Never in my long life did I dream that one day I would select a Cato Institute online blog publication to read and provide to others to read as well. However, Randal O'Toole has become one of my obligatory sources of insight and information about High-Speed Rail. So, there you are. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. Politics and High-Speed Rail make strange bedfellows. And so on.
Perhaps the best indicator that the federal government -- President Obama; Sect. of Transportation Ray LaHood -- have given up on this High-Speed Rail Fantasy Promotion Program, is that the phraseology has changed from "High-Speed Rail" to "High-Performance Rail." While the defining terms for 'high-speed rail' are clear, 'high-performance' sounds more like an advertisement for motor oil or tires; that is, it's actually meaningless. The evidence for that is in the projects that have been funded in this last go-around with ex-Florida HSR funds. The projects, except for California's, are Amtrak upgrades whereby the train speeds may increase several miles per hour.
While that's not a bad thing to have happen, it's certainly not the high-speed rail vision we've had dangling in front of our eyes for several years. It's just one more dimension of this political scam to which we have been subjected. We've been watching it unfold in California for many years. Now it's unravelling there due to mismanagement and lack of direction. Today's LAO report release certainly confirms that impression.
In the same way, due to the underlying dishonesties about what a high-speed rail project must look like, the US Department of Transportation has taken a few vague visionary words from the President, as well as a last minute injection of $8 billion additional dollars into the ARRA Stimulus Fund legislation, and whipped together a program for high-speed rail. A recipe for disaster. The underlying reality of this program was not hard to discern; creating a source of political pork to be earmarked for select congressional districts and states.
Randal nails it. What we may be watching is a reprise of Napoleon before his final days on the Island of St. Helena. The gradual demise of grand visions without substance and a devastated landscape, yet the required huge sacrifices and costs. Just perhaps in California, the Legislative Analyst Office report on HSR will be considered the coup de grace.
It should be.
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The Administration Concedes Defeat
Posted by Randal O'Toole
To sell his high-speed rail program, President Obama desperately needed a success story—a high-speed train operating during his administration that would awe the public and lead to a national demand for more such lines. That success story was going to be Florida’s Orlando-to-Tampa line, the only true high-speed route (as opposed to speeding up existing trains by 3 to 5 mph) that could have been completed during Obama’s term in office (assuming he is re-elected).
Anticipating that success, the administration drafted a proposal to use federal gasoline taxes and a “new energy tax” to fund $53 billion for more high-speed rail lines over the next six years. (The proposal also included $250 billion for highways, $120 billion for urban transit, $27 billion for “livability,” and $25 billion for an infrastructure bank.)
The chances of that happening died when Florida Governor Rick Scott decided to turn back the $2.4 billion in federal dollars dedicated to the Orlando-Tampa line. To maintain momentum behind high-speed rail, the administration could have given all of that money to California, the only other state proposing to build true high-speed rail.
Instead, the Department of Transportation gave nearly $1 billion of the $2.4 billion to Amtrak and states in the Northeast Corridor to replace worn out infrastructure and slightly speed up trains in that corridor, as well as connecting routes such as New Haven to Hartford and New York to Albany. Most of the rest of the money went to Midwestern states—Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, Michigan, and Missouri—to buy new trains, improve stations, and do engineering studies of a few corridors such as the vital Minneapolis-to-Duluth corridor. Trains going an average of 57 mph instead of 52 mph are not going to inspire the public to spend $53 billion more on high-speed rail.
The administration did give California $300 million for its high-speed rail program. But, with that grant, the state still has only about 10 percent of the $65 billion estimated cost of a San Francisco-to-Los Angeles line, and there is no more money in the till. If the $300 million is ever spent, it will be for a 220-mph train to nowhere in California’s Central Valley.
In essence, the administration has given up on high-speed rail. New York Times editorial writers haven’t figured that out yet, opining that Florida Governor Scott made a dreadful mistake when he rejected the rail money. In fact, as tax activist Doug Guetzloe told a Tampa newspaper, “Federally funded rail is like being given a brand new Maserati and then you have to pick up the gas and the insurance — forever. The car looks great, but the costs will kill you.”
The Times suggested that Florida taxpayers will resent Scott’s decision whenever they are stuck in traffic. But no one seriously believes that intercity rail will ever relieve traffic congestion, most of which is in cities, not between them. In its original application for high-speed rail funds, Florida’s DOT admitted that Orlando-to-Tampa traffic grows more every five years than all the cars the trains were expected to take off the road, so at best high-speed rail was a very expensive and temporary solution to congestion.
Outside of the Times editorial offices, most transportation experts agree that the President’s high-speed rail program is over and his draft transportation bill is dead on arrival. Taxpayers throughout the country should thank Scott (as well as Ohio Governor John Kasich and Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker) for saving them the hundreds of billions of dollars that Obama’s program would have eventually cost.
Randal O'Toole • May 10, 2011 @ 1:10 pm
