The High Speed rail from Milwaukee to Madison has been an issue in the upcoming election season. Bruce Murphy breaks it down so simple even Scott Walker could understand.
As Murphy points out to the true blue “conservatives”:
All transportation is subsidized. The state spends more than $2 billion annually to subsidize roads and highways and $66 million just on the Milwaukee County bus system.
He also points out something very important to think about when casting your vote this November:
What stands out about high-speed rail is what a small percentage of the costs will be borne by Wisconsin taxpayers. If Republicans try to kill it next year, they would leave state taxpayers repaying hundreds of millions in federal funds the Doyle administration will have spent by then. By far the cheaper alternative for state taxpayers is continuing with the high-speed rail line. The small state subsidy it will require seems a cheap way to better connect the state’s biggest city and its governmental center, not to mention connecting UW-Madison’s huge research institution and biotech industry with Milwaukee’s economy and academic institutions. Heck, it would also bring more Madison fans to Milwaukee Brewers and Bucks games.
Of course the difference is, people actually, you know, use the roads and bus system. Not to mention, subsidizing buses helps provide mobility to the poorest who can’t afford cars. The Madison to Milwaukee train is going to have a median income per rider well into the territory you folks like to vilify.
“By far the cheaper alternative for state taxpayers is continuing with the high-speed rail line.”
Absent from Mr. Murphy’s analysis is any rider or revenue projections. Without these figures, you cannot reach the conclusion that it would be cheaper to finish the rail. It’s one thing to build a massive infrastructure that will produce positive cash flow. Certainly, this country’s interstate system has done that. It’s quite another thing to build a massive infrastructure that will produce yearly negative cash flow.
Instead, we hear only that we would have to return “stimulus money.” (See e.g., http://www.triplepundit.com/2010/08/republicans-scott-walker-high-speed-rail-is-political-stupidity-2/ ) So what? Some times the best financial move that can be made is cutting a loss short.
I have yet to see any competent projections that would evidence: (1) a need for the rail; (2) yearly revenue projections; (3) and yearly cost projections. It is simply gross negligence to go forward without this project without the necessary DD. This “if you build it, they will come” mentality” is reckless. Is what the private sector did to create the real estate bubble. Now the public sector is repeating those same mistakes on a larger scale–where the risk will be even larger.
Super, I will agree with you that I am not exactly sure that we need the train either. I have not seen competent cost/ revenue projections either. As for the need as someone who travels it often, I think its obvious the need is there.
If we were paying for it I would say we need to slow down, but these are train dollars no matter what. If they dont build the milw-Madison train they will use those dollars to build it elsewhere.
I also dont think this is comparable to the housing bubble. The banks inflated the housing bubble to keep soaking profits. That is why they couldnt sell the mortgages quick enough and couldnt care less if people made their payments or not.
I also find it interesting that$850 million federal dollars is too much for the train, but a billion to add a lane between Beloit and Madison on I39-90 and no one bats an eye.
See that’s the attitude that just disgusts me. IT’S NOT FREE! It’s exactly that attitude that makes our federal government so inept – spending so out of control. Setting aside the fact that we pay at least some of the money the fed spends, why is it OK to spend money on a project of…questionable utility (being generous) if the money comes from people from other states? What makes wasting their money any different than them wasting our money on something like the bridge to nowhere?
The golden rule should apply – do unto others…
The other thing…about the whole, “the money was only available for trains anyway thing”…That’s just another poor decision the Administration and Congress made. Remember the I-35 bridge disaster? How inspections of other bridges across the country resulted in the discovery that there were many structurally deficient bridges? We could have – should – have spent a large chunk of the stimulus money on them. Generating work & employing people to fix things that are actually heavily used and were in need of repair anyway. Work that needed to be done, just moving it ahead of schedule with benefits that would pay dividends for decades. Infrastructure projects that have the most benefit to the most people. As people were saying a few weeks back, how about work necessary to fix Milwaukee’s sewers? That would’ve benefitted so many people and saved millions of dollars in future damages. Instead, greed & politics dictated how the money was spent. “Cool, we like trains, let’s spend some money on them.” $50 million for the National Endowment for the Arts. $400 million for global warming research. $650 million for TV coupons for the digital transition. Less than 5% went to roads & bridges. A cost benefit analysis should have been done on every program & every dime spent. I don’t care if it’s trains, bridges, sewers, roads, dams for hydro, whatever, and I don’t care what states it goes to, so long as it’s a good ROI.
Nobody saw the need for the interstate highways in 1953 except for President Eisenhower. And they weren’t built from coast to coast before they opened…they were built segment by segment over a period of twenty years…I am not sure I would ride the train to Madison very often…but I do take it to Chicago and would certainly take it to Minneapolis (and I would probably go to Minneapolis more than I do now if there were a train).
BUT IT’S NOT HIGH SPEED RAIL…it’s just a fast train…the Milwaukee Road was running steam passenger rail at these speeds in the 1950s…bullet trains are high speed rail and that ain’t what we are buying.