However, some observers still feel like the state may make out like a bandit in the end.
Florida got $1.25 billion and North Carolina, $545 million. Georgia got $750,000 - for feasibility studies.
But Georgia Department of Transportation Commissioner Vance Smith says look on the map/ Those high-speed rail lines, he tells Georgia News Network, have got to go right thru the hub of the south. Beside, Georgia would still have to spend billions on it's own and the jury is still out if anyone wlll actually ride those trains.
Smith says let Florida and North Carolina test the waters first before Georgia commits billions of dollars on its own.
However, U.S. Representative John Lewis of Atlanta is worried about georgia being left at the station, so to speak... with its high-speed passenger rail plans left to "wither on the vine."
One of the proposed lines for high-speed passenger rail service in Georgia follows the corridor used by the Amtrak Crescent between New York and New Orleans: through parts of northeast Georgia - Stepehens, Habersham, Hall, and Gwinnett counties - through Atlanta and into Alabama west of Villa Rica.
GA D.O.T. Commissioner Vance Smith
http://accesswdun.com/article/2010/1/226652