Not a Good Time to Waste More Money

Illinois has the highest pension debt of any state in the union; a phenomenal $317 billion as of 2020. Overall, the state’s financial health is second only to California for being the worst in the nation.

What better time could there be to start planning construction of a high-speed rail line from Chicago to St. Louis? Considering that high-speed rail is one of the reasons why California is in worth financial shape than Illinois, building a new high-speed rail system would be enough to make Illinois number one! Not that any state should aspire to be the worst fiscal condition.

The state has apparently forgotten that it has already spent nearly $2 billion on a project to increase frequencies and speeds on the existing Chicago-St. Louis route. It would be useful to know if those improvements made any difference to ridership before spending a lot more on the corridor. But there is no way to tell because, despite the fact that it began the project in 2010, the trains today are no faster nor more frequent than they were before.
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It would also be useful to know whether the pandemic is going to depress Amtrak ridership by so much that spending more money on rail makes no sense at all. But this question didn’t seem to bother the legislature or governor when they agreed to plan the new project. All things considered, this is really not a good time for Illinois to spend more money on passenger rail.

This is almost classic for a state often considered to be one of the most corrupt states in the nation: spend a lot of money accomplishing nothing. It is also classic high-speed rail: spend a lot of money accomplishing you-know-what. It is almost as if spending the money, not sound transportation, is the real goal. But that can’t be, can it?

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About The Antiplanner

The Antiplanner is a forester and economist with more than fifty years of experience critiquing government land-use and transportation plans.

One Response to Not a Good Time to Waste More Money

  1. LazyReader says:

    I remember during Trump administration, Then California governor Gavin newsom bragged on media/twitter how his state had a budget surplus while US was growing deficit…..
    Of course, when you beg the federal government to pay for all your ambitious projects; you don’t spend your own money.

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