from Washington Examiner:
the U.S. Transportation Department is dangling money before the government of Iowa seeking matching funds from the state for a high-speed rail line from Iowa City to Chicago. The “high-speed” trains would average 45 miles per hour and take five hours to reach Chicago from Iowa City. One might wonder how big the market for this service is, since Iowa City and Johnson County have only 130,882 people; add in adjoining Linn County (Cedar Rapids) and you’re only up to 342,108—not really enough, one would think, to supply enough riders to cover operating costs much less construction costs.
Oh, one other thing. Cox reports that there is already luxury bus service, with plus for laptops and wireless Internet, from Iowa City
to Chicago. It’s part of a larger trend for private companies to offer convenient and inexpensive bus service. A one-way ticket on the bus costs $18, compared to a likely train fare of more than $50. And the bus takes only three hours and 50 minutes to get from Iowa City to Chicago. That’s one hour and 10 minutes faster than the “high-speed” train.
So here’s the logic that Comrade Obama (*DfOaLG) and Choo-Choo Biden want us to accept: It’s going to be better for the hordes of people that commute from Iowa City to Chicago (how many of these could there be, anyway?) to spend hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars to build a rail line that takes longer to get from point A to point B than the existing bus service? How is this good for anybody, except government agencies (who will likely add more staff to regulate and inspect the construction of said railroad) and unions (who will likely build them, given recent history)? It’s not a good deal for the taxpayers, I can assure you of that, and it doesn’t appear to be a good deal for prospective riders. So why build it?
Wendell Cox wrote about these kinds of goofy “nothing for something” projects at New Geography:
Further, this funding would be just the first step of a faux-high speed rail plan that envisions new intercity trains from Chicago across Iowa to Omaha. In the long run, this could cost the state hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars. Already, a similar line from St. Louis to Chicago has escalated in cost nearly 10 times, after adjustment for inflation, from under $400 million to $4 billion.
Unplanned cost overruns are the rule, rather than the exception in rail projects. European researchers Bent Flyvbjerg, Nils Bruzelius and Werner Rottengather (Megaprojects and Risk: An Anatomy of Ambition) and others have shown that new rail projects routinely cost more than planned (Note 1).
Flyvbjerg et al found that the average rail project cost 45 percent more than projected and that 80 percent cost overruns were not unusual. Cost overruns were found to occur in 9 of 10 projects. Further, they found that ridership and passenger fares also often fell short of projections, increasing the need for operating subsidies.
Did you get that? 80% cost overruns are not unusual. Somebody is getting taken advantage of in these projects, and my guess is it’s the taxpayers. Is it any wonder we’re sinking in a sea of debt, when supposedly intelligent public officials are making the kinds of decisions that give us these projects? Despite overwhelming evidence that they’re not needed, or wanted, government officials at all levels jump at the chance to initiate these rail projects, creating zero wealth, and accomplishing zero savings for anyone involved. On the contrary, they practically guarantee decades of losses, and the continual expectation of support from the taxpayers to keep them afloat. They probably better described as government-sponsored opportunities for certain groups of well-connected individuals (um, let’s see: politicians, and unions) to line their pockets through graft, corruption and ineptitude, disguised as “overruns.”
*Descended from Olympus and Lightworker Genius, on the order of Wile E. Coyote
