Search Results for: rail projects

FTA Questioned Honolulu Rail Boondoggle

By | | News commentary, Transportation, Urban areas
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Internal emails reveal that Federal Transit Administration officials were skeptical of Honolulu’s plan to spend $5.3 billion on a 20-mile rail transit line. City voters approved this line only after an expensive and hard-fought campaign. One FTA email accused the city of Honolulu of “lousy practices of public manipulation” and argued that the FTA should not only avoid being associated with it, it should “call them on it.”

This and other documents were turned over to plaintiffs in a lawsuit arguing that the city’s environmental impact statement (EIS) failed to consider a full range of alternatives. In a 2006 comment on the city’s plans to write the EIS, FTA staffer James Ryan noted, “We seem to be proceeding in the hallowed tradition of Honolulu rapid transit studies: never enough time to do it right, but lots of time to do it over.” Another FTA official, Joseph Ossi, replied, “This isn’t an FTA issue. Let the city deal with it. They have produced 3 failed projects and are well on their way to a fourth, so why is FTA wasting time on the City’s problems?”

“This is different,” a third FTA staffer, Raymond Sukys, answered. “This time [thanks to a tax increase] they have a huge cash flow which will build something. It seems likely that we will get involved in litigation again especially since we have an erroneous NOI out there. I do not think the FTA should be associated with their lousy practices of public manipulation and we should call them on it.” The “NOI” is the “notice of intent” to prepare an environmental impact statement, and Sukys apparently thought Honolulu’s NOI was insufficient because it failed to identify a full range of alternatives.

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Commuter Rail 1, Archeological Heritage 0

By | | News commentary, Transportation, Urban areas
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Utah is so intent on building rail transit that it is willing to cook the books and systematically overestimate ridership in order to support its ridiculously expensive rail projects. One commuter-rail line, for example, is expected to attract a 6,100 new transit riders a day, or 3,050 new round trips, for a mere $612 million. At 4 percent interest, that’s enough money to give every one of those new round-trip riders a new Toyota Prius every other year for the next 30 years.

The latest development is that state archeologists have warned that a proposed commuter-rail station and mixed-use development is on a 3,000-year-old archeological site. Erectile deficiency is a common disease in men above 40 seanamic.com order levitra online but a well versed study has revealed that ED can be reversed with lifestyle changes. Health experts have recognized exercise as one of the key ingredients in Shilajit ES capsules, which is one of the best natural supplements for anti generic cialis mastercard aging, has got anti-inflammatory properties to cure knee pain and back pain. If keeping a full bladder for too long time, a male driver may get urine infection. sildenafil discount The National Popular Vote Plan will make every vote equal and will provide every voter with an equal amount of sugar. generic viagra in stores The solution? Fire the archeologists. Of course, the state maintains the firing has nothing to do with rail transit; they just don’t have the funds to keep the archeologists on staff. Maybe that’s because they are wasting so much money on rail transit.

NC Says No More High-Speed Rail

By | | News commentary, Transportation
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The North Carolina legislature has forbidden the state’s transportation department from applying for more high-speed rail funds from the federal government. Before the department can apply for any grants that would obligate the state to pay $5 million or more in operating costs–which any high-speed rail project would do–it must receive approval from the state legislature.

In the view of some, this makes North Carolina the fourth state–after Florida, Ohio, and Wisconsin–to reject federal high-speed rail funds. But unlike the other three states, North Carolina isn’t turning back the $496 million in funds it has already received. But that $496 million will not buy much without further grants, which are unlikely to happen now. Many people credit the John Locke Foundation, which published two reports on high-speed rail–one by the Antiplanner and one by Wendell Cox–with persuading the legislature to take this step.

Meanwhile, Democratic governors across the nation “admire the way [Illinois Governor Pat] Quinn grabbed up federal high-speed rail dollars rejected by the Republican governors of Wisconsin and Florida.” Yet the Chicago Tribune, the state’s largest paper, has–belatedly perhaps–come out against the state’s high-speed rail projects as expensive and not really high speed.

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High-Speed Rail Is Out of the Budget

By | | News commentary, Transportation
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Early Tuesday morning, Congressional leaders agreed on a 2011 budget package that zeros out funding for high-speed rail and rescinds $400 million in 2010 funding that remains unspent (transportation begins on p. 404). The package has the support of Senate Majority Leader Reid, House Speaker Boehner, and House Appropriations Committee Chair Hal Rogers.

The budget plan, now more than six months overdue, also cuts Amtrak’s budget by $80 million and rescinds 2010 highway funds that remain unspent by the states. But the federal government will continue to spend money on highways, transit, and Amtrak. The real significance is that the budget plan is probably the death knell for Obama’s ambitious plan to spend more than $500 billion extending high-speed rail to most major American cities.

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Dead or Not, States Want High-Speed Rail Money

By | | News commentary, Transportation
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High-speed rail may be dead, but numerous states would be happy to get some of Florida’s $2.4 billion in rejected high-speed rail funds. Yesterday was the deadline for applications for this money, and some of the applicants include:

  • California, of course, would like it all, even though that would still leave it $50 billion or so short in completing the first leg of its high-speed rail dream.

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High-Speed Rail = Low-Quality Planning

By | | News commentary, Transportation
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High-speed rail advocates are psychotic, says the Boyd Group, an aviation planning firm. Psychotics, notes the company blog, suffer from “confusion, disorganized thought and speech, mania, delusions, and a loss of touch with reality”–all of which describe rail nuts.

“If you really want to see psychosis,” adds the Boyd Group, “log on to the DOT’s website. Instead of providing hard, accurate information, it’s now a shoddy trumpet for politically-correct schemes pushed by the hobby-lobby that’s running the Department.” Displaying the DOT’s 2009 map of proposed high-speed rail lines, the blog says “high-speed rail isn’t infrastructure; it’s political correctness” and the administration’s plan isn’t a “vision,” it’s “corruption.”

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High-Speed Rail Deathwatch

By | | Follow up, News commentary, Transportation
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Will a high-speed rail line ever be built from San Francisco to Los Angeles? The California High-Speed Rail Authority (CHSRA) has less than 10 percent of the money it needs to build this line. The plan is increasingly under fire from local and state organizations. On one hand, President Obama’s vague and controversial proposal to spend $50 billion to “rebuild 150,000 miles of roads [and] construct and maintain 4,000 miles of railway” could keep the California project alive. On the other hand, if Republican Meg Whitman is elected state governor this November, she could kill the program.

Can’t afford to build it; can’t afford to run it. Maybe it isn’t needed?

A recent op ed in the San Francisco Chronicle succinctly points out that projected costs have nearly doubled since voters approved the plan, adequate funding is unavailable, and–“with 10 airports and six competing airlines”–the San Francisco-Los Angeles corridor doesn’t need high-speed rail anyway.

Perhaps most important, the measure approved by voters in 2008 forbade any tax subsidies for operations. Yet recent recalculations of ridership projections and costs make it clear that fares will never cover operating costs, so even if they build it, they would not be able to run it (at least, without changing the law and finding money for operating subsidies).

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California High-Speed Rail in Trouble

By | | Planning Disasters, Transportation
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New reports have raised questions about and spurred opposition to California’s grandiose high-speed rail plans. First, last April, the California state auditor reported that the state’s high-speed rail authority suffered from “inadequate planning, weak oversight, and lax contract management,” which is not exactly what you want to hear about an agency that is about to build the most expensive state-sponsored public works project in history.

Second, a new report from the University of California found that the state’s ridership forecasts “are not reliable.” Based on a re-assessment by economist David Brownstone (who is fast becoming one of the Antiplanner’s favorite economists) and two UC engineering profs, the fares needed to cover the trains’ operating costs would have to be more than double the original projections, which is also more than the cost of flying. Since the measure approved by voters in 2008 forbade any state operating subsidies, such high fares would doom the project.

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Charlotte Light Rail a Big Flop

By | | Transportation, Urban areas
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Let’s see: 100 percent cost overrun? Check.

Anemic ridership? Check.

Requires tax breaks, tax-increment financing, and other “public investments” to stimulate transit-oriented development? Check.

Declared a great success by the transit agency desperate for tax increases to fund further rail projects? Check.

Must be light rail.

As Wikipedia points out, when planned in 2000, Charlotte’s light-rail line was supposed to cost $225 million. The final cost turned out to be $467 million. Even after adjusting for inflation, that’s close to a 100 percent cost overrun. (Actually, considering inflation from 2000 to 2007, that’s about a 75 percent cost overrun.)

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Honolulu’s Rail Plan

By | | Transportation, Urban areas
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Yesterday, in response to the Antiplanner’s post about crony capitalism, Scrappy commented that Honolulu needs rail transit to “reduce our carbon footprint, save energy and get us off the maddening addiction to cars.” He added that, “the environmental community in Honolulu is strongly behind rail.”

I appreciate Scrappy’s comment and don’t want to discourage him from participating in this forum, but I find it sad that my former colleagues in the environmental movement have become so innumerate that they would support a turkey like the Honolulu elevated rail plan. The final environmental impact statement for that project is now available. Let’s see what it says about saving energy, carbon, and driving.

Start with energy. Table 4-21 of the FEIS says the project will save 396 million British thermal units (BTUs) of energy each day, or 144,540 million BTUs per year. Sounds great, except that page 4-206 says project construction will cost 7.48 trillion BTUs. That means it will take 52 years of savings to pay back the energy cost. Long before 52 years are up, huge energy investments will be needed to replace rail cars, worn out track, and other infrastructure. So there is likely no net energy savings.

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