We finally have a plan for high-speed rail in the United States.

The Obama Administration, which has long made it clear high-speed rail should be a national priority, on Thursday released its long-awaited list of high-speed rail project stimulus money. The official list of projects can be found here (PDF), and as usual Yonah Freemark breaks it down nicely.

The exact distribution of the $8 billion earmarked for HSR in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act ( aka the stimulus bill) has long been the subject of rumor and speculation. As applications poured in, pundits and commenters suggested everything from divvying the money up equally among the projects to giving the whole pot to one mega-project.

What stands out about the awards is their piecemeal nature. While the infusion of cash will bring practical, measurable benefits, high-speed rail is so mind-bogglingly expensive (the California high-speed rail project alone is estimated at $40 billion) and the grants are spread so thinly that many of the benefits we'll see will be tiny. We can draw three conclusions from this.

First, the Obama administration is serious about establishing a nationwide high-speed rail network. Although the plan allocates $620 million to speed up trips between Richmond, Virginia and Charlotte, North Carolina, the largest benefits will come from connecting that line to the Northeast Corridor in Washington, DC and the proposed high speed rail hub in Atlanta. A line linking Madison, Wisconsin with Milwaukee is nice, but hooking it up with the hub in Chicago is really worth salivating over.

Second, states cannot depend entirely on federal money to bankroll these projects. No one received everything they wanted for their projects. Much of what was allotted, particularly in California and Illinois, provides a financial boost to states that already have pledged money. The long-overdue federal transportation bill pending before Congress sets aside a small (relatively speaking for high-speed rail) sum to be handed out annually, but other big announcements in Obama's speech – a freeze on discretionary spending, significant earmark reform, etc - may limit or do away with traditional sources of money that might otherwise be available for high-speed rail.

Third, some is better than none. Many of the stimulus grants aim to increase train speed trains to 110 mph, despite the technology available to increase it to 220 or more. The Northeast Corridor is a prime candidate for increased-speed funding – although the trains running that line are capable of 150 mph, most places along the tracks don't allow it. That greatly suppresses potential ridership. The NEC will have to make do with a $112 million grant for crucial but relatively minor upgrades.

Obama can expect to take flack from both sides of the HSR argument. Fiscal conservatives will blast the grants as a waste of money, and high-speed rail supporters will criticize them as spread too thinly to provide much benefit to any one project. Obama has found an unhappy medium, but it effectively lays the groundwork for what will hopefully be a cash-filled future.

Map: U.S. Department of Transportation. Download the full-size map here.