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Florida turned down so much money for high speed rail that the Feds had to spread it out among 15 states.

Governor Rick Scott turned down the 2.4 billion dollars earlier this year over the objections of lawmakers. Today the Federal Department of Transportation divided up the money to states ready to build rail systems. Brad Ashwell with Florida Public Interest Research Group, fought to try and save the state’s high speed rail project. He says without rail, gas prices will keep raising.

“The only way to really lower gas prices it to decrease our fuel consumption and the best way to do that is through public transit. It’s expensive, but it’s a worthwhile investment and we need to do it,” said Ashwell.

The rail would have run from Tampa to Orlando. Some studies claim it would have created 40-thousands jobs. Scott says most of those jobs would have been temporary and he says he killed the project because the state would have been on the hook to pay for the rail if it didn’t generate enough customers to pay for itself.