
Photo Source: Virgin Group
There are entrepreneurs. And then there is Richard Branson. Branson,
who waded into the U.S. transportation world with Virgin America
Airways (which just reported its first quarterly profit), appears ready
to try his hand at a less-proven transportation mode — at least for
the U.S., anyway. The Virgin Group founder has, according to The Wall
Street Journal, “joined an all-European consortium that plans to bid
for Florida’s planned high-speed rail line.”
Virgin, which operates a rail franchise in the U.K., sees the market as
a natural extension of its existing U.S. transport activities, which
include Virgin Atlantic Airways–a big player in the Orlando airline
market–and Virgin America.
Whether or not Branson and others have a chance to bid on anything may still be up in the air. As
National Public Radio reports, “high-speed rail may be among the
casualties of last week’s midterm elections.”
The newly elected
governors of Ohio and Wisconsin have indicated they don’t want the
money allocated for high-speed rail to their states. In Florida,
according to The Wall Street Journal, the group Branson is joining for the bid “would be among eight potential bidders for the main portion of the
84-mile-long project.” The Florida project “could be the first such
project to move off the drawing board in the
wake of the Obama administration’s high-speed rail push, provided it
isn’t scuttled by the state’s new governor-elect, Republican Rick
Scott.”
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