Bullet Train between LA and SF turning into a train-wreck

This says it all:

The state's plan to build a bullet train has become a monument to the ways poor planning, mismanagement and political interference can screw up major public works.

Those words can be echoed across the Country in cities and towns where public works projects get messed up with political interference.  That is how we got the road to nowhere in South Texas and other places.  The interchange was built with no place to go.  Give a politician money to spend on infrastructure and watch it get messed up by their political appointments to run the project.

Seeing it my own small city with the underpass for the railroad tracks.  They let the contractor try to reuse a bridge but it wouldn't fit and had other problems so now the project is behind schedule which drives up costs but nothing on the scale of the bullet train.

With the strings attached by the Federal Government, this project is doomed to failure.  With having to break ground in 2012 in time for Obama's reelection campaign, the timetable is all off and dooms the project thanks to Obama and his desire for publicity about high speed rail.

We could actually see it working from LA to SF if they didn't make so many stops.  We have a suggestion -- put the monorail engineers of Disney on the project!  The rendition drawing even looks somewhat like the Contemporary Hotel station at Disney World for the monorail.

The idea to have high speed rail in the middle of the country is a non-starter and way too expensive.  It is meant for travel in places like from LA to SF and NYC to DC.  That is where you would attract the passengers to pay for the costs.

California's high-speed train wreck 

The state's plan to build a bullet train has become a monument to the ways poor planning, mismanagement and political interference can screw up major public works. We can do better.

An artist's rendering of the proposed San Jose stop on the $43-billion high-speed rail line. (California High-Speed Rail Authority / Bloomberg)  California's much-vaunted high-speed rail project is, to put it bluntly, a train wreck. Intended to demonstrate the state's commitment to sustainable, cutting-edge transportation systems, and to show that the U.S. can build rail networks as sophisticated as those in Europe and Asia, it is instead a monument to the ways poor planning, mismanagement and political interference can screw up major public works. For anti-government conservatives, it is also a powerful argument for scrapping President Obama's national rail plans, rescinding federal funding and canceling the project before any more money is wasted on it. We couldn't disagree more. We pointed out back in 2008, before voters approved nearly $10 billion in state bonds to fund the project under Proposition 1A, that it would be more expensive and difficult to build than its backers were letting on. But we endorsed it anyway because of the economic and environmental benefits the train could bring. The benefits still outweigh the costs, and none of the $43-billion project's troubles are insurmountable. Fortunately, a report last week from the state Legislative Analyst's Office offers strong recommendations for getting the system back on track. The train's biggest problems can be laid at the feet of the High Speed Rail Authority, which is overseeing its construction. Inexperienced board members appointed by the governor and Legislature on the basis of political patronage rather than expertise have made a host of poor decisions. Not the least boneheaded of these is the board's plan to take a circuitous route from Los Angeles to Bakersfield by veering through Palmdale and Lancaster. Compared with the more direct route along Interstate 5 through the Grapevine, this would add 30 miles to the trip plus $1 billion in construction costs, and make it all but impossible for the train to meet its promised travel time of 2 hours and 40 minutes from L.A. to San Francisco. The legislative analyst calls for slashing the authority's proposed budget for next year by $185 million and eventually eliminating it, transferring the bullet train's oversight to another agency. We heartily agree. Not all of the bad decisions can be blamed on the rail authority. To qualify for federal funds, planners had to agree to break ground by 2012. With political battles raging throughout the state over routing decisions, federal officials deemed that the only segment that would be ready for construction so quickly was in the sparsely populated Central Valley. As a result, the bulk of the $3.5 billion kicked in by the Obama administration must be spent on a train running between the tiny towns of Borden and Corcoran. Ridership on this initial segment would be slight, making it impossible to operate the train without taxpayer subsidies. Yet under the terms of Proposition 1A, the state can't issue bonds to pay for the project unless it has been demonstrated to be self-sufficient. What's more, if federal and other funds for further construction dry up, California could end up with an expensive train to nowhere. Excerpt:  Read More at LA Times Editorial

Fred Barnes: Obama's Pathetic Budget

Of all the articles on the internet about Obama's budget, this headline and article by Fred Barnes caught my eye because of the title: "Obama's Pathetic Budget" which sums up the budget in three short words.

The high speed rail was covered on here yesterday -- we cannot believe that Obama is adamant about this boondoggle. Can remember when he promised then Governor Charlie Crist of Florida they were going to get the money for high speed rail like it would help him win in his fight for the Florida Senate seat against Marco Rubio. The closer Crist got to Obama the more he lost Republicans until finally he went NO PARTY, but that didn't help either -- he lost to Rubio big time on November 2nd. We would expect Marco Rubio in the Senate to go after this boondoggle of high speed rail as Florida doesn't need this added expense to their budget either.

Obama’s plan includes spending hikes in some areas. The most egregious may be $53 billion for construction of high-speed rail in Florida, California and several other states. This is one of the least cost-effective projects in the history of wasteful government spending. Yet it’s one of the president’s pet projects, and he appears more wedded to it than to taming the rise in the national debt.

Would bet his high speed rail boondoggle is DOA in the House. Would also bet that Florida Democrat Senator Bill Nelson would rather have the $53B for NASA which Obama seems to be out to destroy.

Obama's Pathetic Budget12:30 AM, Feb 14, 2011 • By FRED BARNES

Let’s be candid about President Obama’s budget. It’s pathetic. The country faces a worsening debt crisis and Obama has not come to play. He kissed off the crisis in his State of the Union address last month. And now his plan for spending over the next 10 years doesn’t come close to dealing with the debt problem.

So he's 0-for-2 in coming to grips with the fiscal mess that threatens America’s economic position at home and abroad. Obama didn’t create the crisis, but in two years his spending has added $3 trillion to the national debt. In 2011, the deficit figures to be nearly 10 percent of the gross domestic product. In 2012, the deficit will exceed $1 trillion for the third consecutive year.

Obama would cut spending by $1.1 trillion over the coming decade. That figure is smaller than the projected deficit of $1.5 trillion in 2011. Think about that: Obama’s total reductions are less than a single year’s deficit. That’s what I mean by pathetic.

A highly publicized item in the 2012 budget is a 5-year (partial) freeze on discretionary spending, a saving of $400 billion. That was swallowed up this year when Congressional Budget Office re-calculated the deficit for 2011 deficit and boosted it from $1.1 trillion to $1.5 trillion, the biggest 1-year deficit ever.

(snip)

The Obama budget is so unresponsive to the fiscal situation that it prompts this question: it’s merely a tactical budget. He’s now waiting to see what Republicans will propose in their 2012 budget, the outlines of which are to be hammered out by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan in April. Following that, Obama and congressional Republicans will negotiate, ultimately agreeing on a budget.

That’s the most benign interpretation I can think of. A more likely explanation: Obama has set the stage to attack Republicans for proposing spending cuts certain to be deeper than those Obama is advocating.

Excerpt: Read More at The Weekly Standard

If Obama and the Democrats think this 'pathetic budget' is going to set up Republicans to make the electorate mad at them for deeper cuts, he has been hanging out with Bill Clinton too much. Deeper cuts are exactly what the American people want to get this Country back on track and spoke loudly about that on November 2nd.

Looks like Obama and the Democrats want another Government shutdown to blame on Republicans, but it is not going to work this time. Obama is dealing with a House that understands how Democrats work.  With Paul Ryan as head of the House Budget Committee, Obama and his people are out of their league. Under Clinton, the GOP received really bad PR because the Clintonites were masters of spin starting with Clinton. This is a new day and people have more than the alphabet networks to give them the news.

Whatever happened to his Debt Commission recommendations made in December? That group favored $4 trillion in spending cuts over 10 years. Cuts in Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and other mandatory spending programs recommended by that Debt Commission were ignored by Obama in his budget. Looks like the Obama Debt Commission was another boondoggle by this Administration. Which Clintonite recommended the Commission?

The White House has even more Clintonites in it today then when Obama first took office. Every since Bill Clinton took over the press conference, the number of Clintonites who were close to Bill and Hillary have now been appointed by Obama. Just who is running the White House now? This latest budget stunt seems to be right out of the Clinton playbook to try and make Republicans look bad. Not going to work and in the end this 'do nothing President' about the deficit and reining in spending will find out that he is on the outside looking into the White House in January 2013.

High-speed rail is a fast track to government waste (Understatement)

This paragraph from the Washington Post article sums up what is wrong with this Administration. There is an amazing lack of common sense coming out of the President and the Cabinet Secretaries. This time it is Ray LaHood, the Transportation Secretary who we have never had any faith that he would do a good job or come up with ideas that makes sense. He has not disappointed with the high speech rail. You want to toss money down the drain, then invest in high speed rail. Obama wants 80% of the Country covered? Why?

Governing ought to be about making wise choices. 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. The case in favor rests on fashionable platitudes. High-speed rail is not an "investment in the future"; it's mostly a waste of money. Good government can't solve all our problems, but it can at least not make them worse.

Let me give an example of Amtrak. There is an Amtrak train that runs once a day to and from Oklahoma City to Fort Worth, Texas. The cost of the train is $26.00 one way which is okay but the problem is it takes 4 hours 14 minutes to travel. I can drive to Fort Worth in three hours but then I would have my car to get around Dallas/Fort Worth. Ever try taking public transportation in Dallas/Fort Worth? If your original destination is Dallas, then you arrive about 30 miles from your destination when you arrive by train. You will probably have to rent a car which adds even more cost to the trip. Unlike the upper east coast, public transportation leaves a lot to be desired in Middle America but we have all kinds of interstates.

Because the chances of Obama having driven across America is probably slim to none, don't think he or his people have any idea how far it is from destination to destination in this part of the Country. You drive for miles and don't even see a gas station which is why when you drive out here, you had better be filling up when it gets around half a tank. Our cities are not located close together and smaller areas have zero public transportation or even a rental car company.

Chicago has great public transportation even though the trains are old, but you can go pretty much all over the city by train and it sure beats getting stuck on Lakeshore Drive and other places in a traffic jam all the time. What works in Chicago would be a waste of money in someplace like Oklahoma City where people are going to drive not take rail to get around.

This is another reason why you don't elect someone who came from a big city to be President. They have zero common sense and don't understand that high speed rail is joke in areas where cities are not close together. If I have to rent a car and it takes me over an hour longer to get to Fort Worth, why would I want to take the train except for the fun of it. High Speed rail would never work because there are not enough people that would use it between OKC and Fort Worth that would make it profitable.

You can watch the Biden video at Washington Post and shake your head as he doesn't have any more clue than LaHood and the President about rail service in most of America.

High-speed rail is a fast track to government waste

By Robert J. Samuelson
Monday, February 14, 2011

Vice President Biden, an avowed friend of good government, is giving it a bad name. With great fanfare, he went to Philadelphia last week to announce that the Obama administration proposes spending $53 billion over six years to construct a "national high-speed rail system." Translation: The administration would pay states $53 billion to build rail networks that would then lose money - lots - thereby aggravating the budget squeezes of the states or federal government, depending on which covered the deficits.

There's something wildly irresponsible about the national government undermining states' already poor long-term budget prospects by plying them with grants that provide short-term jobs. Worse, the rail proposal casts doubt on the administration's commitment to reducing huge budget deficits. The president's 2012 budget is due Monday. How can it subdue deficits if it keeps proposing big spending programs?

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.

Passenger rail service inspires wishful thinking. In 1970, when 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. Longtime critic Randal O'Toole of the Cato Institute recently planned a trip from Washington to New York. Noting that fares on Amtrak's high-speed Acela start at $139 one-way, he decided to take a private bus service. The roundtrip 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.

(snip)

Rail buffs argue that subsidies for passenger service simply offset the huge government support of highways and airways. The subsidies "level the playing field." Wrong. In 2004, the Transportation Department evaluated federal transportation subsidies from 1990 to 2002. It found passenger rail service had the highest subsidy ($186.35 per thousand passenger-miles) followed by mass transit ($118.26 per thousand miles). By contrast, drivers received no net subsidy; their fuel taxes more than covered federal spending. Subsidies for airline passengers were about $5 per thousand miles traveled. (All figures are in inflation-adjusted year 2000 dollars.)

High-speed rail would transform Amtrak's small drain into a much larger drain. Once built, high-speed-rail systems would face a dilemma. To recoup initial capital costs - construction and train purchases - ticket prices would have to be set so high that few people would choose rail. But lower prices, even with favorable passenger loads, might not cover costs. Government would be stuck with huge subsidies. Even without recovering capital costs, high-speed-rail systems would probably run in the red. Most mass-transit systems, despite high ridership, routinely have deficits.

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 (if fewer people fly from Denver to Los Angeles and more go to Houston, flight schedules simply adjust). Against history and logic is the imagery of high-speed rail as "green" and a cutting-edge technology.

Excerpt:  Read more at Washington Post