Currently viewing the tag: “Rail”
Daryl Cagle, MSNBC.com
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The battle over workers’ rights moves from state capitols to Capitol Hill next week when House Republicans will try to repeal rules that guarantee fair and democratic elections for workers who want to form unions.
The House is set vote on the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) reauthorization bill with a provision that would repeal last year’s new rule by the National Mediation Board (NMB) that says air and rail elections should be decided just like any other election—including congressional elections—by a majority of votes cast.
Previously under the Railway Labor Act (RLA), which covers rail and airline workers, each worker who did not cast a vote in a representation election was automatically counted as a “No” vote.
Republicans and their corporate partners in the transportation industry fought to block the NMB rule through the courts and with a Senate bill last year. They are now mounting a campaign to overturn it through the FAA bill and Delta Airlines is leading the way, reports Brian Beutler on Talking Points Memo.
Now, sources say, a similar fight is likely to play out on the House floor, and anti-union employees at Delta Airlines are preparing to fly to Washington to join the fight.
Beutler says the group “No Way AFA”-a coalition of Deltal employees who want to derail union rights-sent a message to its members obtained by TPM that asserts, “Delta strongly supports the bill” as currently written. AFA is the Association of Flight Attendants, the flight attendants union.
You can help by calling and urging your friends and co-workers to call your lawmakers and tell them to oppose the attack on workers rights and fair elections. Text NMB to 69866 to get the info.
The Senate version the FAA bill does not roll back the democratic election rule.
Click here for the full story and here for more information. Check out comments on about Beutler’s post:
Perhaps Congress should pass this same proposed rule for any election in the United States. In which case the number of non-voters would ensure that no individual is ever elected and no ballot measures ever pass.
And I love the hypocrisy…those “non-union” employees that don’t want to vote and don’t want to pay dues still want all the protections and benefits (although they are getting fewer and fewer) that the union can offer.-DaleD
Heck, if we established the same rule in the Senate the GOP senators wouldn’t even need to come to DC – they could just stay at home and vote “no” for everything.-al203cr
I’m a gold medallion on Delta and this is sad, but not surprising news. They are a southern, conservative company interested in creating as much wage-slavery as possible. Unions are anti-American, in their book, and you should hear the former, unionized Northwestern employees talk about how hard it’s been to get their voices heard by their new bosses.
I wrote a note today to complain about my last flight experience (which was awful), their lack of response to my last complaint, and this news about anti-union posturing. Needless to say, I let them know that yesterday’s flight was my last flight on Delta.-tockeyhOckey
Well they’ve gone and done it. The Republican Florida cabinet has abolished automatic restoration of rights, reviving the Jim Crow practice of putting up roadblocks to the resumption of the right to vote and to obtain certain professional certifications. Also, it turns out someone wasn’t telling the truth when it come to high speed rail […]
The Reid Report
Sarah Goodyear notes that though George Will decided this week that high-speed rail is a plot to brainwash people into becoming socialists, he himself was an HSR advocate just ten years ago. This, for example, is a very sensible point:
Two months ago this columnist wrote: “A government study concludes that for trips of 500 miles or less — a majority of flights; 40 percent are of 300 miles or less — automotive travel is as fast or faster than air travel, door to door. Columnist Robert Kuttner sensibly says that fact strengthens the case for high-speed trains. If such trains replaced air shuttles in the Boston-New York-Washington corridor, Kuttner says that would free about 60 takeoff and landing slots per hour.”
Thinning air traffic in the Boston-New York-Washington air corridor has acquired new urgency. Read Malcolm Gladwell’s New Yorker essay on the deadly dialectic between the technological advances in making air travel safer and the adaptations to these advances by terrorists.
I think this is very sensible. I also think it’s perfectly fair for Will to have changed his mind or to decide that the Obama administration’s HSR initiative doesn’t fit his idea of what our rail policy should be. But earlier this week, Will was saying that HSR investment is so obviously addled that liberals must be lying about their reasons for supporting it, leading him to his brainwashing hypothesis. But surely a person who used to be a pro-rail conservative should be able to at least imagine the possibility of sincere disagreement on this subject.
The Florida Supreme Court ruled that Rick Scott can refuse federal high speed rail money — and that he had not exceeded his constitutional authority in shutting down the project:
The Florida Supreme Court has upheld Gov. Rick Scott’s authority to kill the proposed Orlando-Tampa high-speed rail line.
The justices on Friday rejected a bipartisan challenge to the Republican governor’s refusal to accept $ 2.4 billion in federal stimulus money for the project.
The high court put the case on a fast track because U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood had given Scott until Friday to accept the money or lose it to similar projects in other states.
Scott has refused, saying he’s afraid Florida taxpayers may be on the hook for billions in cost overruns and operating subsidies.
Scott had been sued by two lawmakers — including one in his own party — to keep him from killing the project.
Governor Rick Scott won a huge court case where the Judge sided that Scott was within his authority to reject the $ 2.4 billion in federal money for the high-speed rail.
Scott saved US taxpayers a lot of money. Now that is what I call “winning the future.”
(CNN) – A proposed high-speed rail line in Florida may not be dead after all.
Florida Gov. Rick Scott rejected $ 2.4 billion in federal funding last week for a high-speed rail line between Tampa and Orlando, but the project has not run off the tracks yet. U.S. Department of Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood met with Scott Friday morning to discuss the plan in an attempt to keep it alive.
by Javier Manjarres
Following Florida Governor Rick Scott’s decision to scuttle the proposed High Speed Rail (HSR) project, Congressman Allen West has come out in support of the Governor’s decision to kill the project. West answered a constituent’s question regarding the HSR project by saying, ” I don’t see a need for High Speed rail here in the state Florida.”
West’s reasoning is that since 41 of 44 Amtrack lines lose money, “it’s a train to nowhere.”
Last week, Florida Governor Rick Scott (R) rejected $ 2.4 billion in federal funding for a proposed high-speed rail line from Tampa to Orlando. The governor’s decision was based upon the likelihood of an up to $ 3 billion cost overrun, the likelihood of operating subsidies, and the requirement that the federal grant would have to be repaid if trains were not operating frequently enough, even if they were nearly empty.
Governor Scott joins other governors in this trend: Governor Chris Christie (R), who canceled a new Hudson River tunnel that was already in the process of escalating the liability of New Jersey taxpayers, and Governors Scott Walker of Wisconsin (R) and John Kasich of Ohio (R), who canceled so-called high-speed rail projects in their own states that would travel little faster than the fastest trains of the 1930s.
Since Governor Scott’s action, there has been a flurry of activity by political officials, such as Senator Bill Nelson of Florida (D) and Congressman John Mica of Florida (R), to circumvent the Governor’s decision. It seems likely that the surviving proposal will be to establish a new local government entity along the corridor that would oversee the project. Arrangements need to be in place by Friday, according to Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood, or the funding goes to other states. This is indicative of the Obama Administration’s desperate efforts to force states to build high speed rail without regard to the costs.
Proponents are working overtime to convince the public that there is no taxpayer obligation and that a private consortium that would build and operate the system would pay for it. Anyone familiar with projects of this sort knows that no private consortium could sustain the potentially huge cost overruns and operating subsidies.
All parties agree that neither state nor local taxpayers must be liable for cost increases, operating subsidies or the potential return of money to the federal government. The reality, however, is that federal policy requires the state or local government receiving the federal funding to assume these liabilities. When the costs exceed the limited resources of the private consortium, only the taxpayers will be left.
Promises and statements from project promoters will not reimburse the taxpayers when the private consortium fails to pay. The inevitable statements of regret will do nothing to soften the blow.
Protecting the Taxpayers: It would be difficult, but not impossible, to establish guarantees that protect the taxpayers. Nothing less than the following would be required:
- Performance Bond: The private companies forming the consortium would need to post a performance bond to cover the potential capital cost increase ($ 3 billion) as well as potential operating subsidies. This would be an insurance policy to guarantee payment when the private consortium cannot pay. To proceed without this would be as foolhardy driving on a Los Angeles freeway without car insurance.
- Unlimited Corporate Guarantees: The private companies forming the consortium would need to provide corporate guarantees to cover cost overruns, operating subsidies and any eventual requirement to pay back the federal grant. This would be necessary to protect taxpayers if the performance bond (insurance policy) proves insufficient.
Promoters have confidently told the public that there will be no cost overruns and that operating subsidies will not be necessary—so there should be no objection to these requirements. Finally, similar taxpayer protections should be provided for all other federally funded high-speed rail projects, such as in California.
Special Treatment for Florida: There have been press reports that the proposed new corridor agency and its taxpayers would not be liable for the obligations described above. In fact, this would violate both federal policy and practice. Moreover, any such special treatment for Florida would doubtless bring a rash of requests from state and local governments that have had to pay for cost overruns in other such federally financed projects or recover money returned to Washington. Governor Christie might well be at the front of the line if this foolish project goes forward.
This is a 2010 piece that seems timely today given Obama’s efforts to jump-start high speed rail in America and the response by many conservative governors to block that effort (see “Passenger rail is not in Ohio’s future”: New GOP governors kill $ 1.2 Billion in high-speed rail jobs).
Guest bloggers Julian L. Wong and Nick Wellkamp walk us through China’s aggressive investments in high speed rail.
President Dwight D. Eisenhower put a down payment on the U.S. economy in 1956 by signing the National Interstate and Defense Highways Act. This wise investment in a modern, transformative transportation infrastructure—in the form of 41,000 miles of interstate highways—enabled the rapid movement of people and goods across the nation and was vital to our astounding economic progress for the next 50 years.
Today, it is China that is leading the world in a key next-generation transportation technology: high-speed rail. China has already built 4,000 miles of rail featuring trains with average speeds of 120 miles per hour or greater, and the country plans to build an additional 10,000 miles of high-speed rail connecting all of China’s major cities by 2020.
CAP experts experienced the high-speed rail firsthand during our recent [2010] fact-finding mission to China. We took the train from Beijing to Tianjin, reaching a top speed of 205 mph and covering the 73-mile journey—roughly the distance between New York and Philadelphia—in less than 30 minutes. Stepping off the rail platform, it was hard not to get the feeling that China is racing ahead in investing in mass public transit infrastructure while the United States is lagging behind in the race to develop clean energy industries.
China’s $ 300 billion investment in high-speed rail
China already boasts a rail network that, including both standard and high-speed rail, is more than 53,000 miles long. And China plans for that network to reach 68,000 in 2012 and 75,000 by 2020. All of China’s provincial capitals have been connected by rail since the 1960s, and unlike the United States, rail is already a major mode of intercity passenger transportation.
The country began planning its nationwide network of high-speed rail in the early 1990s. And China began implementing a series of six “speed-up” campaigns in the late 1990s to modernize its existing rail infrastructure by increasing the speed and capacity of its lines. It also plans to build new passenger-dedicated high-speed rail lines. Indeed, the centerpiece of China’s Medium- to Long-Term Railway Network Plan is a new national high-speed rail grid overlaid onto the existing rail network. The new grid would consist of four north-to-south corridors, four east-to-west corridors, and two additional intercity lines, all totaling some 7,500 miles when completed in 2020.
China will spend an estimated $ 300 billion to meet its 2020 goal for high-speed rail. Nearly 40 percent of China’s $ 586 billion economic stimulus package announced in 2008 was allocated to infrastructure projects, and a large portion was dedicated to high-speed rail, pushing forward many projects that were otherwise further down the project pipeline. Planners are now beginning to look for new sources of capital. The Beijing-to-Shanghai route that will open next year, for example, is owned and managed by a consortium that includes the Ministry of Railways, China’s national social security fund council, and an investment arm of one of China’s largest privately owned insurance companies. And there is some speculation that this consortium will seek capital market investors through a multibillion-dollar initial public offering in the near future.
Why it makes sense for China to invest in high-speed rail
Some have questioned the economics of high-speed rail. A common criticism is that the construction of rail infrastructure is very expensive and its operations may never be profitable. The Beijing-Tianjin line, for instance, is reportedly losing some $ 102 million per year. Another criticism is that high-speed rail tends to benefit the wealthier population more than the lower-income class because tickets for high-speed rail are more expensive than those for conventional rail or bus transportation.
But there are at least three compelling reasons to justify this heavy investment:
1. Increasing demands for human mobility
China is experiencing the biggest wave of migration in human history, with an estimated 300 million people relocating from rural to urban areas over the next two decades as part of an urbanization-led economic growth strategy. The country is facing a long-term challenge of meeting a sustained and unparalleled demand for all modes of transportation services, and high-speed rail figures prominently as part of the solution.
China’s floating population—rural citizens who have migrated temporarily to urban centers in search of work or educational opportunities—already accounts for more than 10 percent of its population of 1.3 billion. And there is a mad crush among these migrants every spring festival to hop on existing bus and rail lines to return to their home villages to be with their families for the most important Chinese cultural festival of the year. Migrant workers may not be able to afford high-speed rail fares at present, but expanded passenger rail capacity will eventually lead to more affordable prices over time.
2. Promoting economic development
A major reason for the push to build passenger-dedicated lines is to free up existing lines for freight capacity, which is sorely needed and has been unable to keep pace with the logistical demands of China’s growing national economy since the early 1990s. Additional freight capacity will not only facilitate domestic commerce, but also yield additional revenue that can offset the high costs of high-speed rail construction.
Increased connectivity between provincial capitals will enhance commercial interactions and stimulate the economy. An 800-mile line from Beijing to Shanghai—roughly the distance between Chicago and New York—will open next year, cutting what used to be a 10-hour journey by conventional rail down to four hours. The high-speed rail network will also reach out to cities in less developed western parts of China, stimulating economic activity there and helping to spread the wealth of China’s economy.
High-speed rail infrastructure also increases demand for commodities and creates hundreds of thousands of jobs in the construction, steel, cement, engineering, and manufacturing sectors. Construction of the Beijing-Shanghai line alone created employment for 100,000 workers and engineers.
The benefits of high-speed rail are not limited to China’s domestic market. China is poised to reap the economic benefits from being an exporter of knowledge, technology, and capital for high-speed rail projects worldwide. Chinese companies are already building high-speed rail lines in Turkey and Venezuela, and are in discussions with Brazil, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Poland to build projects there. And the Chinese have most recently signed cooperation agreements with the state of California and General Electric to explore the feasibility of building, financing, and licensing technology to build high-speed rail lines in California.
3. Promoting energy security and sustainability
China’s thirst for oil is growing, in no small part due to its expanding auto and aviation sectors. Half of its oil comes from foreign sources. And use of electric trains offsets the use of oil-based transportation such as automobiles and planes. Fares for high-speed rail are more expensive than conventional rail or bus, but they are half the price of fares for flights and take only slightly longer to travel. The 314-mile Zhengzhou-Xi’An high-speed rail line is already forcing some airlines to suspend their flights, while the Beijing-Tianjin line that we took has led to an 18 percent decline in bus trips. The additional freight capacity that results from passenger rail expansion can also replace more carbon-intensive modes of heavy-duty trucking.
Electrification often requires coal in China, but electric locomotives are much more efficient than oil-based locomotives and also provide the opportunity to utilize cleaner (and growing) sources of power from wind, solar, and biomass. As a result, increased use of high-speed rail over automobiles and planes will reduce dependence on foreign oil, cut local air pollution and carbon emissions, and help China achieve its goal of a low-carbon economy.
The land use issues involved in rail compared to highways are also noticeably lower, achieved largely by building the high-speed rail lines on new viaducts, bridges, and tunnels.
Land-use issues in high-speed rail
Rail infrastructure that relies on large numbers of viaducts, tunnels, and bridges raises overall construction costs, but China has been able to manage its costs in other ways. “The costs of Chinese high-speed rail lines are the lowest in the world because such a massive build-out creates an economy of scale, labor and basic material costs are relatively low, and China generally finishes building lines on time, and therefore avoids costly delays,” observes Will Freeman, a research analyst at Dragonomics, a Beijing-based industry research and advisory firm.
Perhaps most significantly, state-owned banks’ ability to provide multibillion-dollar loans at low interest rates accounts for China’s ability to scale up its infrastructure investments in a way no other country can. According to Freeman’s estimates, the costs of building high-speed rail are up to three times higher than conventional rail in Europe or Japan, but they are only one and a half times higher than conventional rail in China.
Of course, building infrastructure projects quickly can create unintended consequences. Construction of the Guangzhou-to-Wuhan express line, for example, along with an overextraction of groundwater, caused nearby land to sink, damaging 1,000 residents’ properties. And the use of viaducts, tunnels, and bridges may mitigate local land-use changes, but it increases the system’s lifecycle carbon footprint due to the increased use of materials (particularly concrete and steel) and energy. The carbon footprint of high-speed rail compared to other transportation modes also depends highly on ridership, providing another important reason, besides profitability, for employing competent operational management.
China’s philosophy: Import, digest, reinvent
The bigger picture of innovation and competitiveness shows that high-speed rail is yet another technological sector that demonstrates the classic Chinese industrial innovation model of “import-digestion-reinnovation” at work. China’s train technology is state of the art, but originally derived from French, German, and Japanese technology, and tweaked to adapt to domestic geographic conditions—although some have complained of unfair copying of foreign technology by the Chinese. As a result, Chinese rail companies now reportedly have 940 registered patents. In just over a decade since its first “speed-up” campaign, China is now ready to move from being an importer of high-speed rail technology and operational know-how to being an exporter.
The commitment to create the largest market and export base for high-speed rail is also attracting world-class research and development capabilities. IBM announced last summer the opening of its Global Rail Innovation Center in Beijing, where it will work with industry and universities to develop software solutions for high-speed rail operations.
What does this mean for the United States?
The U.S. federal government for most of the past decade has underinvested in its national passenger rail network while continuing to generously fund the interstate highway system and aviation industry, perpetuating high-carbon modes of transportation. There is only one high-speed rail line in the United States—the Acela Express that runs from Boston to Washington, D.C., covering 456 miles in seven hours. The recently opened Wuhan-to-Guangzhou line in China, by contrast, covers 600 miles in three hours.
Differences in political-economic structures and labor and resource costs between China and the United States may make it impossible for the United States to replicate the pace and scale of China’s infrastructure investments, but it is important for the United States to pursue its own strategy to upgrade its transportation infrastructure.
Fortunately, the current administration has laid down a sweeping vision that identifies 10 high-speed rail corridors—each between 100 to 600 miles in length—across the United States. But actual federal funding for this vision is a little more than $ 10 billion so far—a fraction of what China is spending, and certainly insufficient to cover the costs of all 10 projects.
The federal funding is designed to serve as a catalyst for nonfederal sources of funding. But making that vision a reality will require state governments and the private sector to recognize the economic, social, and environmental benefits of high-speed rail and make greater financial commitments. If the vision is not heeded, we will miss the opportunity to lay an important piece of what will be the foundation for a more sustainable and competitive economy.
- Julian L. Wong (then of CAP, now at DOE) and Nick Wellkamp
JR: The other reason to invest in high-speed rail is that airlines are the first industry to be wiped out by peak oil.
GOP Gov. Rick Scott has killed the high speed rail project in central Florida, but that doesn’t mean it’s dead. House Republicans and Democrats from along the I-4 corridor are trying to do everything they can to get the money and create badly needed jobs in their districts.
Advocates for high-speed rail in Florida were hustling to keep it alive late Friday, cobbling plans to accept the federal money Gov. Rick Scott rejected this week.
U.S. Rep. John Mica, R-Winter Park, floated a proposal to dramatically shrink the project to an Orlando International Airport to Walt Disney World link, cutting Tampa and Lakeland out of the mix, for now.
Mica, who chairs the House transportation committee, said an initial 21-mile starter train, with a stop at the Orange County Convention Center, shows the best ridership potential and could even turn a profit. Some portion of the $ 2.4 billion in federal grant money would flow to Orange and Osceola counties and the city of Orlando. The three governments would forge a compact to solicit bids and oversee construction of the project and other partner governments could be added later, he said.
The shorter distance likely would take much of the high speed out of high-speed rail in Florida. The trains have to travel several miles to reach speeds of 160 mph or more and slow down well in advance of stops.
Meanwhile, U.S. Rep Kathy Castor, D-Tampa, shared a legal opinion from Tampa City Attorney Chip Fletcher. It contends that there are a variety of ways local governments could team up to create an umbrella government to accept grant money and oversee the rail project. And Fletcher’s opinion states that either the Florida Department of Transportation or the Legislature could assign the federal grant money over to the newly created agency.
U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood gave state lawmakers a week to come up with a plan to keep the money from going to other states.
“And since Secretary LaHood gave us one week from today, everyone went to work today,” Castor said.
by Javier Manjarres
Longtime politico Roger Stone, is in full support of Governor Rick Scott’s decision to refuse Government dollars for the proposed High Speed rail in Florida. Stone says the Governor shows ” uncommon political courage” by refusing to accept ‘stimulus’ funds for a rail system that will in no doubt turn out to be a bust for taxpayers- ” a sink whole, a money loser, a train that could never make money”, as Stone puts it.
Stone however, feels that a speed rail route between Orlando and Miami would be a better choice than the already proposed Orlando-Tampa. Stone then goes on to give ” Stoney’ advise to Congressman Allen West about mastering being a Congressman before seeking higher office.
By Lone Shark
It’s not often that common sense and fiscal discipline wins the day at any level of government, but Governor Rick Scott deserves big kudos from you (and your kids if you have them) for doing the right thing for Florida and its long-term fiscal health, as he effectively killed the so-called High-Speed Rail (HSR) project which was planned to connect Tampa to Orlando. Governor Scott, like most other clear thinking people who understand the value of a dollar and what a cost/benefit analysis is, looked over the horizon and saw that Florida would have been saddled with an enormous long term fiscal loser in exchange for what?- maybe 20,000 jobs over the next five years, many of them temporary, that would be paid for with more borrowed federal money. Consider it yet another “stimulus” project that wouldn’t stimulate anything but our debt and the growth of government.
It’s a pretty good bet that either a Governor McCollum or a Governor Sink would have approved the HSR project regardless of its bleak long term fiscal projections, as that’s the very short-term thinking we’ve come to expect from politicians of all stripes. But as is typically the case in government, no good deed goes unpunished, and Scott is getting blowback from every direction, including a somewhat unexpected source, as a veto-proof group of State Senators have issued a public rebuke of Scott’s decision to kill HSR.
It’s almost embarrassing to read the letter this group of 26 State Senators sent to Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood practically begging him not to give these rejected federal monies to another state as if it were somehow their birthright. Their letter deadpans that ”Politics should have no place in the future of Florida’s transportation, as evidenced by this letter of bipartisan support.”
Come again, Senators? Governor Scott’s decision to kill HSR is based on his very sober cost/benefit analysis of the project. You can agree or disagree with Governor Scott’s decision, but your support of HSR is as every bit “political” as his decision was to kill the project.
“The truth is that this project would be far too costly to taxpayers and I believe the risk far outweighs the benefits.” - Governor Rick Scott
With 14 trillion dollars of federal debt hanging over our heads and deficits as far as the eye can see, anyone who put their signature on the letter should be ashamed, particularly its Republicans signatories who talk about fiscal restraint when it’s convenient and yet somehow seem to think that borrowed federal dollars grow on trees. It should go without saying, but major government expenditures such as these should live or die based on a rigorous cost/benefit analysis, and this project in particular should never have been viewed as a foregone conclusion simply because a Passenger Rail Commission was already established.
Incredibly ignorant commentary is also popping up in response to Scott’s decision to nix the HSR project. Palm Beach Post columnist Frank Cerabino opined that “Florida may just need a natural disaster for its own good…because it’s becoming clear that our new governor, Rick Scott, thinks that federal partnerships are, by definition, evil.”
Aside from Cerabino’s reprehensible comment, it’s clear he doesn’t have a clue about what the proper role of the federal government should be vis-a-vis state government. Can’t he understand the cosmic difference between the assistance that the federal government provides the states in a natural disaster versus foisting a terrible long term investment on the residents of Florida? Obviously not.
“I hate to say it, but Florida may just need a natural disaster for its own good. It doesn’t have to be catastrophic. A simple state of emergency may be enough to do the trick. Because it’s becoming clear that our new governor, Rick Scott, thinks that federal partnerships are, by definition, evil. And it just might be that without proper treatment, this psychological condition will continue to exist among him and his not-so-merry band of delusional pretend-patriots until Republican control is fully restored to Washington. In the meantime, the rest of us have to suffer along with a politically useful 1776 fairy tale story.” - Frank Cerabino, Palm Beach Post
Let’s get to the heart of the matter here- it would have been an epic waste of money for Florida taxpayers to pay untold billions so that a limited number of people could save 20 minutes of travel time on a typical one hour and fifteen minute drive from Tampa to Orlando. High Speed Rail projects are guaranteed fiscal losers that will never come close to sustaining themselves by user fees alone. As the State of Wisconsin is rightfully standing up to its public sector unions, now is the time for Floridians get Governor Scott’s back and stand up to misguided federal transportation initiatives. A bipartisan coalition is already seeking to bypass the Governor’s decision. When will our public officials finally realize the unquestioned fiscal party at taxpayer expense is over?
By Lone Shark
It’s not often that common sense and fiscal discipline wins the day at any level of government, but Governor Rick Scott deserves big kudos from you (and your kids if you have them) for doing the right thing for Florida and its long-term fiscal health, as he effectively killed the so-called High-Speed Rail (HSR) project which was planned to connect Tampa to Orlando. Governor Scott, like most other clear thinking people who understand the value of a dollar and what a cost/benefit analysis is, looked over the horizon and saw that Florida would have been saddled with an enormous long term fiscal loser in exchange for what?- maybe 20,000 jobs over the next five years, many of them temporary, that would be paid for with more borrowed federal money. Consider it yet another “stimulus” project that wouldn’t stimulate anything but our debt and the growth of government.
It’s a pretty good bet that either a Governor McCollum or a Governor Sink would have approved the HSR project regardless of its bleak long term fiscal projections, as that’s the very short-term thinking we’ve come to expect from politicians of all stripes. But as is typically the case in government, no good deed goes unpunished, and Scott is getting blowback from every direction, including a somewhat unexpected source, as a veto-proof group of State Senators have issued a public rebuke of Scott’s decision to kill HSR.
It’s almost embarrassing to read the letter this group of 26 State Senators sent to Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood practically begging him not to give these rejected federal monies to another state as if it were somehow their birthright. Their letter deadpans that ”Politics should have no place in the future of Florida’s transportation, as evidenced by this letter of bipartisan support.”
Come again, Senators? Governor Scott’s decision to kill HSR is based on his very sober cost/benefit analysis of the project. You can agree or disagree with Governor Scott’s decision, but your support of HSR is as every bit “political” as his decision was to kill the project.
“The truth is that this project would be far too costly to taxpayers and I believe the risk far outweighs the benefits.” - Governor Rick Scott
With 14 trillion dollars of federal debt hanging over our heads and deficits as far as the eye can see, anyone who put their signature on the letter should be ashamed, particularly its Republicans signatories who talk about fiscal restraint when it’s convenient and yet somehow seem to think that borrowed federal dollars grow on trees. It should go without saying, but major government expenditures such as these should live or die based on a rigorous cost/benefit analysis, and this project in particular should never have been viewed as a foregone conclusion simply because a Passenger Rail Commission was already established.
Incredibly ignorant commentary is also popping up in response to Scott’s decision to nix the HSR project. Palm Beach Post columnist Frank Cerabino opined that “Florida may just need a natural disaster for its own good…because it’s becoming clear that our new governor, Rick Scott, thinks that federal partnerships are, by definition, evil.”
Aside from Cerabino’s reprehensible comment, it’s clear he doesn’t have a clue about what the proper role of the federal government should be vis-a-vis state government. Can’t he understand the cosmic difference between the assistance that the federal government provides the states in a natural disaster versus foisting a terrible long term investment on the residents of Florida? Obviously not.
“I hate to say it, but Florida may just need a natural disaster for its own good. It doesn’t have to be catastrophic. A simple state of emergency may be enough to do the trick. Because it’s becoming clear that our new governor, Rick Scott, thinks that federal partnerships are, by definition, evil. And it just might be that without proper treatment, this psychological condition will continue to exist among him and his not-so-merry band of delusional pretend-patriots until Republican control is fully restored to Washington. In the meantime, the rest of us have to suffer along with a politically useful 1776 fairy tale story.” - Frank Cerabino, Palm Beach Post
Let’s get to the heart of the matter here- it would have been an epic waste of money for Florida taxpayers to pay untold billions so that a limited number of people could save 20 minutes of travel time on a typical one hour and fifteen minute drive from Tampa to Orlando. High Speed Rail projects are guaranteed fiscal losers that will never come close to sustaining themselves by user fees alone. As the State of Wisconsin is rightfully standing up to its public sector unions, now is the time for Floridians get Governor Scott’s back and stand up to misguided federal transportation initiatives. A bipartisan coalition is already seeking to bypass the Governor’s decision. When will our public officials finally realize the unquestioned fiscal party at taxpayer expense is over?
