The big transportation news while the Antiplanner was in Japan was that New Jersey’s Governor Chris Christie cancelled a major rail construction project: a planned new tunnel under the Hudson River. Spurred by cost overruns, Christie said “far more than New Jersey taxpayers can afford and the only prudent move is to end this project.” The tunnel was originally projected to cost $5 billion, but the latest estimates are as high as $14 billion.
Soon after the announcement, Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood met with Christie to twist his arm “present a number of options” to keep the tunnel project alive. Christie agreed to revisit the decision, though he remains painfully aware that the project is ruinously expensive for New Jersey.
Christie’s decision, assuming it is sustained, raises an intriguing question: what other raildoggles are susceptible to similar cancellation by a single official such as a governor or mayor? This is especially pertinent as many fiscally conservative candidates are likely to take office in January.
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One obvious possibility is the Milwaukee-to-Madison moderate-speed rail project. Scott Walker, the Republican candidate for governor, has promised to cancel the project when he takes office. (The current governor is busy letting as many contracts as possible to make cancellation infeasible.)
Closer to the Antiplanner’s home, it is remotely possible that the governor of Oregon could cancel the $1.5 billion Portland-to-Milwaukie light-rail project. This project depends on $400 million in state lottery funds, and the governor might be able to veto any further expenditure of those funds. However, it would probably require concurrence of the state legislature, and it isn’t clear that the Republican candidate for Oregon’s governor even opposes the project.
Any other candidates?
The ARC project only became a boondoggle over time, the problem was that the original plan for a new link into Penn Station was dropped in favor of a deeper stub station.
What NJT was pushing in the end couldn’t be used by Amtrak or even the LIRR and would make it harder to eventually connect with Grand Central. Public transit advocates do want to get the most bang from a buck after all!
What Christie really did was just to gain favor amongst Teabaggers, because there would have been too much of a political back lash for him from raising gas taxes in NJ.
In Ohio, John Kasich promises to cancel the 3C Snail Rail Boondoggle if elected governor.
Ted Strickland got $400 million in stimulus money to run 39 MPH deisel trains on existing freight tracks between Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati. No capital match required, but operating expenses are going to eat us alive.
Kasich & Strickland were about even in the polls for nearly a year, until Kasich announced his intention to kill the 3C. Then he shot up to a significant lead and stayed there.
Candidates nationwide can ride anti-rail sentiment to electoral success. IF they have the stones not to cave-in to pressure from freeloading transit parasites.
AIUI, the win-the-race-to-the-bottom folks, auto dependency advocates, wasters of already-sunk costs, fossil fuel lobby and those lacking vision will be disappointed as the poor decision was possibly reversed according to Lautenberg terminology.
So Randal, you “forgot” to mention this wrinkle in all the cheering.
DS
Dan,
Apparently, you “forgot” to read the second paragraph of my post.
‘Revisit’ NE ‘reversed’.
DS
What’s important is that Christie broke the taboo against cancelling projects just because some money was already invested. Too often project planners and advocates know going in their estimates are low but there are no consequences for “revising” costs and making the projects much more expensive than originally sold to the public.
More of these scams need to be cancelled in order to restore order. Hard caps on costs need to be adhered to and public officials who intentionally mislead should pay a high price. It’s become too common to just dupe the taxpayer, pay off cronies with contracts, and laugh all the way into public retirement.
COAST said: Candidates nationwide can ride anti-rail sentiment to electoral success. IF they have the stones not to cave-in to pressure from freeloading transit parasites.
THWM: Sorry to hit you with reality, though transit uses pay taxes too!
stevenplunk said:
What’s important is that Christie broke the taboo against cancelling projects just because some money was already invested. Too often project planners and advocates know going in their estimates are low but there are no consequences for “revising†costs and making the projects much more expensive than originally sold to the public.
More of these scams need to be cancelled in order to restore order. Hard caps on costs need to be adhered to and public officials who intentionally mislead should pay a high price. It’s become too common to just dupe the taxpayer, pay off cronies with contracts, and laugh all the way into public retirement.
THWM: ARC was a mess, though that was because the goal posts were moved around.
Christie didn’t cancel it for the right reasons, he canceled out of crooked teabagger spite!
The $6-14 billion will go to more value when spent on just about anything else.
With transit users being <4% of the population, they can be estimated to pay <2% of taxes, since, on avg they earn less money.
Why should general taxes pay for anything that only goes to <4% of the population? That's ridiculous. That's the worst program; about any other program goes to more people.
Maybe rail will soon be obsolete:
Google Testing Self-Driving Cars.
Scott said:
The $6-14 billion will go to more value when spent on just about anything else.
With transit users being <4% of the population, they can be estimated to pay <2% of taxes, since, on avg they earn less money.
Why should general taxes pay for anything that only goes to <4% of the population? That's ridiculous. That's the worst program; about any other program goes to more people.
THWM: I'm not surprised, you teabaggers are evil people!
Highman,
Creating worthwhile valuable uses is evil?
Oh good one; another sarcastic reversism.
Just like you freely taking a sack of balls on your chin, so you say.
Also: stealing from many, for the very expensive benefit of a few, is good policy.
Hey, the avg of the $12 billion bridge, among the filers who pay Federal Income Tax, is $160, for those to take a minute trip under water.
Why should others be charged for that trip?
Only $160? Well, can every little group, like those tunnel commuters, charge the rest, for stuff?
Theft, deliberately charging others & avoiding responsibility, is not evil, right.
Referring to intimate acts, is just your personal perversion.
Oh, hman, since your math is deficient, the capital cost of that bridge is about $20,000 per regular commuter.
Would it be fair for all people to have transport projects like that, for just 1 route?
Unfortunately, there are other projects, of that waste & very low value-per-dollar.
Yet again @Highwayan has me thinking “those posts are just generated by some undergrads sophomore AI class project”
Scott said: Would it be fair for all people to have transport projects like that, for just 1 route?
THWM: You don’t even know what you are writing about!
Are we in discussion on Santa Claws making tracks?
Or is that every group of 500,000 commuters should have $10 billion for several miles of tunnel?
Such a valuable deal.
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