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A draft report co-authored by a Baton Rouge engineering firm paints a red ink–stained picture of the budget required for high-speed passenger rail between the Capital Region and New Orleans. The proposal could lead to real estate development around two stations in Baton Rouge and stops in Gonzales, LaPlace, Kenner and New Orleans but would require $11 million to $14 million in annual subsidies until net benefits, including reduced highway traffic and fuel savings, showed a payoff in 2037, The Times-Picayune reports. Sherri LeBas, interim secretary for the state Department of Transportation and Development, tells the Daily Report that a final draft of the report is due March 16 from Burk-Kleinpeter Inc. of Baton Rouge and an Omaha, Neb., engineering firm. The million-dollar-plus report was commissioned about a year ago, she says, and is expected to show “an unsustainable operating loss to the state.” LeBas says the projected operating cost of $14 million to $22 million “is quite a bit of money … during these hard economic times.”

Dawn Starns, executive director with the Capital Region Legislative Delegation, says a working group met at the beginning of this month to discuss the plan’s feasibility and will meet again March 24 to get a briefing from Burk-Kleinpeter. Starns says the group includes East Baton Rouge and Ascension parish officials as well as legislators from the nine-parish Capital Region. “In this post-Katrina world that we live in, our region is one of the fastest-growing in the state,” she says. “Everyone needs to work together if we want to get things done.” Although Gov. Bobby Jindal nixed plans in August to apply for stimulus funding for the rail project, Starns says there is still $2.5 billion in federal funding available for high-speed railways, which could help with capital investment to turn the Kansas City Southern rail line into the commuter route. Still, she says, “There [are] no operating funds to pay for it.” Meantime, although The Times-Picayune says 90% of the 1,300 expected daily passengers would head to New Orleans, most from Baton Rouge, an Ascension Parish official tells the Daily Report that the service could provide a key benefit for state workers commuting from Gonzales to Red Stick. “We’re losing 16,000 people a day to somewhere else,” says Michael Eades, president and CEO of Ascension Economic Development Corporation, citing Census data. “It seems like a good idea within budgetary constraints—always, right?”