Progressive Railroading, which has never met a passenger train subsidy it didn’t like, claims that, after six years and $1.3 billion, work on moderate-speed rail service between Chicago and St. Louis is “nearing the finish line.” Since the trains will go a maximum of 110 miles per hour, it isn’t true high-speed rail; Progressive Railroading calls it “higher-speed rail” while the Antiplanner prefers the term “moderate-speed rail.”
It turns out that Illinois is also approaching “the finish line” at moderate speeds. After nearly six years of work, Illinois has trains running at 110 mph on only one 15-mile segment of the 284-mile trip. The “final phases” of the project will be completed “within the next few years,” the magazine says vaguely.
When it is done, trains that currently take 5 hours 20 minutes will finish the trip in “about” 4 hours 30 minutes, for an average speed of 63 mph. Google maps says people can drive the distance in 4 hours 20 minutes, so the train will still take more time than driving. Plus, of course, the train probably won’t go where most people want to go as there just aren’t that many businesses or residences within walking distance of either Chicago Union Station or St. Louis’ Amtrak station. If you are driving alone, the $27 cost of an Amtrak ticket is enough to pay the marginal costs of driving; if you have some passengers, you’ll save money even counting all the costs of driving.
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The train might compete with air service, at least on price. The airline trip takes a bit more than an hour and currently costs about four times as much as Amtrak (half of whose costs are subsidized). But if you are price sensitive, Megabus takes 6 hours and its most-expensive tickets are a bit more than half Amtrak’s lowest fare.
There aren’t many businesses within walking distance of Chicago’s Union Station? I guess the Sears Tower (can’t call it anything else) right across the river doesn’t count. Or Boeing’s corporate HQ right down the street. Or all the insurance companies & brokers in the building next door. No, not a lot of jobs in the heart of downtown Chicago.
And who is commuting from St Louis to work at any of those places?
Yeah, I had the same thought. Downtown Chicago is incredibly bustling. Also, you need to consider the costs of parking in Downtown Chicago when you’re comparing. I occasionally have business in Downtown Chicago and I almost never drive there from Milwaukee – I know a lot of people who do the same thing. Not sure if the same is true in St. Louis, but some of your assumptions here aren’t good.
You folks are missing the point. This boondoggle is putting us another $1,300,000,000 farther in debt just to shave a minimal amount of time off a train trip from St. Lewis to Chicago. The point is that we are nearly $19,000,000,000,000 dollars in federal debt and every tax payer is $156,000 in federal debt right now.
We must stop this kind of out of control government spending and every single penny counts. Money from the feds is not manna from heaven. It’s hard cold debt that we are on the hook to pay back with interest. Our very freedom and prosperity are at stake for the debt bomb looms and the debt bomb is not a myth or a religion you can choose to believe in or not. It is a mathematical fact we must deal with.
What’s this “we” and “us” you speak of, P.O. Native?
Repudiate the debt: “? And why should we, struggling American citizens of today, be bound by debts created by a past ruling elite who contracted these debts at our expense? One of the cogent arguments against paying blacks “reparations” for past slavery is that we, the living, were not slaveholders. Similarly, we the living did not contract for either the past or the present debts incurred by the politicians and bureaucrats in Washington.”
Add me to the list of people who don’t like the term “higher speed rail” when referring to trains that go slightly faster than “regular” trains. The common usage is “high,” “higher,” “highest.” So why is “higher speed rail” slower than “high speed rail?”
Calling the St. Louis – Chicago trains “higher” speed rail is fundamentally dishonest and contributes to public skepticism towards rail projects.
“There aren’t many businesses within walking distance of Chicago’s Union Station? ”
I think the antiplanner just decides to throw in some nonsense in every post to see if we’re paying attention.
Frank,
exactly.
The national debt was never intended to be paid off from the beginning, and WILL be repudiated sooner or later.
Anyone else notice that the Portland to Milwaukie boondoggle light rail was $200 million a mile and this boondoggle was $200 million a year, so far?
By “We” and “Us” I mean American citizens and tax payers. American citizens have put into office people who have been borrowing and spending public money in an out of control fashion for a long time and we are indeed on the hook for every penny and the feds pay interest on it all the time. These politicians who promise free stuff are doing more harm than good, but it sells, wins votes and help keep them in their cushy jobs. If you think they care about you, you need to think again.
“By “We” and “Us” I mean American citizens and tax payers.”
You mean the people who are robbed of their production by the government? When something has been taken by force, those who have the stolen property control it. It’s an illusion to think
taxpayersvictims of theft retain any control of their stolen property. Guy steals my laptop and I think I can tell him not to sell it for cash or not to watch nasty videos on it? Riiiiiiight.“American citizens have put into office people who have been borrowing and spending public money in an out of control fashion for a long time”
SOME American citizens. A minority of American citizens. And those who actually showed up to Democratically steal from others didn’t have any real choices: Statism or statism.
“and we are indeed on the hook for every penny”
No way. I’m not. You’re not. No one is. The only way “we” are on the hook for it (and more likely your children are on the hook for it) is if taxes are raised. In the future. Not going to happen. Dollar devaluation will continue until the house of cards falls.
Repudiate the debt!
Repudiate the debt!
And it shall be! Let me be clear (Frank already knows this). There is ZERO, nada, zilch chance for the debt to ever be repaid (and as Frank noted, forcing taxpayers to help repay it is not moral anyway). Taxes would have to go up by 300 or 400 percent to even come close to starting to pay off the debt. It won’t happen!
There is no free lunch. Public debt is just that, public debt. It will not just go away untill it is paid off. In the mean time we do and will continue to pay interest on every penny of it. Every penny our government has is real money and each penny has come from us through taxes, fees, fines or was borrowed to be paid back by us through taxes fees or fines. There is no magic wand to repudiate public debt, that’s why it matters. Nothing is free.
When you have a hole that needs to be filled in the first thing the have to do is make the man digging the hole stop digging. That’s hard to do when digging to hole is making him rich. He will come up with all kinds of reasons to keep digging even when your whole house is about to fall into the hole.