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Specter, Ridge, local leaders huddle on maglev funding
Tuesday, July 24, 2001 By Joe Grata, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
If there were such a thing as "High-Speed Maglev Week" in Pittsburgh, this would be it.
About 100 elected, civic, labor and business leaders joined U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter and Gov. Tom Ridge yesterday to devise ways to win federal funding to build the nation's first magnetic levitation train system here.
Yesterday also was the deadline for consultants to submit proposals for an environmental study of the project to the Port Authority, the public partner of Maglev Inc., headquartered in Monroeville.
Specter, R-Pa., a senior member of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Transportation, is to meet tomorrow with U.S. Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta to continue building a case for allocating $950 million for high-speed maglev in southwestern Pennsylvania.
More than two dozen people, including Pennsylvania Department of Transportation officials, are to fly to Germany tomorrow as the latest entourage to see and ride a prototype high-speed train built by Transrapid International, Maglev's technology partner.
Not only is this shaping up as the busiest week in a decade of maglev development, but Maglev Inc. President and Chief Executive Officer Fred Gurney called it a telling week.
"In the old days, the people at the meeting [yesterday] would be called the 'captains of industry' in Pittsburgh, and it was important to have them in the same room with labor and elected leaders," Gurney said. "The message that went out was we need to work together, build strong teams and expand the boundaries of interest in order to capture this opportunity for the future."
The high-speed maglev project would use electromagnetic fields to levitate and propel trains over a 47-mile system costing at least $2.4 billion and linking Greensburg, Monroeville, Downtown and Pittsburgh International Airport. Trains would run at speeds eclipsing 240 mph on elevated guideway.
Called The Pennsylvania Project, it has received more than $10 million in federal funds and $3.6 million in state funds thus far.
While Maglev Inc. officials envision the airport-to-Downtown section being operational by the end of 2006, they will have to beat out another finalist for federal funding: a 40-mile Baltimore-to-Washington, D.C., high-speed maglev line.
Specter said he'll point out to Mineta not only the advanced status and broad-based support of The Pennsylvania Project but also its importance to a region trying to recover from the loss of heavy manufacturing.
"It has the best potential as a pilot project, with a most emphatic impact on the community," he said. "And when you get Western Pennsylvania into gear, it's going to be pretty hard to stop us."
Yesterday's meeting was a virtual "Who's Who" of Republican and Democratic officials at all levels, politicians in a show of unity and support with labor, corporate, business, institutional and other leaders.
"This could be one of the most important meetings, economically, that we've ever had," Allegheny County Chief Executive Jim Roddey said.
Ridge, whose administration has backed maglev, joined the cheerleading, saying new stadiums, the convention center and high-tech industries in the city are "proof positive that, when everyone in the community rolls up their sleeves and works together, we can achieve anything."
State Rep. Richard Geist, R-Altoona, told Specter that if he can use his political power in Washington to deliver the federal funds to build maglev in Pittsburgh, "this will be your legacy."
Kristen Szymkowiak, executive director of the organization of young professionals known as Pittsburgh Urban Magnet Project, or PUMP, said maglev "will make our city world-class."
The Federal Railroad Administration, in concurrence with the U.S. Transportation Department hierarchy, is supposed to choose either The Pennsylvania Project or the Baltimore-Washington, D.C., maglev proposal by early 2003. The next step would be to complete the final environmental impact study and start final design.
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