When Central Florida's HSR project got the axe, I mentioned it would trigger a chain of events that could sink other rail related projects as well. Here is a story out of Indian River County on the FEC/Amtrak proposal.
QuoteBy Jessica Tuggle
jtuggle@hometownnewsol.com
INDIAN RIVER COUNTY - While Gov. Rick Scott may not support high-speed rail in Florida and has dismissed federal funding for it, three Indian River County commissioners believe the transportation system would be best for Indian River County.
Commission Chairman Bob Solari proposed that the board send a new resolution to Tallahassee rescinding their previous support of the proposed Amtrak passenger rail service along Florida's east coast, but failed in a 2-3 vote.
Using the governor's term, Chairman Solari called the project a "boondoogle" and said he had grave concerns about the ongoing costs the project would need to keep going.
He said he has asked the state department of transportation for information about how the project would benefit taxpayers by turning a profit, but has not received any financial data in return.
"I consider this close to fraud on the taxpayer," Chairman Solari said.
Many high-speed rail presentations have been given to community groups in Indian River County and the Treasure Coast, outlining railway stops and station designs and connecting tracks, but information about the financing for the rest of the project's lifetime has not been explained.
Putting more debt on the backs of the people for an unsustainable project was not something Chairman Solari said he wanted to do.
"We can do the right thing, right now," he said.
Commissioner Gary Wheeler agreed with the chairman, but commissioners Joe Flescher, Peter O'Bryan and Wesley Davis did not.
Commissioner O'Bryan said he saw the rail as a huge economic driver for tourism.
Commissioner Flescher said the project has received a lot of positive input from the community and said transportation success is economic success.
Commissioner Davis voted against Chairman Solari's motion, but said he was open to hearing the presentation again at the next metropolitan planning organization meeting to hear the member's responses.
Kim DeLaney, growth management coordinator for the Treasure Coast Regional Planning Council and proponent of the rail system, said financing for capital improvements, such as the $118 million that would be used for the FEC high-speed rail project, are still in Gov. Scott's proposed budget.
The $118 million would cover the costs of upgrading the rails and adding track connections, pretty much all but the trains themselves, Ms. DeLaney said.
Amtrak officials are also reviewing their system for efficiency and may consider shouldering the project as well, she said.
To view agendas, or for more information about upcoming county government meetings, visit www.ircgov.com.
http://myhometownnews.net/index.php?id=79444
So how many projects does Chairman Solari demand turn a profit for the county?
I'd like a list.
QuoteTO THE HOMETOWN NEWS:
Was this new crop of ax swinging rail busters born stupid or did they have to go to school for that? How much "profit" came out of I-95 last year? How much "profit," did the county get out of each aircraft that arrived at the taxpayer supported airports? How expensive is it for the county to keep stretching pipe and wire to remote sprawled out development? Wouldn't a dense, well connected community be superior?
While I'd agree with Governor Scott that the High Speed Rail plan was horrible, rail between Orlando and Tampa along the CSX corridor with enough frequency to be convenient, would have been a game changer.
The facts are even if the FEC/AMTRAK rail line never carried a passenger the current numbers for new development around CONVENTIONAL passenger rail in the USA suggest the FEC/AMTRAK corridor would generate a 3.2 to 1 return on investment. For every dollar spent on the new trains, $3.20 in new tax paying real development would take place. The facts are that many rail projects are seeing a $14 to $1 return, so the actual application may produce a much higher yield.
Tell me Mr. Solari, how much money do you think the 31,962 Amtrak passengers that entrained or detrained at Winter Park spent last year? Don't you suppose that there might have been a hotel room or restaurant dinner or perhaps some theater tickets purchased? Frankly those passengers probably probably spent a hell of a lot more money locally then those that sped past on I-4. Consider the money in the pockets of the passengers at West Palm Beach 62,233? Jacksonville 70,728? Orlando 159,533? Or perhaps Sanford 244,252? (https://www.amtrak.com/pdf/factsheets/FLORIDA10.pdf)
Mr. Solari, a railroad is a national interstate system that won't need widening. If your buying into the Heritage Foundation, Hoover Institute, Wendell Cox or Robert Poole at the Reason Foundations "facts" about Amtrak subsidy's (which are direct and therefore visible). Let's add some other numbers that are not often published. Amtrak's entire budget accounts for less than one per cent of US Department of Transportation spending and for that investment we get a national passenger network that serves more cities then both of the largest airlines combined.
Between 1980-1989, total spending by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) was $54.9 billion. Of that amount, less that half, 45.1% came from user charges. The rest, 54.9% came from non-users through the general revenue fund. -(Source: Office of Management and Budget). When the Reagan Administration claimed that each rail passenger required a $35 subsidy, Amtrak President Graham Claytor countered that air passengers were subsidized at $42 each, including $9 for the air traffic control system. -(Source: US News and World Report, April 29, 1985).
Building a stronger intercity rail passenger system would create additional jobs, would be a catalyst for local development near railroad stations, and would help recreate a once thriving rail manufacturing industry. Meridian Mississippi, has seen tremendous development around it's Union Station, one of the highest ridership locations along the Washington-New Orleans route. Since it was constructed the private sector has developed more then $90 million dollars in what was once a dilapidated and underutilized part of the downtown core.
Mr. Solari, you are invited as are the readers, writers or editors of the Hometown News to visit us/me at (BOB aka: Ocklawaha) at metrojacksonville.com. The readers might benefit from the FEC report published at: http://www.metrojacksonville.com/article/2009-jul-jacksonville-to-miami-passenger-rail-returning
Robert W. Mann,
METROJACKSONVILLE
OCKLAWAHA
Quote from: Ocklawaha on March 18, 2011, 11:30:28 PM
QuoteTO THE HOMETOWN NEWS:
Was this new crop of ax swinging rail busters born stupid or did they have to go to school for that?
Thanks for sending that Op/Ed to the deaf ears of another Republican, Mr. Solari.
Yes, they will be deaf ears...........but we MUST speak out!
BTW,
they weren't "born stupid, nor did they go to school for that," they are simply following the calculated Republican anti-rail plank,..........which definitely will work well for them with the un-informed voter.And how CAN we expect the voter to be informed when they are working 2-3 low wage jobs just to keep their heads above water.
Where have all the well-paying jobs gone?
Answer: They have been killed by the anti-rail governors like Rick Scott and his cronies.
You forgot the Koch Brothers... :o ::)
Faye...while I agree that Republicans tend to be anti-rail...I am pretty annoyed right now with party politics...after all, it was the idea of "voting for a Democrat at all costs" that likely handed this city to a guy like Mike Hogan.
So...enough already!
Quote from: tufsu1 on March 24, 2011, 09:02:52 PM
Faye...while I agree that Republicans tend to be anti-rail...I am pretty annoyed right now with party politics...after all, it was the idea of "voting for a Democrat at all costs" that likely handed this city to a guy like Mike Hogan.
The "vote for a Democrat at all costs" pretty much never worked in Jax, or at least as long as I lived here. Seems more like "vote for a Republican at all costs" is what has been the MO in Duval county.
And to be clear I advocated for Audrey Moran, a Republican, even though I cannot even vote in Duval county.
Now that we unfortunately know that Mike Hogan is in the runoff, we MUST coalesce in support of Alvin Brown.
QuoteAlvin Brown: "First of all, I have helped create jobs through public-private partnerships during my tenure in the Clinton administration. That will be my No. 1 priority as mayor, fostering an environment that will create jobs and grow the Jacksonville economy. We need to target growth industries like the port - a $19 billion industry; aviation; health care; logistics; focus on small business access to capital and credit to allow for startups and growth. I’ve done that, and I’m the candidate best positioned to accomplish that for Jacksonville. I still have contacts throughout the nation that can help. I have worked with members of Congress on both sides of the aisle. I know the process and how to navigate through the agencies in Washington for grants and other federal funding that we’ll need to move the city forward. The next mayor must be a jobs mayor for this city to advance to the next level. In addition, I have a background in business, an MBA from Jacksonville University that I will put to good use running the city in a fiscally responsible manner."
http://www.news4jax.com/duval-county-elections/27297966/detail.html
http://jacksonville.com/news/metro/2011-03-24/story/alvin-browns-personal-touch-proved-decisive
QuoteBoth Corrigan and Baker said it will be important for Brown, especially, to reach out to supporters of the former candidates as he faces off against Hogan, who has a large base.
“He has to first reach out to unite all Democrats behind him, then turn his attention to independents and moderate Republicans who voted for Mullaney and Moran,†said Baker.
http://www.jaxdailyrecord.com/showstory.php?Story_id=533215
Or alternately the prevailing "vote for a Republican at all costs" is going to get us a very bad Republican indeed. Do we really need more damage done than what Rick Scott is already doing to our state?
Faye...lots of Republicans crossed over and voted for Alex Sink...Scott won because many Dems stayed home
here in Jax, lots of Dems (like me) supported Audrey...she lost because the Dems had a great ground game and Alvin got the votes....in order for Alvin to win, he needs all of Audrey's supporters and more.
Now imagine what could have been if the Dems had a decent ground game in Jax. and around the state last November!
Yeah, and a lot of Dems voted for Scott, because they believed the right-wing BS machine that filled the airwaves and the anti-Dem chain-mails that filled their inboxes.
Quote from: tufsu1 on March 24, 2011, 10:13:24 PM
Faye...lots of Republicans crossed over and voted for Alex Sink...Scott won because many Dems stayed home
Alex Sink had more cross-over voting than most Dems ever get from Republicans.
That's because Republicans rarely engage in cross-over voting ( they are more ideologically hardened and "believe" is stronger than reason).
The real trends have been the crossover of Dems having voted Republican (middleman has it right), Trends in Florida:
Quoterelative Democratic performance has declined as Republican performance has increased.
http://www.failureisimpossible.com/ElectionStudies/Trends.htm
Even the one in four Floridians who are not registered with either the Republican party or the Democratic party tend to vote Republican ( many of those are libertarians).
The other thing that works against Democrats in Florida is gerrymandering and the principle of the Status Quo bias. You might be interested in reading some of the reasons we are hitting our collective heads against a brick wall when it comes to changing people's minds about rail policy:
QuoteWhy do we need nudges?
Freedom of choice is best, right? Many economists (and some of the engineers I know) like to say that we don’t know better than the user/chooser, that we should present all options to people, and let them choose. This makes the false assumption that almost all people, almost all of the time, make choices that are in their best interest, or at least are better than choices someone else would make for them.
There is no such thing as a nudge-less choice.
SOMETHING is always influencing your choices. People are influenced by small factors in the design of an experience, so even if you don’t consciously design your choice architecture, it is still there, affecting the actions of the choosers.
When do we especially need nudges?
This happens predictably in the following scenarios:
- When we see the benefits now, costs later.
- When encountering decisions we make infrequently: We get better at everything through practice.
- When feedback is not immediate.
- When it is hard to imagine the possible outcomes.
3 of the main ways to predict what people will do.
1. We have predictable mental biases.
Anchoring Bias: We are heavily biased by where we start.
Availability Bias: We overestimate the likelihood of events we can easily remember. ?
Representativeness Bias: We someetimes see patterns where there are none.
Unrealistic Optimism: Almost all of us think we are better than average.
Loss Aversion: We are happy when we gain something, but twice as unhappy when we lose it.
Status Quo Bias: We rarely overcome inertia.
Framing Bias: “10 out of 100 die.†vs. “90 out of 100 are cured.â€
Priming Bias: What we see or hear immediately before a choice affects how we behave.
2. We predictably succumb to temptation.
The Spock-Homer empathy gap: Your planner does not fully appreciate how much your behaviors are altered when you are under the influence of temptation. Your planner does not fully appreciate how much your behaviors are altered when you are under the influence of temptation.
You also have a third system... Mindless choosing: your autopilot just continues doing what it’s used to - driving the same route, or continuing to eat when there’s food in front of you.
3. We predictably follow the herd.
We like to conform. This is at the root of speculative bubbles, internet memes, and fads. One phenomenon that drives us to conform is the “spotlight effect,†which makes us feel like people are paying closer attention to us--especially when we’re not conforming--than they really are. (I have a feeling this dude with the emover thinks everyone is paying attention to him.
One particularly interesting ramification of the herd behavior is its effect on popularity lists. One experiment offered different groups of people the same set of downloadable mp3s with visible popularity data. In the end, the most popular songs for each group were not predictable and were not similar from group to group, except that they were lucky and picked by the first users of the system.
So how can we help our Spock defeat our Homer?
Incentives: e.g. a social program that gives teen moms a dollar a day every day that they are not pregnant.
Understand “mappingsâ€: How we translate data about an option into what it actually means for us, like translating kilowatts of energy into dollars on the electricity bill, or translating megapixels to maximum print size.
Defaults: Not new to us - defaults are POWERFUL because of the Status Quo bias. You can default to opt-in, opt-out, or mandatory choice (which is like having yes/no radio buttons with nothing selected).
Give Feedback
Expect Error
Structure Complex Choices: The paradox of choice is reduced if options are grouped. Or use strategies like “collaborative filtering†to reduce options presented.
To summarize: Nudges are about designing choices to try to help people make choices more with their rational mind (their inner Spock) and less with their gut. There are certain situations: Benefits now, cost later; decisions we have to make infrequently, places where the feedback isn’t immediate or the outcome is hard to imagine, where the Homer in us has the upper hand, and we can use our knowledge of our predictable psychology in these ways mentioned: incentives, understanding mappings, defaults, giving feedback, and structuring complex
http://bighow.com/news/decison-making-lessons-from-nudge
I highly doubt many true Democrats (not dixiecrats) voted for Rick Scott
Quotelots of Republicans crossed over and voted for Alex Sink
Ick, no way!
Quote from: BridgeTroll on March 24, 2011, 07:18:49 PM
You forgot the Koch Brothers... :o ::)
Ah, mentioning the forces behind the conservative crazyness, their anti-union and anti-rail planks, seems to evoke a visceral response just like what happened to a professor in Wisconsin when he questioned the forces behind the Wisconsin GOP destructive policies:
QuoteA Shabby Crusade in WisconsinPublished: March 25, 2011
The latest technique used by conservatives to silence liberal academics is to demand copies of e-mails and other documents. Attorney General Kenneth Cuccinelli of Virginia tried it last year with a climate-change scientist, and now the Wisconsin Republican Party is doing it to a distinguished historian who dared to criticize the state’s new union-busting law. These demands not only abuse academic freedom, but make the instigators look like petty and medieval inquisitors.
Related
Wisconsin Professor’s E-Mails Are Target of G.O.P. Records Request (March 26, 2011)
Op-Ed Contributor: Wisconsin’s Radical Break (March 22, 2011) The historian, William Cronon, is the Frederick Jackson Turner and Vilas research professor of history, geography and environmental studies at the University of Wisconsin, and was recently elected president of the American Historical Association. Earlier this month, he was asked to write an Op-Ed article for The Times on the historical context of Gov. Scott Walker’s effort to strip public-employee unions of bargaining rights. While researching the subject, he posted on his blog several critical observations about the powerful network of conservatives working to undermine union rights and disenfranchise Democratic voters in many states.
In particular, he pointed to the American Legislative Exchange Council, a conservative group backed by business interests that circulates draft legislation in every state capital, much of it similar to the Wisconsin law, and all of it unmatched by the left. Two days later, the state Republican Party filed a freedom-of-information request with the university, demanding all of his e-mails containing the words “Republican,†“Scott Walker,†“union,†“rally,†and other such incendiary terms. (The Op-Ed article appeared five days after that.)
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/28/opinion/28mon3.html?_r=1&ref=opinion
Florida will be next.
Knowing who the puppet masters are is importan t in a Democracy, expecially as an issue advocate!!!!
Quote from: mtraininjax on March 25, 2011, 11:28:11 AM
Quotelots of Republicans crossed over and voted for Alex Sink
Ick, no way!
Hmmm yeah, the idea of free-thinking Republicans might seem a little obnoxious to the Tea Party sort.
Quote from: tufsu1 on March 25, 2011, 09:38:49 AM
I highly doubt many true Democrats (not dixiecrats) voted for Rick Scott
True, Dems seem to adhere to the fairness doctrine: rewarding a crook who ripped off seniors is not our cup of tea.
QuoteThe Fairness Doctrine was a policy of the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC), introduced in 1949, that required the holders of broadcast licenses to both present controversial issues of public importance and to do so in a manner that was, in the Commission's view, honest, equitable and balanced. The 1949 Commission Report served as the foundation for the Fairness Doctrine since it had previously established two more forms of regulation onto broadcasters.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairness_Doctrine
Quote from: buckethead on March 27, 2011, 03:02:14 PM
QuoteThe Fairness Doctrine was a policy of the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC), introduced in 1949, that required the holders of broadcast licenses to both present controversial issues of public importance and to do so in a manner that was, in the Commission's view, honest, equitable and balanced. The 1949 Commission Report served as the foundation for the Fairness Doctrine since it had previously established two more forms of regulation onto broadcasters.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairness_Doctrine
Yeah, one of those crucial moments in history that allowed opinion to pass for news and that led to the right wing propaganda radio stations to flourish (they didn't have to allow an opposing view anymore):
QuoteFCC Chairman Mark S. Fowler, a communications attorney who had served on Ronald Reagan's presidential campaign staff in 1976 and 1980, was appointed by Reagan to head the FCC.[10] The commission began to repeal parts of the Fairness Doctrine, announcing in 1985 that the doctrine hurt the public interest and violated free speech rights guaranteed by the First Amendment.
That was the beginning of a rabid right wing shift in American politics, and the myth that America is a right of center nation.