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Joe Biden- Kamala Harris administration announces $2.4 billion in new US railroad projects to improve safety and grow the passenger and freight networks
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In 2021, the 117th Congress legislated and president Joe Biden signed the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (Bipartisan Infrastructure Law), which represents "the most significant investment in American rail in more than 50 years." This funding is being doled out to states and railroads, including passenger railroads, to significantly improve infrastructure.
There are many more rail projects being funded here. You can see a full list of projects from the Federal Railroad Administration (PDF link). About $1 billion of this funding is for rural communities: railroads aren't just a "big city thing."
Seems from more specific funding ledgers that many of the small (<500k) grants are aimed at improving safety, namely for passengers. Hopefully this will further improve the impressive safety record of commuter rail safety.
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Yes, lots of the grants improve passenger safety directly or indirectly. Even the grants for freight railroads will often help passengers, since Amtrak leases trackage rights on many such lines.
Positive train control is one of the expensive upgrades that some of these grants fund. PTC is a modern signaling system which gives operators a better sense of where trains actually are. This helps prevent collisions of multiple trains and theoretically allows for higher operating speeds and lower headways, since operators have better information and don't need to pad schedules so much.
One of the best ways to make the rails safer is to grade-separate road crossings. This is very expensive, which is why it's not the default. But cars driving onto railroads leads to a lot of derailments. For this reason, the FRA limits railroads to 79 mph near at-grade crossings, even if the track is otherwise suitable for faster speeds. There is a bit of grade separation in the legislation, including in the large grant in Illinois. This will help improve speeds/travel times while also improving safety.
There are a few hundred million dollars going to fencing projects in order to limit access to tracks except for stations. This will help keep people from the tracks as well as debris, which can also cause derailments.
In general, maintenance of railways reduces risk of derailment, fire, and other problems. So the grants really are doing a lot here.