Last week CJ’s Michael Lowrey analyzed what he described as the ‘kudzu of transit projects’—- the proposed a $452 million, 25-mile commuter rail line from the center of Charlotte through Huntersville, Cornelius, and Davidson and Mooresville.
Today I read in today’s N&R this AP story on the proposed $4.9 billion bullet train through the Mojave Desert to Las Vegas.
Never mind that the train would be financed by a ‘loan’ from the Obama administration to his buddy ‘Dingy Harry’ Reid. Never mind that while jobs provided by the Keystone pipeline have been called into question, yet Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood ‘publicly blessed’ the train because of the jobs it would provide, never mind that who in their right mind would drive into the middle of the desert only to stop and hop a train the rest of the way.
Here’s the bottom line:
“When somebody comes and tells me I will build a system that pays for itself, I’m a little suspicious,” said Hasan Ikhrata, executive director of the Southern California Association of Governments, which questioned ridership potential in a report last year. “There is no high-speed rail system in the world that operates without subsidies.”
Although I believe in the theory that the mainstream media pushes mass transit as part of its support network for Obama administration policies, I’m still amazed at the way they cannot neglect the fact that mass transit does not pay for itself. Still they keep pushing it.