US Mid-term Results Bad For Rail?

[geoff_184]

"That train is dead. I said it during the campaign. It is dead. Passenger rail is not in Ohio's future."




Kasich says no passenger rail for Ohio
Kasich wants to focus on jobs and balancing budget

Wednesday, 03 Nov 2010, 5:26 PM EDT

By Sonu Wasu
http://www.wdtn.com/dpp/news/local/dayton/kasich-says-no-passenger-rail-for-ohio

COLUMBUS, Ohio (WDTN) - In his first news conference as governor elect, John Kasich de-railed plans for high speed trains connecting Dayton to the rest of the state.

In a press conference with reporters from around the state, Kasich outlined his priorities for taking Ohio into the future.

"My message today is to get jobs going in this state," said Kasich.

Political analysts said the economy is what helped Kasich win the election, now he wants the economy to win for Ohio.

"We have to become competitive. We've got to show the people of this state that we can manage the budget and we are going to be very aggressively talking to businesses both in this state, and outside of this state," said Kasich.

Kasich also answered questions about education, saying he needed to have a serious conversation with educators about unfunded mandates. Kasich is strongly against Governor Ted Strickland's evidence based model of education, saying there are no funds to enforce it.

"We are going to get dollars into the classroom, and push shared services, and make sure there's no excuse for multiple school districts not being able to share administrators. There's too many things going on out there that are not business like," said Kasich.

Kasich also had a direct message for the teacher's union, who blasted him during the campaign for his stance on the merit pay and holding teachers accountable.

"I am waiting for the teachers union to take out full page ads in all of the newspapers apologizing for what they had to say about me during this campaign," said Kasich.

An issue important to many in the Miami Valley was the future of the 3-C rail, that would bring passenger rail travel into the region.

Kasich minched no words about the future of passenger rail service in Dayton and the rest of the state.

"That train is dead. I said it during the campaign. It is dead. Passenger rail is not in Ohio's future."

Kasich went on to say that he did support expanding the rails to help with the transportation of goods, just not for passengers.

2 News asked Dayton officials about Kasich's remarks.

City economic development director John Gower said it was too early to comment.

[john-ston]

Basically, you have a situation where the US Economy is in the most uneviable of positions - for all intents and purposes, it is screwed unless a miracle happens. We cannot forget how California very nearly went bankrupt, and the US Government owes something closing in on $15 trillion, and then has $50 trillion of unfunded liabilities (Social Security and Medicare). The odds of the United States going through a period of hyperinflation are growing every day that the printing presses keep on turning.

[Daniel]

This is merely politics and Ohio is hardly at the cutting edge of progressive America.

If it was in California or the North Eastern states, then I'd be worried.

[geoff_184]

The city of Palo Alto in California recently objected to the plan for high speed rail to stop there. The council has basically said that if the line is built, it wants the trains to run straight through. Parking issues and job protection were cited as reasons. It's been a similar story elsewhere, with a number of cities on proposed high speed rail routes objecting to the plans or else not wanting to be involved.

[Daniel]

The city of Palo Alto in California recently objected to the plan for high speed rail to stop there. The council has basically said that if the line is built, it wants the trains to run straight through. Parking issues and job protection were cited as reasons. It's been a similar story elsewhere, with a number of cities on proposed high speed rail routes objecting to the plans or else not wanting to be involved.

Peolple in Palo Alto's community might be talking this guff now but they'd change their tune within 2 years if a line did get built.

As for the interior of the USA, they're a bit backward and ignorant like much of NZ. But it's only a matter of time before they wake up with cheap oil running out and other nations in Asia and Europe making investments in rail. Even the Shanghai MAGLEV made many Americans ask the hard questions.

[geoff_184]

Wisconsin halts high speed rail, Illinois take a hint

James Carlini
WTN News
November 10, 2010

High-speed rail projects are expensive. Too often, all they create are great monuments to government bureaucracy which provide little public benefit, but require big continuous funding.

Wisconsin's governor-elect Walker is showing more executive vision and putting the money where it will have a greater impact for the greater good of more people by directing high-speed rail money to be spent on roads and highways. Illinois Governor Quinn should take a hint.

What we don't need is another transit bureaucracy, like some of the Chicago area suburban bus transit authorities, and all its operational funding requirements that has more people sitting at the board of directors' table collecting a check, than what they have sitting on the busses paying a fare on a daily basis.

That is NOT saving the environment. That is mass waste, not mass transit.

Mass transit doesn't pay off unless there are a great number of people taking it everyday! Not just for a one-time "let's check out the train" fantasy ride which is about the strongest affirmation of the new high-speed train infrastructure that Joe Citizen has announced. No one is saying they are going to be buying monthly passes or worried about long lines to buy tickets.

ILLINOIS' TRAIN TO NOWHERE

Instead of wasting money on a route to St. Louis, all that transportation money should be spent on

* adding another access (West) entrance to O'Hare Airport;
* fixing up the CTA routes in the Chicago metropolitan area; and
* adding Metra train routes coming into Chicago. For example, add a third track on the route between Chicago and Elgin so they can put in express trains and make the commute time shorter.

These projects should be the priority projects for Illinois as they would positively impact the most people on a daily basis.

Traffic would clear up on eastbound 90 where many motorists are jammed up everyday due to many cars going downtown being slowed down by cars and trucks going to O'Hare. They have to go so much further east because no one ever thought about access from the west of O'Hare, not just westbound traffic from the city.

The commuter rails that bring in people everyday to work in Chicago should be updated. The CTA as well as Metra routes could benefit from that money being spent on updating their infrastructure.

To get more people to take a train from Wisconsin to downtown Chicago could be easily accomplished and at a much lower cost just by adding a couple more trains on the AMTRAK line that goes from Milwaukee to Chicago. Just add more trains to the existing track with more times at rush hour, more riders will appear.

Maybe then we can start seeing more jobs come into the state of Illinois instead leaving the state. Having wishful thinking that a "train to nowhere" is going to create a better job environment or create residual jobs beyond the initial construction jobs is ludicrous.

A simple cost-benefit analysis should be the way to prioritize infrastructure projects, not by a whimsical exuberance of several elected officials' misguided ideas that a high-speed train will somehow “wow” businesses to magically appear in the state and create jobs.

Evidently Scott Walker did well in math in school compared to Pat Quinn. At least he sees that the numbers don't add up for trains - not only in residual job creation, but in servicing the public who are expected to ride them en masse as well as pay for their ongoing operational costs.

Quinn take a hint and while you're doing that, also look to the east and see what Christie is doing to cut state budgets in New Jersey.

CARLINI-ISM Let's have some common sense in government and put money into the right layers of infrastructure which have the greatest payback.

[Daniel]

Urban areas like Chicago aside, the Midwest are pretty much the most backward part of the states.

It's when the Eastern seaboard and California start canning their projects that I'll be concerned. Because once they start operating successful HSR services the Midwest will change their tune.

[geoff_184]

Letters: High-speed rail isn't right for Wisconsin

...It's much more likely that the only passenger interested in using the train is the same guy who can't afford personal transportation...

http://www.postcrescent.com/article/201 ... -Wisconsin

[geoff_184]

The NY Times appears to share my view, that the elections were bad for rail.

Midterms Threaten Obama’s Rail Plans

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/18/us/18rail.html?_r=1&src=twrhp

By MICHAEL COOPER
Published: November 17, 2010


The Obama administration’s signature transportation initiative is almost always described as “high-speed rail.” But more than half of the $10.4 billion the administration has awarded for rail so far has not gone toward real bullet trains, but to build slower, conventional train lines that it hopes will form the foundation of a nationwide high-speed rail network.

Now, though, that strategy is being tested by this month’s midterm election results, which have halted a couple of the administration’s biggest train projects.

Work on a pair of conventional rail lines in the Midwest is grinding to a stop now that Ohio and Wisconsin have elected Republican governors who are threatening to spurn $1.2 billion in federal rail money that their Democratic predecessors had sought and won. The governors-elect are concerned that the new trains will not be fast enough or transformative enough to convert their state’s drivers into paying railroad passengers.

“That train is dead,” John Kasich declared after he was elected governor of Ohio, following through on a campaign pledge to halt a $400 million federal project linking Cincinnati, Cleveland and Columbus with trains that would go less than 50 miles per hour. He said he feared they would be too costly for the state to run.

And the Republican takeover of the House could have ramifications for the administration’s rail program as well. The incoming chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, Representative John L. Mica of Florida, supports high-speed rail but has a different vision: A report he co-wrote last month called for “reprogramming funds that were awarded to states for slow-speed passenger rail projects to true high-speed projects that can attract private sector participation and run at an operational profit.”

The question now is how much pizazz will be needed to sell a rail-averse nation, and some of its increasingly rail-averse elected officials, on a future with bullet trains that can rocket at speeds of more than 150 m.p.h., pulled by sleek Jetsons-style locomotives?

Or will building more lines with decent, dependable service, which many transportation advocates say will provide more bang for the buck, be sufficient to get people in the habit of riding the rails again?

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, a former Republican congressman from Illinois who is now the Obama administration’s biggest booster of passenger rail, said there was no shortage of worthy rail projects that other states wanted to build. He added that he was preparing to give some of them the money that Ohio and Wisconsin were now threatening to give up.

And at a high-speed rail conference this week in New York, he made it clear that he still favored the more incremental approach of building a nationwide rail network in stages.

“The train has left the station,” Mr. LaHood proclaimed. “High-speed rail is coming to America.”

But the debates over high-speed rail have highlighted the difficulties in building major transportation projects in America under its current brand of federalism.

President Obama and the Democratic-led Congress agreed that the time had come for high-speed rail, and they included $8 billion in the stimulus act and another $2.4 billion after that to jump-start the effort. Although the federal government has the vision and the money, it is up to states to build the projects.

So states submitted nearly 400 applications for rail projects, and federal rail transportation officials chose the ones they thought had the best chance of success. The states and the federal government began to haggle with the nation’s freight railroad companies, which own most of the nation’s track. Then elections brought new state officials, some of whom are saying thanks, but no thanks.

Just last month, Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, a Republican, killed a long-planned commuter train tunnel under the Hudson River that had received pledges of $3 billion from the federal government. He cited concerns about the strapped state’s share of the project’s rising costs.

Karen Rae, the deputy administrator of the Federal Railroad Administration, said at this week’s conference that the nation needed to build a viable train network of feeder lines before high-speed rail would make sense in many places. She also noted the structural difficulties.

“Everyone likes to compare us to Europe, and to Asia, and to Japan and China, and how come we can’t do that?” Ms. Rae said. “First of all, I always like to say, when I look at Europe, we’re more like the European Union in our role at the F.R.A. than we are like Spain or France, which are much more like our states — they have independent governance structures, they have independent decision-making.”

The federal government chose to finance only two true high-speed train routes: California got around $3 billion for its plan to connect Los Angeles and San Francisco with trains that can go up to 220 m.p.h., a project that is expected to cost more than $45 billion. And Florida got around $2 billion, almost enough to pay for a high-speed line between Orlando and Tampa.

But now Florida’s governor-elect, Rick Scott, a Republican, is taking another look at the numbers to see if the train will be viable: at only 84 miles, the route is not considered long enough by many rail experts to be optimally served by high-speed rail.

And neither Orlando nor Tampa has much of a transit system — this month voters in Hillsborough County, the home of Tampa, voted against raising taxes to build a commuter transit system. So many of the rail riders would end up needing cars when they reach their destinations anyway.

The most successful rail corridor in the nation — the Northeast corridor, which links the densely populated, transit-friendly cities of Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Washington — has been largely shut out of the high-speed rail money.

Amtrak’s Acela trains can go up to 150 m.p.h., but average around half of that because they share their curvy tracks with many other trains. This fall, Amtrak unveiled a $117 billion proposal to make it a true high-speed line, but no one knows where the money will come from.

At the rail conference, Mr. LaHood, the transportation secretary, spoke of spending $500 billion over the next 25 years to connect 80 percent of the country with rail. Then, although the conference was in a hotel across the street from Pennsylvania Station, where Amtrak trains leave all day for Washington, Mr. LaHood left for the airport.

His schedulers had booked him a flight back to Washington.

A version of this news analysis appeared in print on November 18, 2010, on page A16 of the New York edition.

[Daniel]

I don't see anyone disputing that the US midterm results are bad for rail. Just the severity of the setback.

[geoff_184]

Rail is 200 year old technology? In that case roads are 5000 year old technology...

Tea Party may stall rail projects under Scott

http://www2.highlandstoday.com/content/ ... s-under-s/

Despite's Florida's popularity with federal transportation officials as a hub for rail projects, the unpopularity of trains with many voters who helped elect Gov.-elect Rick Scott could bring projects to a screeching halt once Scott gets to work.

As a candidate, Scott said he was not against all rail projects; he was just opposed to those the state would have to pay for. But many of his most ardent supporters are adamantly opposed to new rail of any kind.

Activists from the Tea Party, which fueled Scott's rise in the Republican gubernatorial primary and his narrow win over Democrat Alex Sink, drew a line in the sand over rail as they met with legislative leaders during Tuesday's veto override special session. And they're saying the same thing to Scott.

"You are a Republican outsider that prevailed with an agenda that promoted both a reduction in spending and taxation," the Florida Liberty Alliance wrote to Scott in a letter dated Nov. 11. "We trust you will fight to reduce government spending as you are sworn in this January. We can think of no better symbol of wasteful and unnecessary spending than passenger rail in all its forms."

The highest profile fight overall since advocates squeezed through the Legislature Orlando's proposed SunRail commuter train is likely to be finding another $300 million to build a long-sought bullet train along the I-4 corridor between Orlando and Tampa. Backers point to the fact that the federal government has offered up $2 billion for the project, more than any state has been given for rail other than California.

But Karen Jaroch of the Tampa 9-12 project, said she would liked to see high speed rail "scrapped." Jaroch also said there could be other regional transportation fights that lawmakers will have to deal with in the coming year. In particular is a revived push for a light rail in Hillsborough County that supporters envision connecting to the high speed train.

That train was soundly defeated in November, when Hillsborough County voters overwhelming rejected a proposed countywide transportation tax that would have funded the proposed light rail and expanded bus service in Tampa. The measure¸ which was projected to raise $180 million for transportation initiatives in the area, was strongly backed by business groups and Tampa Mayor Pam Iorio. But it was soundly defeated, with 58 percent of the county electorate voting no.

Supporters are considering bringing the plan back for another vote in 2012 under the Tampa Bay Area Regional Transportation Authority, which encompasses not only Hillsborough, but Pinellas and Pasco counties. However, at least one grassroots conservative group, Ax the Tax, has pledged to put up $250,000 to fight it, saying it's supported by "tax-and-spend bureaucrats."

"Rail is a two-hundred year old technology with a new millennium price tag that only serves one percent of the traveling public," Ax the Tax chairman Doug Guetzloe said in a statement. "The only mobility that occurs is billions of our dollars moving from the public treasury into the pockets of the vested special interests."

Jaroch agreed, saying her organization was "very up in arms" about the tri-county light rail proposal and planned to ask lawmakers they supported to put the brakes on it.

"We're going to lobby legislators in our area not to grant them taxing authority," Jaroch said. "That seems to be their next move, so we're gearing up the troops."

[pcuser42]

Rail is 200 year old technology? In that case roads are 5000 year old technology...

And the wheel is 10,000+ year old technology

[Daniel]

Looks like congress is about to kill it for the foreseeable future;

http://www.fmnewschicago.com/news/article.aspx?id=1127910

Congress is on the verge of killing funding for President Barack Obama's signature high-speed rail program, but it may have some life in it still.

Republican lawmakers are claiming credit for killing the program. But billions of dollars still in the pipeline will ensure work will continue on some projects. And it's still possible money from another transportation grant program can be steered to high-speed trains.

Obama had requested $8 billion in fiscal 2012 for the program, and $53 billion over six years. House and Senate negotiators agreed to a measure this week that eliminates any funding specifically for high-speed trains. Final passage of the bill, which funds day-to-day operations at the Transportation Department and several other agencies in fiscal 2012, is expected Thursday in the House and Friday in the Senate.

Republicans have made it clear since taking control of the House last year that they intended to eliminate the program, which they say is too costly.

The bill marks "an end to the president's misguided high-speed rail program, but it is not the end of American high-speed rail," said Rep. Bill Shuster, R-Pa., chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee's railroad subcommittee.

Shuster and the Transportation Committee's chairman, Rep. John Mica, R-Fla., say the future of high-speed rail in the U.S. is in the Northeast rail corridor that connects Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Washington, rather than the national network of trains envisioned by Obama.

"We are being given a chance to refocus and reform the high-speed rail program," Shuster said.

But Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., an Obama ally and high-speed rail supporter, said he is confident some money will be found to keep Obama's train program going through the Transportation Department's TIGER program, which makes grants to projects that achieve critical national objectives.

The 2012 spending bill includes $500 million for the TIGER (Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery) program. High-speed trains would have to compete with highway, transit, port and freight rail projects for money.

Since Obama took office in 2009, his administration has steered $10.1 billion to high-speed rail projects around the country. Some of the money is only now being used because of the time it takes to start up a major grant program and because the program suffered setbacks when several GOP governors canceled projects in their states that had been awarded funds.

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said Wednesday that he expects more than $1 billion in high-speed rail construction-related activity across the country next year.

The biggest project is in California, where the state is proposing Europe-style bullet trains traveling up to 220 mph between San Francisco and Anaheim. Planners hope to start construction of the first phase, from Fresno to Bakersfield, next year and complete it by 2017.

The project has been awarded $3.9 billion in federal aid so far. California voters also authorized $9 billion in bonds for high-speed trains in 2008. But at that time the project was forecast to cost $45 billion and be completed by 2020.

A new estimate and schedule released this month pegged the cost at just under $100 billion and pushed completion out to 2034. One reason for the cost increase is that it takes into account inflation over that period. But the price tag has strengthened the position of the project's opponents.

"What's frustrating about Congress passing no new funding this year is that it adds uncertainty to federal funding," said Petra Todorovitch, director of America 2050, an urban planning and infrastructure advocacy group. "That isn't helpful to projects like California that rely on a certain amount of federal funding."

The first phase of the California project is already funded.

"Some time in the next few years they will need Congress to vote for more money for rail, but it doesn't kill the project that Congress zeroed out funding this year," Petra said.

Mort Downey, the No. 2 Transportation Department official under President Bill Clinton and a former Obama campaign adviser, said Obama's high-speed rail plans depend on the California project.

"If California continues to go forward, we're still on life support," Downey said.

Anthony Perl, chairman of the Transportation Research Board's rail group, said that even if Obama's program collapses, it's "still highly likely" a national high-speed rail network will be built in coming decades, partly because the price of oil is expected to continue to increase.

"There is nothing that uses less oil than moving people than trains," Perl said. "Cheap oil equals more cars and planes; expensive oil equals trains."

California transportation officials estimate that if high-speed train service doesn't go forward, the state will need to spend $171 billion to construct more than 2,300 miles of freeways, four more airport runways and 115 additional airline gates to accommodate the travel demands of the state's population of 54 million people by 2050.

[john-ston]

To be honest, the United States Congress has bigger problems to deal with - they really need to address that deficit and get their huge debt under control (and it isn't just the $15 trillion they owe on paper, it is also the $100 trillion they owe to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid).

[pickle]

They need some higher taxes, that would solve their problems quite easily.

[john-ston]

They need some higher taxes, that would solve their problems quite easily.

Unfortunately it will not solve their problems - for instance, the corporate tax rate in the US is already the second highest in the OECD (the highest is Japan), and if that were to go up, then you would see firms simply head overseas.

Personally, I would simplify the US tax code, introduce a GST and cut expenditure.

[pickle]

Unfortunately the Tea Party idiots would never allow tax to be increased by a cent. And they're the ones that moan about debt being so high....

[duddley]

I think they are so far deep in debt that they may have to become a state of China!

[Kalelovil]

Unfortunately it will not solve their problems - for instance, the corporate tax rate in the US is already the second highest in the OECD (the highest is Japan), and if that were to go up, then you would see firms simply head overseas.

There is a significant difference between the legislated marginal tax rates for companies and individuals, and what large companies and wealthy individuals in the US in practise pay in tax.
There just hasn't been the political will to tackle that tax avoidance, as other countries do far more successfully, which isn't a surprise when the average US senator has a net worth of US$2.56m and it costs on average US$8.5m to run a successful US Senate campaign (US$1.4m for a successful House campaign).

[john-ston]

There is a significant difference between the legislated marginal tax rates for companies and individuals, and what large companies and wealthy individuals in the US in practise pay in tax.

Hence the simplify the US tax code comment, although I would point out that lower corporate tax rates usually correspond with booming economies.