GSA rail transit

[motonenterprises]

This article states that things are being put into place to have rail transit up and running in the Greenville area in less than a decade. Wow! GSA transit article

[Spartan]

Indeed that is exciting news. I hope this is a sign of a greater revival of rail transit in general

[monsoon]

The last paragraph of that article is a bit disturbing and puts into question on how well they did their research.

Currently, a lot of federal funding is available for light rail projects that requires comparatively small state and local matches, which can be raised through means from temporary taxes to private partnerships, Hudson said.

In reality, federal funding is very scarce, and by law is limited to 60% funding for a system that is more than $160M. From a practical standpoint, the local share will need to be at leas 50% before it will get serious consideration from the FRA. I'm not sure how much distance they are talking about but the LRT in Charlotte is costing about $45M/mile and there were some significant costs that were paid for by the Trolley project which did not use Federal funding.

[Spartan]

I think the total distance of the line is something on the order of 10 miles. The problem in Greenville is conencting the two. This will probably involve an on street rail/trolley setup.

The government (even the republicans) are beginning to see that mass transit is something that neds to be invested in. It may take a while before the funding becomes available, but we should hopefully see an increase soon, and Greenville is well positioned to take advantage of it as soon as it becomes available.

[GvilleSC]

YAY! I can't wait! I certainly hope that this is started in a timely manner and is successful!