Obama sends money to Florida for rail

   Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood told a gathering of Tampa Bay and Orlando business and civic leaders Thursday that $66.6 million in federal grants is being released to help fund the planned high-speed rail service between Tampa and Orlando, the St. Pete Times reports. The funding is part of the $1.25 billion down payment first committed to the project by President Barack Obama during his visit to Tampa earlier this year.
   "The president's vision for high-speed rail will forever change the way Americans travel by offering new transportation options," LaHood said. "The grants released today are merely the very beginning of many more to follow."
   The money will be used for preliminary engineering and related up-front work on the project, LaHood told an audience of 500 gathered at the second annual "super region" conference. The meeting, a collaboration of economic development groups from Tampa Bay and Orlando, was convened to find common ground and smart growth strategies between the two metro areas as they anticipate slowly merging into a single, gulf-to-Atlantic Central Florida metropolis.