Not much actually, except that both states governments seem to be on a kick to install high speed rail lines.  As reported here in the WSJ yesterday, 'Next to national health care, no liberal dream has lingered longer in the nation's public policy than high-speed rail...Like health care, the justifications shift with the political winds. High-speed rail's current rationale, needless to say, is jobs. Unlike real jobs created by the private sector, taxpayers get to pay for those in high-speed rail. Let's look at the Orlando-to-Tampa proposal."  They go on to talk about the history of rail in Florida and how the state has "nixed high-speed rail three times because of costs. In 2004, voters repealed a 2000 ballot initiative requiring the state to build a high-speed rail system because they didn't want to foot the bill."  Of course this is not enough for the train lobby, particularly since President Obama is in a mood to pour stimulus money into new rail lines.

What is really interesting in this article is the reference to the 2009 GAO report that says, "new high-speed rail projects in France, Spain and Japan average $51 million per mile". You read that right—$51 million per mile. That would put the cost of the Tampa-Orlando line at $4.28 billion or $3 billion more than the estimate.   How does this tie Florida to Minnesota?  Well the state of Minnesota got  their cut of stimulus money to support MNDOT's "sweeping plan for passenger rail development that envisions a train running to Chicago within five years and a network of passenger trains someday connecting the Twin Cities with Rochester, Duluth and several other cities...at a price tag of as much as $9.5 billion over the next 20 years"  If my math is correct, that means MNDOT can do 186 miles of this network.  A quick check of Mapquest shows that it is 154 miles from Duluth to Minneapolis and another 314 miles to Chicago.  That means at $51 million per mile, that portion of the network will cost closer to $25 billion or nearly 3 times the current estimate.