ATLANTA — The Georgia General Assembly didn’t pass a resolution urging support for a high-speed rail link between the Chattanooga and Atlanta airports, but nothing about the endeavor is derailed, officials agree.

The resolution’s sponsor, Sen. Jeff Mullis, R-Chickamauga, said his bill got lost “in the heat of the process.”

The resolution that urged the Georgia Department of Transportation to build a magnetically levitating railway between the two airports passed the Senate 51-1 on March 11. The measure passed through a House committee but never reached the House floor for a vote.

“It doesn’t mean it’s not viewed favorably,” Sen. Mullis said. “We’ll continue pushing the politics of it.”

Chattanooga Mayor Ron Littlefield joked that he was glad Peach State lawmakers could support the high-speed rail and weren’t “deeply offended” by his gift of bottles of Tennessee River water earlier in the session. He sent the bottled water delivery as a light-hearted response to Georgia legislation to re-examine the states’ shared border and move it north, giving Georgia a piece of the Tennessee River and some relief during a historic drought.

More seriously, Mayor Littlefield said, “If it did that well, I’m encouraged.”

The resolution was one of almost 20 recommendations made by a joint study committee on transportation funding that Sen. Mullis co-chaired last summer.

However, GDOT already is conducting an $8 million federal study of high-speed rail to connect the two airports. That study is expected to be completed by October 2009, and the fate of Sen. Mullis’ resolution won’t affect its progress or funding.

Georgia senators held a meeting with GDOT officials in February to answer questions from nervous private donors about the study’s progress. Those donors supplied matching funds for the maglev study, including $300,000 from Chattanooga through the nonprofit The Enterprise Center.

“We’ve got it back on the right track,” Mr. Littlefield said, adding engineers are beginning to “add flesh to bones” on the 300-mph train line that would cost somewhere along the lines of $4.8 billion.

It would cut the trip between the two airports to a breezy 47 minutes, with a couple key city stops and no threat of metro Atlanta traffic gridlock.

After the GDOT study is complete, it will be time to start seeking federal money, Mayor Littlefield said. Similar studies are being conducted to install maglev in other parts of the nation, and he said a solid GDOT study will help put the Atlanta-Chattanooga rail and the possible addition of a Chattanooga-Nashville leg higher on the list.

“What we’re doing is holding our place in line,” Mayor Littlefield said.

Residents probably won’t ride on maglev systems for at least another decade, officials estimate. When the discussion began, though, gasoline cost less than $1 per gallon. With it pushing toward $4 a gallon now, Mayor Littlefield said the project becomes “much more reasonable and important.”

“In the early days, we were talking about $50 tickets,” which seemed unreasonable at the time, he said. “If you go from Chattanooga to Hartsfield in your own car (now), you’re going to spend $50 and not have a pleasant trip.”

While Georgia and Tennessee officials agree on maglev, Mayor Littlefield, Sen. Mullis and other officials on both sides of the border stress that shared interest has nothing to do with water or any potential swap.

“They’re not related at all,” Mayor Littlefield said. “I still have congenial conversations in Georgia (about maglev), and I still have congenial talks about their water problems.”

HOW IT WORKS

A magnetic levitation train uses the repulsive forces of electromagnetic fields to “levitate” the train above the track. A magnetized coil runs along the track, or guideway, and repels magnets on the undercarriage of the train. A current is passed through and can push or pull the train along with no friction.

Source: NASA