday's inspection of the P&L Railway between Louisville and Cecilia Kentucky was a resounding success. We now have momentum towards a commuter rail corridor in Louisville!

CART will have a lot more to say later, stay tuned!

We got a nice write-up in the Courier-Journal today, with many nice quotes from public officials. Train ride may spur look at line serving Louisville, Fort Knox

There's been a lot of confusion about Commuter Rail and Light Rail. They are both forms of passenger rail, but there the similarity ends. You can't call one the other!

Commuter Rail goes over longer distances than Light Rail. For example, compare the system maps of our proposal to the T2 Light Rail plan from 2002. The system we're proposing for Jefferson, Hardin, and Meade counties would travel from here to Elizabethtown via Fort Knox. It would not be a Louisville project, but a Kentucky project. Contrast that to the T2 light rail line we almost build a few years ago, that went from downtown to just outside I-265. That would have been purely urban and suburban.

The two PAL passenger coaches are visible behind the engines in this photo from the PAL website.

On the morning of November the 8th, 2008, Jefferson, Hardin, and Meade counties will play host to something not seen in a generation in these areas: passenger rail service along the Paducah and Louisville Railway.

For one round trip only, there will be a commuter "inspection train" operating from Louisville, through Shively, West Point, Fort Knox, Mulldraugh, North Radcliff, Vine Grove, and Cecilia.

The trip is to draw attention to the huge economic potential that the Paducah and Louisville tracks hold in terms of adding capacity to Highway 31-W aka "Wide Wide Dixie Highway", one of the regions most congested corridors.

About the Inspection Train

Seating on the inspection train is going to be extremely limited, because we can use just the two passenger cars you see above. Because of that, seats are invitation only, and reserved for elected officeholders, transportation professionals, members of the media, and a small staff of volunteers, most of them FRA certified.

Update: New photo-op location added at Southwest Government Center - more info below the fold.

LEO has the best article about the Music City Star tour.

Fox also covers us.