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12/8/2010
Shown: What's So Progressive about High Speed Rail?
Abortion, gay marriage, taxes - issues many associate with clear partisan positions. From current debate, high speed rail is no different from these subjects in the partisan response it generates. Certainly since Scott Walker's election, if not before, clear lines have been drawn on the issue of high speed rail between Madison and Milwaukee, lines highly correlated with party affiliation.
Writing at Isthmus, Emily Mills recently called killing high-speed rail an "issue of concern for those of us with a more progressive bent." What is that supposed to mean? Opposition to rail would seem to be in line with the stated GOP platform of smaller government and less intrusion into markets, but making the case for rail as crucial to a progressive agenda is much tougher.
If support for public transportation is part of a comprehensive plan to help the urban poor, this rail proposal doesn't seem to fit the bill. I doubt many Milwaukee residents will find that the ability to commute to Madison in a little more than an hour opens up a whole new world of economic opportunity for them. Even if it did, with the projected cost of a fare at about $25, what would they demand in a wage differential over local workers to offset the cost of commuting?
Perhaps then, it's the jobs related to the project that make it progressive. Even here though, this rail line seems lacking. Yes, thousands of jobs could be involved in construction of the line, but the Journal Sentinel reports that only about 55 permanent jobs would be directly associated with it. With respect to the jobs at train manufacturer Talgo, the number I’ve seen reported is only about 125. Apparently,180 jobs with an initial price tag of $800 million is sufficient for the AFL-CIO to hold a candle light vigil outside the Talgo facility.
I don't know that much about Talgo's business practices, but I assume they are in business to turn a profit, not to provide jobs to the community. Can you imagine the outrage that would ensue if a Tea Party group held a rally outside the offices of a big insurance company (after all, people work there too, you know).
I just can't see what is so progressive about high speed rail. I also can't help but wonder if the support for this proposal has its real root in the dislike so many on the left in this state feel for Scott Walker. If so, I'd urge those folks to take a long hard look at what rail does and does not do and use that as your basis for supporting the project or not. Simply taking the position opposite Walker's on every issue, regardless of the merits, is no way to govern. At some point we will have to move on, we just won't be doing so on high speed rail.
Jeremy Shown blogs at Rhymes with Clown and frequently hits on politics and economics in Wisconsin and the U.S.
COMMENTS
The HSR project is sensible. It would provide another option for travelers as well as improving frieght lines. Jobs are very important >>>Yes, thousands of jobs could be involved in construction of the line,<<<
$810M sound like a lot till you compare that with some other projects like a hwy in Milwaukee. Yet you minumize the job creation HSR provides. You ignore the stimulus it provides.
>>>Apparently,180 jobs with an initial price tag of $800 million<<<
Mills chose to call it progressive. I do not know why it has become partisan at all. For some reason Walker opposes it sneering at the $810m, free for Wisconsins economy.
Dean Weichmann (Wed Dec 08 06:00:01 2010)
I agree. HSR would just give us another tool for transportation. And of course building the necessary infrastructure for it would create jobs, as would maintaining and operating the system. What's the big deal? Especially between Mad town and Milw, it makes a lot of sense and would act as catalyst for economic development around the stations.
JeanMarie (Wed Dec 08 08:05:37 2010)
Mr. Weichmann,
>> For some reason Walker opposes it sneering at the $810m, free for Wisconsins economy <<
You're being provocative on purpose, aren't you? Or are you? You don't REALLY think that the $810 million is "free", do you? Do you?
Steve Erbach
Neenah
Steve Erbach (Wed Dec 08 09:14:45 2010)
Early opponents of the interstate hwy system couldn't understand how limited access roads between major cities would benefit smaller towns. Once the "backbone" infrastructure between major hubs was in place, links to small towns were built.
I doubt many people today would diss the U.S. highway system. It took well over three decades to roll out that system.
Anyone who thinks the one person/one auto transportation model will persevere with cheap fossil fuel (or even "cheap" electric storage cells) is delusional.
At some point large-scale mass transit will become the new norm. High speed rail, like the interstate hwy system, has to start somewhere. And it's not likely to get cheaper to construct 3, 5, 10 years from now.
Dennis (Wed Dec 08 10:12:22 2010)
>>>You're being provocative on purpose, aren't you? Or are you? You don't REALLY think that the $810 million is "free", do you? Do you?<<<
Steve, we all pay taxes...or share in the dillution of the dollar that results if that money is simply "printed" to pay for that $810m. I did the calculation a while back, each of us will "pay" $2.70 to the feds and Wisconsin residents will get $135 each back only if Walker takes the money.
It ain't free but it will cost us dollars either way.
So Walker can refuse the money and we loose both that money and the benifit of the train option.
Dean Weichmann (Wed Dec 08 10:59:58 2010)
Emily Mills is Madison's resident who sprinkles pixie dust for every hare-brained leftist progressive issue.
The low speed rail is about Madison politics--nothing more. There is an existing rail line that goes thru Columbus where Madison can catch the train.
Nobody's talking about the other $1B that would be needed to rebuild the tracks north of Madison. This Madison project is a boondoggle.
mark sevelis (Wed Dec 08 15:07:38 2010)
This is the train to nowhere.
Fix Amtrak first. Show us how it can work on it's own. Then, come back and sell us your bilge.
Jimmy (Thu Dec 09 03:02:36 2010)
Jimmy said;
>>>Fix Amtrak first. Show us how it can work on it's own<<<
Jimmy, are you really not aware that other modes of transport are subsudized as well? Who builds the roads? Do airlines pay for airports? Even the lock and dams on the Mississippi are built by the government. Come on, get a clue.
Dean Weichmann (Sat Dec 11 06:40:52 2010)
This below is comment after an article in the Wisconsin State Journal.
First, passenger rail is not some pet scheme of socialistic red termite liberals. Midwest Regional, developed by a consortium of nine states, was led by WisDOT under a Republican governor. ProRail, the large, south-central Wisconsin chapter of Wisc. Assoc. of RR Passengers, was founded by Pat Robbins, a lifelong Republican. (In fact, Mr Walker is lucky she's no longer alive, or he would be missing some skin, now.)
Second, the project has nothing to do with Amtrak, beyond the presumption that it would operate the service; but maintenance would be out of Amtrak's hands (and out of Chicago).
Third, Amtrak is in no sense a "failed system", as its growing ridership would suggest (against all odds, such as too-many-cooks meddling by politicians and aging equipment and obstructionism by its landlord railroads). All the criticism I ever see against Amtrak consists of a recycled urban myths, plus almost defiant ignorance of the fact that ALL transportation systems enjoy large public subsidies, Amtrak's being peculiar only because of its size (small) and the annual noisy spectacle of begging for support for it for another year. No such noisy and unedifying wrangling surrounds subsidies for highways, or emerged over the past two fiscal years when the federal "highway trust fund" had to be topped off by $28 billion from the general fund.
Fourth, the "high speed" plans for the MAD–MKE segment were compromised, only for the duration, by an FRA decree a couple of years ago limiting the speeds of trains until Positive Train Control was implemented. That's supposed to happen in 2015 (no one in the industry thinks that's possible). But when and if it did happen, the engineering of the Waterloo Spur and the main line between Watertown and Milwaukee would have been been ready, having been designed for 110 mph operation. Upgrading MKE–CHI for 110 mph passenger was to have been a later phase of the Midwest Regional project.
Fifth, the Midwest Regional Rail Initiative was NOT cooked up by "rail enthusiasts". It was undertaken by nine state departments of transportation—effectively departments of highways under another name—most of which had little or no previous experience in or any particular enthusiasm for passenger rail, the chief exceptions being Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin (marginally), and Missouri.
Sixth, the Midwest Regional plans were essentially complete 1999, except for some ongoing tweaking. All that was needed was funding. That was never easy to see coming, and of course the Bush recession pretty much brought an end to hopes for federal involvement. Finally, after 15 years of planning, environmental studies, etc., FULL funding suddenly appeared, in a complication-free form that no one had anticipated in their wildest dreams.
Seventh, my sense is that the responsible citizens and policy makers who were in favor of this project lost control of the narrative very early on. This was probably because it had not been anticipated that a project that had been favorably and publicly evaluated, and whose need was obvious, over a period of half a generation, would suddenly be the target of a furious (if largely fact-free) assault. For example, the Madison project was mischaracterized as a "train to Milwaukee", whereas it's really multiple trains to and from Chicago. With a stop at Milwaukee (among other places). Even those who knew that there are already trains between MKE and CHI didn't seem to understand that the "train to Milwaukee" was simply an extension of that highly successful service, no one would have to change trains in Milwaukee, etc., etc. (The "future extension" to Chicago that one sometimes saw mentioned in the media coverage had to do with 110 mph operation over the route that would be covered by current 80 mph speeds until the upgrades.)
Eighth, it seemed to me from Walker's first comments on the subject that he had a very limited grasp of the bare facts. He seems to have thought, for instance, that the Madison project was something clapped up by (ugh) liberals trying to make a play for some federal money (so like a liberal). He seemed to think that there was some sort of uncertainty about "where to put the tracks" for the operation, for instance. His recent remark about supporting passenger operations on "existing tracks" suggests that he doesn't know of the existence of the Waterloo Spur between Watertown and Madison. AND as for using the funds for highways, he never somehow mentions that $700 million that Wisconsin got from ARRA funds explicitly for highway construction. And as for the economics, I somehow can't see Walker refusing construction funds for an Interstate highway, or major upgrading of a US highway, on the grounds that Wisconsin will then be stuck with the costs of maintaining it.
I don't actually remember where I saw, recently, among comments on a "Milwaukee train" story, a remark about avoiding the mistakes of "failed high speed passenger train projects". Like so many comments, it gave no specifics, and I'm at a loss to think of any.
Oh, and a final remark. I've several times seen sneering remarks about how the "train to Milwaukee" would be making "all these intermediate stops" (two, to be exact) and so would never be able to attain the promised 110 mph for more than a few miles. Well, the acceleration of a standard trainset like the ones serving the Hiawathas between CHI and MKE is 1.5 mph per second. That's far less than your grandmothers BMW, of course, but you can do the math: it would take all of 75 seconds to go from zero to 110 at that rate.
Dean Weichmann (Sat Dec 11 14:27:32 2010)
Mr. Weichmann,
>> I don't actually remember where I saw, recently, among comments on a "Milwaukee train" story, a remark about avoiding the mistakes of "failed high speed passenger train projects". Like so many comments, it gave no specifics, and I'm at a loss to think of any. <<
It does depend on what is meant by "failed". If one means that the entire rail project died on the vine and is bankrupt, then that hasn't happened. However, I think you'd admit that cities with rail projects funded by federal dollars have incentives to prop them up so that the money doesn't have to be repaid.
If one allows varying degrees of weak performance then definitely there have been "failures". Look at the large number of metropolitan areas that have seen decreases in overall transit ridership after trains were built. For example, a comparison of the 1985 and 2008 FTA National Transit Databases show that 17 out of 28 rail regions have seen declines in overall transit ridership despite the construction of rail transit lines. Some would call that "failure".
Somehow I think that the mention of the name of the fellow who pulled together a huge amount of federal statistics to demonstrate the infeasibility of passenger rail transport would cause a severe negative reaction...so I'm tempted not to name him. You may see the compilation of transport statistics here, if you care to: http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa663.pdf
That report has this wonderful passage:
"Rail advocates object to using true cost-efficiency analyses. In January 2010, rail supporters cheered when Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood announced he was abolishing costeffectiveness rules and would instead judge projects based on whether they promote 'livability,' a concept that is impossible to quantify. 12 The rules LaHood was eliminating had been written under the previous transportation secretary, Mary Peters... Under Peters, the Federal Transit Administration also required that cities applying for funds for streetcar projects demonstrate that streetcars were more cost-efficient than buses. As a result, almost all of the cities that had been preparing to apply for federal grants for streetcars gave up those plans.14 In deciding to repeal these rules, LaHood was saying, in effect, that the FTA would be willing to fund rail transit projects no matter how much money they waste relative to alternatives."
So rail against rail opponents all you want to. High-speed rail is dead in Wisconsin and good riddance.
Steve Erbach
Neenah
Steve Erbach (Tue Dec 14 11:23:55 2010)
I tried to find info on the train Randal O’Toole talks about. By accident I found this;
>>>The new mid-day trains between Raleigh and Charlotte boosted rail travel on Amtrak’s Piedmont line by more than 200 percent during June.
Ridership on trains between North Carolina’s two largest cities climbed from 5,258 in June 2009, to 15,426 in June 2010.
Read more: Raleigh-Charlotte train traffic jumps 200% | Triangle Business Journal<<<
Dean Weichmann (Tue Dec 14 18:54:40 2010)
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