Republican Tea Party is Bad for Public Transportation Investment

[FayeforCure]

Compared with the cost of building new airports, widening interstates, relocating highway sound barriers, and erecting millions of parking lots, high-speed rail is a bargain.

The U.S. built its way out of the Depression by investing in massive projects such as the Empire State Building, the Hoover Dam and the Blue Ridge Parkway. High-speed rail is a time-proven way out of today’s economic morass.

(The penny wise and pound foolish) Tea Party Surge

Then came the Tea Party uprising of 2010, ushering in a crowd of anti-spending legislators. They immediately set out to derail the program, which they conflated with the supposedly socialist agenda the president was pushing with his health-care overhaul. Newly elected Tea Party governors in Florida, Wisconsin and Ohio returned a total of $3.6 billion in stimulus awards; Representative Paul Ryan of Wisconsin introduced an amendment to rescind $2.3 billion in rail funding that hadn’t yet been spent.

The protests were mostly grandstanding, and didn’t end up denting the deficit by a dime. Ryan’s bill stalled in the Senate, while the grants to Florida, Wisconsin and Ohio were redistributed to other states. Wisconsin’s governor, Scott Walker, even applied for an award from a later round of federal funding to upgrade rail between Chicago and Milwaukee.

This opposition may have been good politics, but it’s terrible policy for America. The arguments in favor of high- speed rail are just as compelling as they were in the early 1990s, when President George H.W. Bush’s administration first outlined the rail corridors.

Investment in rail is a step toward energy independence. Transportation accounts for almost three-quarters of U.S. oil consumption.

Shifting millions of passenger trips from cars and airplanes to electric-powered trains each year wouldn’t just relieve airport and highway congestion; it would also reduce the amount of oil we need to import from the Middle East. And because trains use a third less energy per passenger mile than cars do, they’re far less damaging to the environment.

The weak economy only increases the urgency. Interest rates are at historic lows, real estate values remain depressed, private sector spending is stagnant, and unemployment is stuck around 9 percent. There could hardly be a better time to borrow billions of dollars to buy up land for train rights-of-way and to create high-paying jobs in engineering, manufacturing and construction.

When Florida’s Republican governor, Rick Scott, returned $2.4 billion in federal rail funds last year, he also expunged about 17,000 construction jobs in one of the most depressed areas of his state. The Florida corridor, which could have linked Orlando to Tampa as early as 2014, was projected to return an operating profit of $10 million in its first year alone.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-12-19/riding-high-speed-rail-to-a-u-s-recovery-john-rosenthal.html

[Ocklawaha]

I read this opinion piece on the bloomberg site and found it refreshing, its about time that someone in our national business and government 'think tanks' stood up and explained this to the unwashed masses.

We need HSR to happen, I also like the idea of the two coasts in competition for the first, best and fastest. The concept of HrSR in California along the Union Pacific's San Joaquin Valley mainline would be a smashing success. It would change minds in Bakersfield, which would benefit immensely being at the foot of the mountains. If Bakersfield doesn't want on board the train at this point, I'd say we build from Fresno to Richmond in the Bay Area and at a distance of 187 miles, that's still a 2 hour 45 minute drive. Fresno is large enough to serve as a interim terminus and anchor a successful demonstration. Union Pacific would no doubt require a massive capacity increase or possibly a completely new set of tracks along their right-of-way.

The NEC is going to be much harder to pull off due to space restraints and a current right-of-way that curves and weaves in and out of the string of cities.

Perhaps after a successful demonstration, Florida could rethink it's flying fantasy train and build a system that makes sense. IE: Fully integrated with a greatly expanded conventional rail system, Amtrak and Commuter Rail at its terminal points, runs downtown to downtown, builds direct routes rather then a circuitous ones, and eliminate aimless routes terminating in places like Lake City. This done and I'd be a rabid supporter.

Let's hope he 's right about the 'Tea Party'  being a temporary bump in the road.

OCKLAWAHA

[FayeforCure]

I read this opinion piece on the bloomberg site and found it refreshing, its about time that someone in our national business and government 'think tanks' stood up and explained this to the unwashed masses.

We need HSR to happen, I also like the idea of the two coasts in competition for the first, best and fastest. The concept of HrSR in California along the Union Pacific's San Joaquin Valley mainline would be a smashing success. It would change minds in Bakersfield, which would benefit immensely being at the foot of the mountains. If Bakersfield doesn't want on board the train at this point, I'd say we build from Fresno to Richmond in the Bay Area and at a distance of 187 miles, that's still a 2 hour 45 minute drive. Fresno is large enough to serve as a interim terminus and anchor a successful demonstration. Union Pacific would no doubt require a massive capacity increase or possibly a completely new set of tracks along their right-of-way.

The NEC is going to be much harder to pull off due to space restraints and a current right-of-way that curves and weaves in and out of the string of cities.

Perhaps after a successful demonstration, Florida could rethink it's flying fantasy train and build a system that makes sense. IE: Fully integrated with a greatly expanded conventional rail system, Amtrak and Commuter Rail at its terminal points, runs downtown to downtown, builds direct routes rather then a circuitous ones, and eliminate aimless routes terminating in places like Lake City. This done and I'd be a rabid supporter.

Let's hope he 's right about the 'Tea Party'  being a temporary bump in the road.

OCKLAWAHA

Hi Ock, thanks for that wonderfully positive comment. As you know I favor true HSR over the incremental HrSR as frequently suggested by Republicans who are afraid of the most advanced mode of Rail transportation, which is in keeping with their advocated conservative baby steps approach.

As to the Tea Party being a temporary bump...........I'm not so sure. As much as the Tea Party is discrediting any remaining sense of rationale for the Republican Party, the Republican Party in general has becaome soooo much more regressive in recent years, that even without the Tea Party influence, obstructionist Republican efforts will continue on this front...............even if it's just to score points with their regressive base.

The only way to proceed is to vote Republicans "en masse" out of office.

[Ocklawaha]

There's an interesting saying in the political world, "Part of something is better than nothing at all." Being that we are probably going to have these obstructionist politicians with us for a long time, I think HrSR alone will make them cry uncle. At that point we can run rampant on development of a more technically advanced system.

California's is a good match for this because the flat valley and long distances combined would contribute to economy, ease of construction and an ability to pull this off quickly, IE: prove that HrSR can knock em dead in those long legged sprints, we would have an undeniable 'US' version of things to come. Not so much in Florida or the NEC.

Moving trains back up to 110 - 120 mph (something we had in abundance prior to a 1947 ICC decision - one likely heavily supported by the highway and airline industries) would be like smelling the coffee, the anticipation would drive this movement ahead on it's own momentum.

The other beneficial aspect of laying down these HrSR lines is the fact that HSR seems determined to miss many of the en route cities. In California, they are pushing an I-5 concept for the true HSR that cuts Fresno, Bakersfield, Modesto, Merced and Stockton out of the picture. With a start in HrSR on certain 'one stop' trains, people could rocket from LA to the base of the 'Grapevine' on HSR, then transfer to HrSR to move up the valley. I truly think once this concept of marriage between the modes is understood, we'll be on the downhill side of this fight.

In any case, it's great to have you on TEAM RAIL!

OCKLAWAHA

[FayeforCure]

There's an interesting saying in the political world, "Part of something is better than nothing at all." Being that we are probably going to have these obstructionist politicians with us for a long time, I think HrSR alone will make them cry uncle. At that point we can run rampant on development of a more technically advanced system.

You know how it is in politics too. Keep cutting here, cutting there, modifying here, modifying there (for the sake of so-called compromise with regressives)............and pretty soon there is nothing left of the project.

Often that political process of making perpetual changes that nobody is satisfied with, is used to derail the entire project.

Why can't we have the bold American vision we used to have........that put us at the cutting edge of technology on infrastructure in the past?

Why do we have to continously cater to the regressives among us? How much further behind must we fall before we can start ignoring the regressives and return to the progressive vision of America?

For the sake of expediting Rail we also need to be bold enough to vote Republicans out of office. If Pro-Rail groups try to coddle Republicans for the off chance that they might change their mind........they are wasting their time.

[Jdog]

...and in Michigan where an auto parts company might start dis-investing in Troy due to the recent Tea Party decision to scuttle mass transit progress.   


"Troy faces business backlash over transit center vote" (Detroit News, 12/20/2011). 
http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20111220/METRO02/112200423/1409/metro/Troy-faces-business-backlash-over-transit-center-vote

[FayeforCure]

Keep California's bullet train on track
Despite recent negative reviews by experts, in the long term the rail project still makes sense.
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California High Speed Rail Authority shows an artist's rendering of a high-speed train speeding along the California coast. (California High Speed Rail Authority / Associated Press)


California's proposed bullet train took another shot this week when an independent review panel issued a report concluding that the project wasn't financially viable. This followed negative reviews from the state auditor, the inspector general, the legislative analyst and the UC Berkeley Institute of Transportation Studies.

It's hard to argue with such a distinguished group of experts, whose logic is unassailable. No source of funding has been identified for the project beyond the initial segment in Central California, they pointed out. Moreover, the location of that segment poses grave risks; if it were built near Los Angeles or San Francisco, it would still have major public benefits even if no more money could be found to extend it, but a spur from Fresno to Bakersfield alone would be a costly train to nowhere.

The trouble with this kind of expert analysis, though, is that it seldom takes politics into account. Planners didn't have much choice but to place the initial segment where they did, because to qualify for federal stimulus money they had to guarantee that construction would begin quickly, and the Central Valley portion was thought to be the only part of the line that would be ready to meet Washington's deadline. No source of future funding, such as a higher gasoline tax, has been proposed because the economy is rotten and voters would be unlikely to approve it right now. So does that mean the whole thing should be scrapped?

The project is unquestionably risky, far more expensive than voters were told it would be when they approved nearly $10 billion in bonds to build it in 2008, and unlikely to be finished until years later than promoters had suggested. Polls show that the public is turning against it, and if new information emerges forecasting more serious troubles, even we might be persuaded to dump it. But we're not there yet, especially because the latest report, from the California High-Speed Rail Peer Review Group, doesn't tell us anything we didn't already know.

The project's current political ills remind us of the firestorm that erupted over L.A.'s subway, when sinkholes appeared on Hollywood Boulevard, construction mismanagement led to cost overruns, and voters became so disillusioned with subways that they approved a measure in 1998 forbidding the expenditure of county sales tax money to pay for them ever again. A decade later, they realized how shortsighted they had been; failure to complete a subway to the sea contributed to worsening gridlock on the Westside, and the subway had such clear benefits for riders that its construction troubles were largely forgotten. The result: County voters approved a new measure in 2008 to raise the sales tax to pay for, among other things, more subway construction.

The same phenomenon is already happening in Boston, home of the nation's most expensive transportation project. The Big Dig highway tunneling scheme was a political catastrophe a few years ago, what with mistakes that prompted severe delays and caused the price tag to skyrocket. Although the Big Dig is nobody's idea of the right way to build infrastructure, Bostonians are now reveling in a downtown park built on what used to be an expressway, and a tangled traffic mess has been unsnarled. In a few more years, the headaches will probably have been forgotten.

Worthwhile things seldom come without cost or sacrifice. That was as true in ancient times as it is now; pharaoh Sneferu, builder of Egypt's first pyramids, had to try three times before he got it right, with the first two either collapsing under their own weight or leaning precipitously. But who remembers that now? Not many people have heard of Sneferu, but his pyramids and those of his successors are wonders of the world.

The point is, you can take the long view or the short view toward the bullet train. The expert panels are taking a short view; we prefer the long. In the end, if Californians have the patience and the political will to stick with it, they'll have a project with extraordinary environmental, economic and transportation benefits. If they don't, they'll have worsening congestion, rising pollution and soaring transit expenses as gasoline prices continue their inevitable rise. We like the first vision of the future better.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/opinionla/la-ed-rail-20120107,0,5272840.story