Cleveland
Plain Dealer...
ODOT paid $1.4
million for passenger-rail effort, won’t seek reimbursement from feds
By Tom Breckenridge
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
COLUMBUS,Ohio -- Ohio will not get back the $1.4 million it spent on a
scrapped high-speed passenger rail project.
Gov. John Kasich axed the proposed passenger-rail link between
Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati when he took office in January.
State transportation officials said they didn’t push for reimbursement
from the federal government because rail officials expressed “great
concern” in reimbursing states where no construction would occur,
Melissa Ayers, spokeswoman for the Ohio Department of Transportation,
said in an email.
Two other states that did much more work before scrapping the projects
have sought reimbursement.
The Federal Railroad Administration had committed $400 million to Ohio
as part of a national effort under President Barack Obama to expand
passenger rail nationwide.
But Kasich said the project was a boondoggle, with trains that would
move too slowly and operating costs that would require subsidies of $17
million a year from the state. Former Gov. Ted Strickland and rail
supporters saw it as a job generator and a first step toward a
high-speed rail link in the state’s busiest traffic corridor.
After Kasich nixed the project, questions remained whether ODOT would
ask the federal agency to cover the $1.4 million billed by two
contractors.
The companies fleshed out key components of the rail proposal,
including routes, train stations, schedules and operating costs.
The $1.4 million spent by ODOT fell way short of the $15 million that
federal agency had put aside for an early phase of the project, said
ODOT spokesman David Rose.
The rail agency expected preliminary engineering and an
environmental-impact study, which ODOT was not going to deliver, Rose
said.
“The writing was on the wall,” Rose said. “The likelihood of us being
reimbursed was very, very, very slim.”
In a letter sent to ODOT last month, the rail agency’s Administrator
Joseph Szabo acknowledged the end of the rail-funding pact with the
state highway agency and said the money would be sent to other states.
“We appreciate receiving your written confirmation of changed
conditions and that Ohio will not be seeking reimbursement,” Szabo
wrote.
The two other states where Republican governors scrapped passenger-rail
projects -- Florida and Wisconsin -- had done more work than Ohio in
pursuing the rail lines.
The federal rail officials determined that Florida is eligible for
$32.3 million in reimbursements, including $21.5 million spent before
the project stopped.
The federal agency is considering a request from Wisconsin to reimburse
$32 million, a spokeswoman said.
Read it at the Cleveland Plain Dealer
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