Event highlights $10M TIGER grant to extend Vermont passenger rail

Written by Mischa Wanek-Libman, editor
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USDOT

An event held in Burlington, Vt., placed the spotlight on a $10 million Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery (TIGER) that will be used to extend passenger rail from New York City to Burlington.

 

U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx, Federal Railroad Administrator Sarah E. Feinberg, Vermont Governor Peter Shumlin, U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and U.S. Congressman Peter Welch (D-VT) attended the event. The TIGER grant was awarded to the Vermont Agency of Transportation in October 2015 as part of the seventh round of grants.

The funds will be used to extend Amtrak’s Ethan Allen Express passenger train service all the way to Burlington, Vt. Currently, the service begins in New York City and stops in Rutland, Vt. The $10 million grant will fund approximately 11 miles of new rail track along the state-owned line and three passenger platforms in Middlebury, Vergennes and Burlington. The project will also reduce long-term maintenance costs for the state, allow passenger trains to operate up to 60 miles per hour and enhance safety at multiple railroad crossings.

“Transportation is always about the future. If we’re just fixing today’s problems, we’ll fall further and further behind. We already know that a growing population and increasing freight traffic will require our system to do more,” said Secretary Foxx. “In this round of TIGER grants, we selected projects that focus on where the country’s transportation infrastructure needs to be in the future: safer, more innovative, and more targeted to open the floodgates of opportunity across America.”

“This is a day Burlington has been waiting a long time for – this funding will help not only take us back to a time when passenger rail extended to Burlington, but more importantly, it will take us into the future,” said FRA Administrator Sarah E Feinberg.

Since 2009, the TIGER program has provided $4.6 billion to 381 projects in all 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, including 134 projects supporting rural and tribal communities. Demand for the program has been overwhelming: to date, the U.S. Department of Transportation has received more than 6,700 applications requesting more than $134 billion for transportation projects across the country.

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