The basis for the Biden Administration:
“Necessity is the plea of every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.” – William Pitt.
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Monday, March 19, 2018
Why they always lie to get their wasteful projects built. CRC, anyone?
Why?
Because they lie. And we let them get away with it.
Just ask Sen. Ann "Gas Tax" Rivers. The same lies we heard last time on the CRC/Loot Rail Scam.
A full-scale mock-up of a high-speed train is displayed at the Capitol in Sacramento, California, in 2015. A 520-mile Los Angeles-to-San Francisco line was approved 10 years ago. The cost has soared by the billions and the train has yet to be built. Washington Gov. Jay Inslee now says he wants a bullet train — a “monument to optimism,” he calls it. (Rich Pedroncelli/The Associated Press)
More examples this week of the real reasons our big public projects, like the Seattle streetcar, often get so off track. Up next is one of the biggest projects ever proposed in the Northwest. Will this one be more honest?
Seattle has a checkered history with transportation projects morphing into pricey boondoggles. On one day this past week there were two perfect illustrations why.
The first came in the form of a report in this newspaper that city officials last year lowballed the costs of a downtown Seattle streetcar. Nothing new there. Only this time, the costs were lowballed again even after city planners were told they were wrong.
“You aren’t changing anything in this operating plan,” a city transit chief rebuked another official, after it had been pointed out the new streetcars would cost 50 percent more to operate than either the public, or the City Council, had been told.
Fast forward and the streetcar line in question, along First Avenue, is under construction. So it’s too late to worry about a pesky 50 percent cost overrun! Mission accomplished.
Simply put, the political system first lowballs the costs and timelines in order to grease the projects for approval.This is a classic example of what university researchers have come to call “strategic misrepresentation” — or, as you amateurs might term it, “lying.” It is one of the two main reasons big public infrastructure projects are so often delivered late and way over budget.
The second reason was on radiant display Friday afternoon up in Vancouver, B.C. Our governor, who I like to call Sunny Jay for his effusive and often contagious enthusiasms, was on full beam when it came to a proposal to build a bullet train from Vancouver to Portland.
“When you build a high-speed rail line, you are building a monument to optimism,” the governor gushed. He went on to say that the Cascadia region’s unparalleled smarts, innovation and can-do spirit are what’s needed to get a projected 1.8 million riders annually speeding at 200-plus mph across the border.
The lies also come to grease the palms of the rent-seeking contractors and unions that love this big money wasting projects. This is NO justification for the CRC (with trolley cars -- a "great" 19th century technology), though an additional Columbia crossing (without trolley cars) is easily justified.
A "high speed" train from Vancouver BC to Portland would be a HUGE waste of resources. It would NEVER come anywhere close to delivering the "benefits" claimed. The money would be much better spent on improving I-5 and/or building a parallel freeway to I-5 (if geography would allow) to handle increased traffic flow and allow additional BUS traffic to move without delays. (Busses can be placed into service within weeks or months, especially if the highway infrastructure is kept up to date with traffic levels (that tend to increase with economic activity and as population grows).
The existing "Cascades" trains only "save" about 5 minutes over bus service between Portland/Seattle -- but the trains cost double or triple the ticket price ... and cost the tax payers several times the ticket price for each rider. (Note the recent Cascade "death train" and just over one busload of passengers -- on the INGNAUGRAL run. Rail transportation is one of the LEAST economic methods of moving people long distances overland.(Freight is another matter.) Trains work best in extremely high density corridors ... almost NO commuter train pays for itself (except in the New York City area) and no "high speed" train will have any chance what so ever to pay for itself ... except in the Northeast Corridor (between Washington DC and Boston). No other U.S. Route has anywhere near the density to support such trains. (But they pay contractors big bucks to build and unions get big bucks (these are taxpayer dollars we're talking about) to operate them.)
For the past 50 years I've heard comments about how "good" the trains in Europe are ... and Japan also has "wonderful" high speed trains. Well, Japan has a population of about 127 million living in the land area that approximates the size of California -- and a very large portion of the population is concentrated in about 1/2 the area -- perfect for high speed trains. Likewise, Europe's major cities are only a few hours apart via train -- most easily covered in less than a day. In the U.S. current trains take 2+ days to travel from Los Angeles, San Francisco, or Seattle to Chicago ... and another 18-24 hours to reach east coast destinations. Even if a high speed train cut the travel time by 2/3 ... it would still take 4 or 5 times LONGER than an airline flight.
It takes about 2 hours to fly from Seattle to San Francisco -- and less than an hour from San Francisco to Los Angeles -- and when all subsidies of each method are counted, the air travel more nearly is completely paid for by the passenger while the rail passengers hardly pay 30% of the costs!!! (Yeah, I think Amtrak is a big waste, too...)
PS. You'd never know that I had a 21 year career with a major western railroad .... including several years involved with passenger carriage ... indeed, I'm the last living pre-Amtrack "passenger sales representative" from that railroad. I love passenger trains ... but they are the epitome of 19th century technology. Too bad that our tax money squandering politicians don't realize that we're in the 21st century.
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The lies also come to grease the palms of the rent-seeking contractors and unions that love this big money wasting projects. This is NO justification for the CRC (with trolley cars -- a "great" 19th century technology), though an additional Columbia crossing (without trolley cars) is easily justified.
ReplyDeleteA "high speed" train from Vancouver BC to Portland would be a HUGE waste of resources. It would NEVER come anywhere close to delivering the "benefits" claimed. The money would be much better spent on improving I-5 and/or building a parallel freeway to I-5 (if geography would allow) to handle increased traffic flow and allow additional BUS traffic to move without delays. (Busses can be placed into service within weeks or months, especially if the highway infrastructure is kept up to date with traffic levels (that tend to increase with economic activity and as population grows).
The existing "Cascades" trains only "save" about 5 minutes over bus service between Portland/Seattle -- but the trains cost double or triple the ticket price ... and cost the tax payers several times the ticket price for each rider. (Note the recent Cascade "death train" and just over one busload of passengers -- on the INGNAUGRAL run. Rail transportation is one of the LEAST economic methods of moving people long distances overland.(Freight is another matter.) Trains work best in extremely high density corridors ... almost NO commuter train pays for itself (except in the New York City area) and no "high speed" train will have any chance what so ever to pay for itself ... except in the Northeast Corridor (between Washington DC and Boston). No other U.S. Route has anywhere near the density to support such trains. (But they pay contractors big bucks to build and unions get big bucks (these are taxpayer dollars we're talking about) to operate them.)
For the past 50 years I've heard comments about how "good" the trains in Europe are ... and Japan also has "wonderful" high speed trains. Well, Japan has a population of about 127 million living in the land area that approximates the size of California -- and a very large portion of the population is concentrated in about 1/2 the area -- perfect for high speed trains. Likewise, Europe's major cities are only a few hours apart via train -- most easily covered in less than a day. In the U.S. current trains take 2+ days to travel from Los Angeles, San Francisco, or Seattle to Chicago ... and another 18-24 hours to reach east coast destinations. Even if a high speed train cut the travel time by 2/3 ... it would still take 4 or 5 times LONGER than an airline flight.
It takes about 2 hours to fly from Seattle to San Francisco -- and less than an hour from San Francisco to Los Angeles -- and when all subsidies of each method are counted, the air travel more nearly is completely paid for by the passenger while the rail passengers hardly pay 30% of the costs!!! (Yeah, I think Amtrak is a big waste, too...)
PS. You'd never know that I had a 21 year career with a major western railroad .... including several years involved with passenger carriage ... indeed, I'm the last living pre-Amtrack "passenger sales representative" from that railroad. I love passenger trains ... but they are the epitome of 19th century technology. Too bad that our tax money squandering politicians don't realize that we're in the 21st century.