A word of friendly advice to our Republican and Democratic friends who continue touting fixed rail as a transportation solution: Read this San Jose Mercury-News article about California’s high-speed rail project, which may eventually cost taxpayers more than $100 billion. An excerpt:
“This is really very serious and needs to stop in its tracks,” said state Sen. Alan Lowenthal, D-Long Beach, chairman of the Senate committee overseeing the project. “We can’t just be acting as if someone’s out there giving us wheelbarrows full of money, and it’s just coming. This is not the way we should be operating.”
[snip]
When California voters approved the project in 2008, the state said it would cost $33 billion, but it soared to $43 billion a year later — already making it the single largest public works project in the nation. Even now, the state only has about one-fourth of the money needed to fund the entire rail line and no clear plan on how to secure the rest.
The country is broke. We can’t afford new rail projects, which do not reduce congestion anyway. And alternatives such as bus-rapid transit exist that can move more people more efficiently without requiring massive borrowing to purchase land, steel, and concrete. As ex-Meck Decker Jeff Taylor said, “Either a transit line is a good idea on the merits or it is not.” If public transit is worth pursuing, choosing the most costly and least efficient method is nuts, plain and simple.
The Man in Black was singing about a flood, but somehow this seems appropriate:
