This is almost a day old now, but hey, us transit lovers are used to things taking a bit longer than usual, am I right??  (Ah, how I love self-flagellation.  Who needs enemies when you have yourself?).

Just days after receiving word that Atlanta would receive a lot of federal cash for its downtown streetcar, the state learned that it would be receiving $4.1 million to develop high-speed rail between Atlanta and Charlotte.  It seems like for all of Atlanta (and Georgia’s) mistakes in getting their railroady fingers on the fed’s transit money as of late, Atlanta’s location as a regional hub makes it sorta hard to ignore.

From the AJC…

North Carolina has invested heavily in rail programs over the past two decades, and in January, it won a $545 million grant to build high-speed rail. Florida has invested, too, and also won a $1.25 billion construction grant to partially fund a line from Tampa to Orlando. This week, the Obama administration will award Florida an additional $800 million for the line, according to U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla.

[U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood] added, “Whoever gets elected governor will be getting a phone call from me, really trying to figure out if Georgia’s going to be in the mix on high-speed intercity rail. They should be. They’re an important region of the country. We want them to be, but it’s going to take extraordinary leadership from the state.”

$47 mil to be precise on how “big ‘ol”.  Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood…

“We’re here today because you all have your act together,”…”People have to come together around a common agenda, list the priorities and then start working on them. And this community knows how to do it.

“I hope soon the state will take your lead and become a model for it,”

You gotta give Atlanta mayor Kasim Reed credit for this one.  He focused the greedy and scattered Peachtree Streetcar effort and got the city some cash.  The AJC reports that construction on the streetcar should begin in 2012 and be operational by 2013.

Whether downtown Atlanta is ready for a streetcar or a streetcar is ready for downtown Atlanta is yet to be seen.

Photo above courtesy of Kwanza Hall

Aw heck…

Georgia appears to have won as little as $750,000 from the $8 billion pool of high-speed rail grants that President Obama was scheduled to announce this week…

The money to be announced Thursday would pay for three feasibility studies, at $250,000 each…

Last fall, U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood told a number of states, including Georgia and Florida, that they had better get their act together on rail transit or risk losing out on the high-speed rail grants. In a special session weeks later, Florida voted additional annual funding for one rail transit line and expedited buying track for another.

According to the AJC, it looks like Florida will be the big high-speed winner in the Southeast.  I guess the fed wasn’t all that concerned with investing in a state that could serve as a regional hub.

Or we just totally blew it.

h/t:  Terminal Station (actually I also used Ben’s cut-and-paste)

While his highways flooded, Federal Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood managed to stay dry yesterday inside the 5 Points MARTA station, where he announced the distribution of $100 million in nationwide “clean-transport” grants distributed across 43 local transit agencies.

MARTA came out a big “winner” in this disbursement, getting over $10 million of the total money to build Georgia’s largest solar-panel installation at the Larado Bus Facility, just east of Decatur.

A bit more detail from Streetsblog…

Georgia: Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority, $10,800,000. Laredo Bus Facility Solar Canopies: Provide shade structures with integrated, grid tied photovoltaic cells to be erected on the bus storage lot at the Laredo Bus Maintenance Facility. PV canopies will produce power and reduce temperatures underneath canopies. MARTA anticipates that the power produced by these photovoltaic panels will be sold to Georgia Power under their Distributed Generation Contract Program. The largest PV installation in Georgia.

Thanks to Ridgelandistan for the Streetsblog link!