One more nail in the high-speed rail coffin: The House of Representatives voted to redirect $833 million from high-speed rail to Midwest flood relief. This is money that the Department of Transportation had awarded to Amtrak and Northeast Corridor states in May, but since Secretary Ray LaHood hasn’t actually signed the checks yet, Congress can take it back.
So now the race is on: New Jersey Senators Lautenberg and Menendez and Representative Rodney Frelinghausen want LaHood to release the funds before the Senate can vote on the House bill. If he does, Congress will have to look elsewhere for funds for flood relief. If the Senate passes the bill first, then the Northeast’s loss is the Midwest’s gain.
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Either way, it is clear that high-speed rail is dead, at least as long as the House is run by Tea Party fiscal conservatives. Of course, there was a time when the president would have vetoed a bill for flood relief on the grounds that “I can find no warrant for such an appropriation in the Constitution; and I do not believe that the power and duty of the General Government ought to be extended to the relief of individual suffering which is in no manner properly related to the public service or benefit.”
Yes! Now, I agree that Congress shouldn’t meddle with flood relief and the Prez should veto such a bill, but better flood relief than high speed rail, I say. $800 million for flood relief will provide help to beleaguered citizens, 800 million for high speed rail will provide a bottomless pit for money to disappear in over decades.
Randall:
Its amazing isn’t it?
A constitutional activity undertaken by our government since 1803 – the funding of the construction of transportation infrastructure – is attacked by so-called “Constitutionalist” “Conservatives”, while an unconstitutional activity – government handouts for disaster relief, is supported.
Well, the Constitution aside (it’s not really the Best-Piece-Of-Paper-In-The-World it’s presumed to be), I’d rather fund 800 million for disaster relief rather than spend it on creating a disaster (another wasteful, useless high speed rail system).
It doesn’t really matter. We’ll probably end up paying for both programs, since both have large constituencies and logrolling is the norm in Congress, and borrowing the money to finance them.
A constitutional activity undertaken by our government since 1803 – the funding of the construction of transportation infrastructure – is attacked by so-called “Constitutionalist†“Conservativesâ€, while an unconstitutional activity – government handouts for disaster relief, is supported.
If you really think the federal government is still within its constitutional bounds when it comes to transportation programs, you should probably revisit that document.
MJ:
If you really think the federal government is still within its constitutional bounds when it comes to transportation programs, you should probably revisit that document.
Have you ever read Gibbons vs. Ogden? And do you understand what the power to establish Post Roads confers?
Post roads, not post rail, if you want to use that example to support building of pork rail. Amtrak doesn’t carry mail!
metrosucks:
39 USC 5003
The following are post roads:
(1) the waters of the United States, during the time the mail
is carried thereon;
(2) railroads or parts of railroads and air routes in
operation;
(3) canals, during the time the mail is carried thereon;
(4) public roads, highways, and toll roads during the time the
mail is carried thereon; and
(5) letter-carrier routes established for the collection and
delivery of mail.
Railroads and air routes are post roads regardless of the carriage of mails and are always to be available to carry mail should the government so choose. Railroads were designated as permanent post roads in 1838: “Sec. 2. And be it further enacted, That each and every railroad within the limited of the United States which now is, or hereafter may be made and completed, shall be a post route.”
Letter carriers also have a right of free passage on all forms of public transportation when delivering mail or going to and from work.
39USC 5007
(a) Each person or carrier engaged in the transportation of mail shall carry on any vessel, train, motor vehicle, or aircraft he operates, upon exhibiting their credentials and without extra charge therefor, persons on duty in charge of the mails or when traveling to and from such duty.
I posted here not long ago the true spirit of the Founding Fathers in this regard: Federalist Papers (No. 42) “[the] power of establishing post-roads must, in every view, be a harmless power; and may, perhaps, by judicious management, become productive of great public conveniency. Nothing, which tends to facilitate the intercourse between the states, can be deemed unworthy of the public care.”
The facilitation of public interourse: commmunication, commerce, navigation, and travel between the states is “worthy of public care” and “judicious management” by the US Government.
The loony anti-rail (and frankly anti-transportation and also anti-Post Office) movement is simply completely unhinged from the entire basis upon which this country was founded as one nation.
Hey Andrew, stop whining. Being anti-rail is being anti-waste. The idea that anti-rail is anti-transportation is laughable. Passenger rail doesn’t carry mail. Neither do boats, at least in the US. Stop quoting 300 year old writing to justify passenger rail boondoggles! Is that what the rail lunatics’ argument has come down to? Justifying boondoggles based on dubious phrases from the Constitution? Now we know how Congress and the Senate work!
Andrew is right, Metrosuck you’re just crooked & a hypocrite.
Amtrak trains can transport mail, just as well as they transport automobiles & people.
Cry all you want highwayman, rail is on its way out. Period.
Metrosucks, rail has taken hits, due to dirty politics, not money.
The road in front of your home doesn’t exist on a profit or loss basis for it’s continued existance.
Metrosucks, you want capitalism for rail, but you want communism/socialism for roads.
You & O’Toole want transport policy based on a false premise, that is why you are hypocrites & frauds!
No, you still don’t get it. Which is pretty understandable, given that you’ve got a selfish desire to have taxpayers pay for something you wish to selfishly use, but won’t benefit most people in the US.
So let me run over this again. Roads don’t exist on a profit or loss basis, duh. That is a straw man argument. They simply have to pay for themselves. And they largely do, across the spectrum of road types & sizes. Rail does not pay for itself, and it in fact requires large subsidies from road users to exist. It can’t even pay for its operating costs, much less its capital costs.
So get lost, idiot.
Metrosucks that’s bullshit.
Even if there were no cars there would still be roads.
metrosucks:
How does my road in front of my house pay for itself? As near as I can tell, not only do I own half of it outright with the road sitting on an easement, but my property taxes are what actually pays for it.
Your property taxes pay for local roads (sometimes, not always), schools, social services, and fire/police/libraries/etc. That’s a lot of services for a one-time bill. Every service you get gets to you by the road in front of your house. When was the last time the streetcar or Amtrak delivered your mail or your Amazon purchase.
But if you and highwayman hate the streets in front of your houses so much, by all means, tear out your half of it and forbid any auto or street dependent businesses (meaning, every one of them) from serving you. Streets are multiple use. Not only can freight and passengers use them, but also buses, a cheaper, more reasonable & flexible form of transit. But of course it’s not glitzy like shiny streetcars and $20 million light rail stations.
To conclude this public service announcement, you’d starve to death in short order without the street in front of your house. But you’d never miss Amtrak, the streetcar, or light rail. Says something about how useful the pork rail really is.
metrosucks:
The library doesn’t come via my road. I don’t get social services. The Post Office around Philadelphia does use public transit some times to help mailmen deliver the mail. Although the mail is delivered via little mail truck at my house, its pretty silly as the mailman could walk as fast as he is driving house to house – the post office is three blocks away and every street has nice sidewalks.
The streetcar near my house which used to deliver goods to town was ripped up by National City Lines to provide “flexible” buses which 60 years later still use exactly the same route and so did not need any route flexibility, and to help the State “improve” the road into a 4 lane automotive sewer with no on-street parking which has killed the old borough business district because it is frighteningly unwalkable with crazy 40 mph traffic down 8.5 ft. lanes.
My street is a dead-end residential street. I doubt I would starve at all without it as I can walk to the supermarket which is located on a state highway. But you are still missing the point – the street does not pay for itself. I pay for it, and I am hardly its majority user. Its a public good, just like the streetcar line used to be, constructed to serve the public convenience and necessity. It is not a self-supporting entity. There is no toll both at the bottom of my hill to charge the drivers using it. And I do miss the streetcar line because I do not enjoy riding the bus and waiting for its 30 minute headways.
I apologize for not loving the life of having to drive everywhere that you are infatuated with. It just holds no appeal to me so I don’t live it. What bothers me is that you want me to help pay through taxes for your desired lifestyle of driving everywhere which requires lots of road capacity in a vastly overdeveloped road system, but you refuse to return the favor of supporting my desired lifestyle of minimal car use.
You are a selfish one-way street who thinks that not only is your lifestyle better, but that everyone should be forced to live just like you.
Honestly Andrew? The same old conspiracy theories? YOU are the selfish one because YOU think we should subsidize your unicorn on steel rails fantasy! It’s not our problem that you hate cars and hallucinate about a return to stupid streetcars and rail everywhere. I suggest you go move to North Korea, should work great for your anti-car views. And I think they have streetcars too.
What National City Lines was very real, though what they did was take advantage of bad transport policy.
Andrew face it, Metrosucks wants despotism in the USA!
Andrew face it, Metrosucks wants despotism in the USA!
Though of course, stealing billions from car drivers to pay for lazy, shiftless, irresponsible mass transit users is freedom and brilliant public policy!
Some how you’ve seem to over looked the fact that transit users pay taxes too!
Yeah, when they buy a Big Mac, not when they get on the bus.
Though that’s how life works, just as pedestrians pay for other peoples parking.
It’s no point explaining it to you. Everyone else knows how you operate.
Cross subsidizing is part of life, you can’t escape it.