President Obama has resurrected his proposal to invest $50 billion in infrastructure and wants it included in the fiscal cliff deal. Republicans were immediately critical of the proposal.
Details were not released, but it is assumed that the proposal is similar to those previously announced by President Obama in 2010 and 2011. Those proposals have not passed the Democratic Senate or the Republican House. It’s debatable how hard the White House has pushed Congress to pass the proposal.
Streetcar!
Streetcar? I think we’ll get more ptrans ridership by building a train station in providence place mall.
I’ve suggested that before, actually, and I’ll keep on suggesting it.
The tracks already pass under the mall, there’s plenty of clearance in the mall complex to build out new station infrastructure, and pushing the platforms down-line opens up the possibility to reconnect the NEC to the East Side Rail Tunnel. (See: http://goo.gl/maps/KEAgr)
East Providence – Attleboro is easy 150+ mph territory, and frees up worlds of capacity for service to Pawtucket and Woonsocket – plus, it can probably be four tracked without a terrible amount of difficulty. Hell, it’s probably a better HSR corridor than the one we have now!
Practically speaking, the walk from the train station to the mall and back is short enough and fast enough that it might as well be a rounding error, and Kennedy Plaza is already so totally disjoined from the train station that the impact on people traveling from one to the other is a wash.