Why Michigan didn’t get more federal money for trains

Last month the Obama administration announced $8 billion in competitive grants for high speed rail, and though Michigan’s Department of Transportation had compiled about $1 billion in requests, the state ended up getting just $40 million to upgrade three rail stations.

In an editorial in today’s Detroit Free Press Tim Fischer, deputy policy director for the Michigan Environmental Council, describes how Michigan lagged behind other states in the competition for rail money.

Wisconsin really ate Michigan’s lunch. Last year, the state spent $47.5 million to purchase new trains from Spanish train manufacturer Talgo — which then agreed to open two new manufacturing facilities in Wisconsin. When the $8 billion in federal money was announced, Wisconsin got $822 million.

It’s not that Michigan didn’t try. The director of our state Transportation Department created an office dedicated to seizing such opportunities. They quickly pulled together about $1 billion in various requests.

But while Wisconsin’s governor was negotiating with Talgo, our governor was proposing a 25% cut in the state’s passenger rail funding. While the Illinois Senate was approving that $400 million to expand passenger rail, our senators were looking to cut rail funding in half. While the Florida Legislature was endorsing its state’s rail plan, we didn’t have one. We still don’t.

Fischer says that in order to secure more aid in the next round of federal funding Michigan must pass legislation to create a Southeast Michigan regional transit authority and fully fund the current passenger rail system.

Yet another example of our legislature being penny wise and pound foolish, refusing to raise the revenue necessary to secure hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding for important infrastructure projects. In the last budget, that refusal cost the state more than a billion dollars between Medicaid and transportation matching funds, money the state can ill afford to turn down.