The Homa Files

Seriously, have you heard anybody (except Reid & Obama) say “man, what this country needs is a $53 billion  “national high-speed rail system” ?

I sure haven’t.

Except for connecting liberal bastions DC, NYC and Boston .., and Disneyland and Las Vegas … I can’t figure out where it would run … and more important, who would ride it ?

Robert Samuelson of Newsweek sees a few other holes in the program …

The rail proposal casts doubt on the administration’s commitment to reducing huge budget deficits.

High-speed rail would definitely be big.

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has estimated the administration’s ultimate goal – bringing high-speed rail to 80 percent of the population – could cost $500 billion over 25 years.

For this stupendous sum, there would be scant public benefits. Precisely the opposite. Rail subsidies would threaten funding for more pressing public needs: schools, police, defense.

How can we know this? History, for starters.

In 1970, Congress created Amtrak to preserve intercity passenger trains.  The idea was that the system would become profitable and self-sustaining after an initial infusion of federal money. This never happened. Amtrak has swallowed $35 billion in subsidies, and they’re increasing by more than $1 billion annually.

Despite the subsidies, Amtrak does not provide low-cost transportation. Fares on Amtrak’s high-speed Acela start at $139 one-way; A comparable roundtrip bus fare: $21.50.

Nor does Amtrak do much to relieve congestion, cut oil use, reduce pollution or eliminate greenhouse gases. Its traffic volumes are simply too small to matter.

Measured by passenger-miles traveled, Amtrak represents one-tenth of 1 percent of the national total.

The reasons passenger rail service doesn’t work in America are well-known: Interstate highways shorten many trip times; suburbanization has fragmented destination points; air travel is quicker and more flexible for long distances.

Even if ridership increased fifteenfold over Amtrak levels, the effects on congestion, national fuel consumption and emissions would still be trivial.

What’s disheartening about the Obama administration’s embrace of high-speed rail is that it ignores history, evidence and logic.

The case against it is overwhelming.  High-speed rail is not an “investment in the future”; it’s mostly a waste of money.

High Speed Rail a Fast Track to Waste, February 14, 2011

This entry was posted on February 16, 2011 at 6:59 am and is filed under Autos - Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.