When Ohio and Wisconsin elected governors who promised to cancel those states’ high-speed rail projects, Secretary of Immobility Ray LaHood redistributed the federal grants to those projects to other states (including $342 million to Florida) before the new governors even took office. Now that Florida has also cancelled its high-speed rail project, LaHood is being a little more careful with where he spends the freed-up dollars.
Instead of arbitrarily handing out the money to other states, the Federal Railroad Administration has announced a new competitive grantmaking process. As faithful Antiplanner ally Wendell Cox writes, the FRA has some very strict requirements in the grants.
First, applicants must show that they can pay for any cost overruns (pages 9 and 12). Second, they must show that they can pay any operating subsidies (page 31). Third, they must show they can maintain the facilities and operations for up to 20 years (page 41). The grant also stipulates that states that terminate rail service before 20 years must repay the federal government a pro-rated share of the grants used to start the service (page 41).
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We also know that one way to avoid having to prove that you can afford to operate and maintain a rail project is to overestimate the revenues. Florida projected that its line would carry as many or more passengers as Amtrak’s Acela, which serves a corridor that has more than 10 times as many residents. Although the FRA requires that projections of revenues and costs be “reasonable,” it apparently does not rigorously enforce that requirement.
The real danger for a state applying for funds, then, is that it will not have the money needed to maintain the facilities for 20 years. Of course, that will be the problem of future state officials, not the ones writing the applications today, so they won’t worry about it too much. Those future officials can always say, “It is less expensive to keep funding this foolish project than to give the feds their money back.”
No doubt there will be plenty of applicants for the money–almost everyone except a few weird governors and Tea Party activists wants free money. But, as the New York Times has observed, the wind has certainly been taken out of the metaphorical sails of Obama’s high-speed rail program.
Governor Scott used the cost overrun, operating subsidy, maintenance costs and grant repayment provisions as reasons why HSR was a bad idea for Florida. Secretary LaHood and other politicians, including Senator Nelson, claimed that Governor Scott was wrong and that none of those reasons was valid. Unfortunately the press never fact checked who was more accurate so it made Gov. Scott look foolish for turning down the money.
The Atlantic had a great post the other day about HSR entitled When Rail Becomes Ridiculous.
Quoting the Atlantic article:
So basically, the feds wanted to spend $2.6 billion, plus any cost overruns or operating costs, to put in a train for which there was no evident demand. Why? Because they didn’t have any better options, and they wanted to build a train. The California High Speed Rail project, following similarly sound reasoning, is going to start out in California’s not-very-populous Central Valley, because . . . it’s easier to get the right of way. Never mind that there aren’t any, like, passengers.
Thanks for the link CP. I’ve noticed the ROW issues are a big part of transportation projects. Look at Austin. We have a train to nowhere and a toll road to nowhere. The train was built on an existing ROW so there was no choice in route design. The way Texas builds highways (2x the footprint of highways in my home state but no extra capacity…) large swath of open land are required, hence nowhere.
I think the crux of that quote is “Because they didn’t have any better options, and they wanted to build a train.” I’m not real familiar wi CA, but it seems that when it comes to these BIG new transportation projects, regardless of mode, viability is not something that is considered.
This reallocation process almost makes one wish that they bring back Congressional earmarks.
I just want to know, does the Antiplanner have any information regarding the cost effectivness regarding Maryland’s MARC trains or Baltimore’s Light rail?
LazyReader, O’Toole isn’t going to give you the real numbers, so you might as well look else where.
LazyReader, I’ll give you a freebie, look at where the Autoplanner has “Loyal Oppents” listed, ask the guy at VTPI, he’ll give the CORRECT data.
Though don’t worry if public transit doesn’t make money, neither do roads.
Amtrak CEO ditches broken train to travel by car to ribbon cutting of Wilmington’s Joe Biden station
Today’s the big day for Amtrak’s Wilmington train station. It is being renamed in honor of Vice President and former Delaware Senator Joe Biden following major renovations made possible with stimulus funds.
One problem: the CEO of Amtrak got stuck on the train.
“Amtrak CEO abandoned his own train to make ribbon cutting ceremony for Joe Biden station in Wilmington,†Falcone reported. “When I told Amtrak CEO Joe Boardman it was a bad sign he was ditching the stranded Acela, he chuckled.â€
Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2011/03/19/amtrak-ceo-ditches-broken-train-to-travel-by-car-to-ribbon-cutting-of-wilmingtons-joe-biden-station/#ixzz1HGglZdX9
I just want to know, does the Antiplanner have any information regarding the cost effectivness regarding Maryland’s MARC trains or Baltimore’s Light rail?
If you’re interested, you can get the data to play with yourself. Just click on the “National Transit Database” link on the right column of this page, under “useful data”. You can download the data from that site.
If these guys won’t take the money, maybe Dan and Highwayman would. I’m sure Aurora could use some high speed rail. Plus, building roads never clears congestion, no matter how many you build, or how big you build them. But one, single high speed rail line will carry all the people in a large metro area.
There isn’t a lack of road space, there’s a lack of properly charging for it!