Here is a 20-minute news report on the California high-speed rail project in four parts. I can think of several lessons people should learn from this fiasco.
First, don’t vote to partly fund a project. The government agency in charge will spend all of the money even if there is no chance to get the rest of the money.
Arizona Shuttle offers 19 buses a day between Tucson and Phoenix. Greyhound offers at least eight. But that’s not good enough for some people, so the state is spending $6.3 million studying the idea of running passenger trains between the two cities.
The state’s first guess is that the start-up cost would be a mere $1 billion. Phoenix and Tucson are about the same distance from one another as San Diego and Los Angeles, where Amtrak runs something like 11 trains per day. Of course, those trains run just 35 percent full despite the fact that they serve urban areas whose combined populations are four times greater than Phoenix and Tucson.
To make the case for rail, the state is spreading scare stories about how bad congestion will be in 2050. Of course, trains won’t do anything about that congestion, since so few people will ride them. Given that most cars on the road in 2050 are likely to be driving themselves, congestion will probably be a lot less than today even if the region’s population doubles, as planners forecast.
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Bloomberg News, or at least a writer named Stephen Smith, has discovered that the transit industry is gouging taxpayers with its schemes for high-cost rail transit and high-speed rail. Smith says there are two causes for this gouging.
First, “agencies can’t keep their private contractors in check,” and instead hire “consultants who consultant with consultants and advisers who advise advisers.” This drives up the cost of planning and building rail lines. Second, antiquated labor practices drive up the cost of operating the trains.
Smith makes good points, but his implicit assumption, that fixing these problems would make passenger rail transportation economically feasible, is wrong. He cites several examples in Europe and Japan of “how it ought to be done,” but the fact is that European and Asian countries are wasting their money on rail transit as well.
In 2010, Amtrak proposed to spend $117 billion to upgrade its Boston-to-Washington high-speed rail corridor. This idea was so unrealistically expensive that the Antiplanner called it “gold-plated high-speed rail.”
Apparently, Amtrak wants platinum plating instead, as its 2012 update to the proposal has raised the cost to $151 billion. This includes some additional bells and whistles, including a $7 billion revamp of Washington, DC’s Union Station (see Amtrak’s report for complete details).
Amtrak either hasn’t heard or doesn’t care that high-speed rail is dead (except for a train to nowhere in California) or that the federal government is about out of money. Instead, says Amtrak CEO Joseph Boardman, it wants to be “ready” in case someone accidentally drops $150 billion or so in its path.
The California legislature based its approval of the sale of billions of dollars of bonds to start construction of high-speed rail partly on claims that the rail line would help revitalize California’s economy. But now a study from UCLA finds that Japan’s high-speed rail line, one of the most popular in the world, failed to boost that nation’s economy.
“Rather, the evidence suggests high-speed rail simply moves jobs around the geography without creating significant new employ- ment or economic activity” says the study. “As an engine of economic growth in and of itself, CHSR will have only a marginal impact at best.”
The California High-Speed Rail Authority responded to the study by trotting out an architect who claimed all sorts of benefits for the train. Asking an architect to respond to an economic analysis is like asking a plumber for a second opinion on your cancer diagnosis. The plumber might give you the answer you want, but probably not the right answer.
Last week, the California legislature voted to destroy the state’s economy for another decade. The 21 senators who voted for the measure told the public they were approving a high-speed train from Los Angeles to San Francisco, but everyone knows they barely have enough money to build from Fresno to Bakersfield.
In voting to borrow $4.5 billion as a down payment on a rail line that is certain to cost at least $68 billion, and more likely over $100 billion, the legislature is risking the state’s entire economic future. The state already has a $16 billion deficit in its budget (which it closed only with one-time tricks and the promise of increased taxes), and the rail line will immediately increase that by more than a quarter of a billion per year, and in the long run (if it continues building) by much more.
This is not about jobs. More jobs are going to be killed by running up tax rates (or further cutting services) to pay for the deficits. This is not about transportation. Though advocates promise fast downtown-to-downtown travel times, only 2.5 percent of Los Angeles-area jobs are located in downtown LA, so few residents will ever have reason to ride the train. This is nothing more than pork barrel.
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California’s high-speed rail project seems to be dead. At least, that’s the conclusion of a Washington DC writer commenting on a report that Governor Brown has given up on the idea of exempting high-speed rail from environmental reviews.
Without that exemption, the writer thinks, the state will never be able to build the line. However, In the spirit of former Egyptian President Mubarak, who was clinically dead though maybe still alive, perhaps California high-speed rail is only clinically dead. The latest word is that Brown is only delaying, not ending, his proposal exempt the project from environmental reviews.
Someone made a little poster designed to convey the value of high-speed rail.
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CNN reports that the cost of California high-speed rail has tripled, and it correctly points out that federal taxpayers will be expected to pay for most of it. While this is a somewhat belated report, it is nice to see this boondoggle get the attention it deserves.
CNN gets some numbers wrong; as the Antiplanner has previously noted, the original $34 billion cost was adjusted for inflation while the current $98 to $108 billion projection is not, so the cost estimate has really doubled, not tripled. But the basic point is correct. We can supply generic medicines purchase viagra online http://www.heritageihc.com/buy8816.html as per the National Kidney and Urologic Diseases Information Clearinghouse. Single moms often tend to fall victim to these issues because they have more responsibilities on their shoulders, and that burden can purchase viagra in canada be overwhelming. A useful and simple way to distinguish between physiological and psychological impotence is to determine whether the condition of your spine has already improved. buy cialis usa Brown Spot Remover Lightening of brown spots or hyperpigmentation involves a lot of patience and india viagra understanding of a variety of treatment selections. This project really made no sense at $34 billion. It certainly makes no sense at the much-higher current projected cost, whatever that is.
The Obama administration has announced that it wants to spend a half-billion dollars buying high-speed rail cars in an obvious bid to create more businesses beholden to the administration as well as to its rail program. But more and more people are turning against the president’s dream of being the Eisenhower of high-speed rail.
The Wall Street Journal calls the California high-speed plan the Kafka Express. Michael Lind, of the center-left New America Foundation, realizes that high-speed rail is the wrong future. Yet Jerry Brown is so insistent on building it that he’s willing to sacrifice welfare and other social programs.
In response to pressure from the federal government to start construction, the president of California’s senate has asked the federal government to commit itself to put up several tens of billions to finish the project. Of course, with resistance to the project in Congress, that’s not going to happen.
