TAMPA, Fla. -- The drive from Orlando to Tampa takes only 90 minutes or so. Despite the short distance, the Obama administration awarded Florida $1.25 billion in stimulus money to link the cities with a fast train to help kick off its efforts to bring high-speed rail service to the United States, The New York Times reports.
The Florida train would indeed be high speed -- as fast as 168 miles per hour. But because the trains would make five stops along the 84-mile route, the new service would shave only about half an hour off the trip.
Time-pressed passengers may also find themselves frustrated at the end of their trip. Neither city is known for great public transportation, so travelers may discover that they have taken a fast train to a slow bus.
Proponents of high-speed rail worry that the new line, which is scheduled to be up and running in 2015, might hurt rather than help their cause, if it comes to be seen as little more than an expensive way to whisk tourists from Orlando International Airport to Walt Disney World, which is slated to get its own stop.
Even Representative John L. Mica, a Republican whose district in northeast Florida stops about 20 miles short of the proposed line, has questioned whether his state was the best choice to receive some of the $8 billion that was set aside in the stimulus act for high-speed rail.
Mr. Mica wondered if the notoriously congested Northeast corridor from Boston to New York to Washington, which was largely shut out of the pool of money, might have been a better choice.
"That would have the most dramatic impact, as far as a positive result for the country," said Mr. Mica, who added that he was grateful for the investment in his home state.
State officials say they have been planning the route for decades and own most of the right of way needed for the tracks -- a big selling point to the Obama administration, which saw it as the fastest and cheapest way to get a line up and running.
And Florida hopes that it would be only the first leg of a high-speed line that would eventually stretch south to Miami, linking several of the state's tourism and business centers.
But it is unclear where the state will get the money to extend the train line. As it is, officials are uncertain where they would get the rest of the $2.6 billion that they believe is needed to build the Orlando to Tampa route.
Supporters of high-speed rail often argue that it can be a way to lure passengers off airplanes. Orlando and Tampa are so close, however, that no airlines fly between them.
The drive took less than 82 minutes on a couple of recent test runs by a reporter; the train is expected to cover the same ground in 54 to 58 minutes.
Even the Florida project's planners have acknowledged it would have a limited impact on traffic. An environmental impact statement issued in 2005 estimated that the train would draw 11 percent of the 4.5 million people who drive between Tampa and Orlando each year.
It also said the drivers who opted instead to ride the train "would not be sufficient to significantly improve" traffic flow on Interstate 4.
Tourists who try to use public transportation, rather than renting a car, may find themselves seeing sights they would rather avoid and missing some they would like to see. As the Frommer's travel guide to Tampa advises, "Like most other Florida destinations, it's virtually impossible to see Tampa's major sights and enjoy its best restaurants without a car."
A couple of tourists from Chilliwack, British Columbia -- Allana Strickland and her teenage daughter, Sarah McKenzie -- learned this firsthand recently. When they took the public bus from Tampa to the Salvador Dali Museum in nearby St. Petersburg, a major draw in the region, they found themselves on a journey that lasted more than two and half hours to go less than 20 miles.
"It's not as easy to get around here as it could be, for sure," Ms. Strickland said.
The Florida route was one of only two true high-speed rail projects -- with trains capable of going more than 150 miles per hour, as is common in Europe and China -- to win some of the $8 billion in high-speed rail money in the Stimulus Act that was awarded in January. (The Acela trains on the Northeast Corridor are capable of going 150 m.p.h., but average only around half that because they operate on crowded, curvy tracks.)
The other high-speed route is in California, which was awarded $2.25 billion, a small fraction of what it will need to build a rail line for trains that could travel from Los Angeles to San Francisco at speeds of up to 220 m.p.h.
The rest of the stimulus money was divided among 31 states, mostly to speed up existing train service by improving track and signal systems. Supporters see the Florida line as a hedge against future population growth and congestion.
"We believe it's a mode for the future, and we have to start today," said Nazih Haddad, the chief operating officer for the Florida Rail Enterprise, a division of the state's Department of Transportation. He said ridership studies projected that the route would attract enough passengers to cover its operating costs.
But when America 2050, a planning group, ranked potential routes last year in a report called "Where High Speed Rail Works Best," the Tampa to Orlando route did not even make the cut, because the group found that cities should be at least 100 miles apart to capture riders.
The planned route from Tampa through Orlando to Miami did make the list, though: it was ranked 100th among potential routes in the United States.
If the project is built but is not successful, it could make it harder for other high-speed rail projects to get money in the future. Florida knows about that possibility firsthand: its voters once passed a constitutional amendment requiring the state to build a high-speed rail system, only to repeal it later over cost concerns.
As it stands, the proposed route does not have the easiest connections. It would go to downtown Tampa, but not to Tampa's airport. It would go to Orlando's airport, but not to downtown Orlando.
Orlando is planning to build a commuter rail system, but the current plans do not connect it to the proposed high-speed rail line. Tampa is debating a new light rail system, but construction could be years off.
In the short term, experts predict that up to a third of the train's ridership would be for the 19-mile trip between the Orlando airport and Walt Disney World, which has agreed to donate land for a stop.
A recent visit to the Tomorrowland Transit Authority, a retro-futuristic people mover in the Magic Kingdom, shows the enduring pull of car culture in Florida: a sign at the station announces that it is presented by Alamo, the car rental company.
(The preceding article by Michael Cooper was published March 22, 2010, by The New York Times.)
