Several states looked at the proposal and saw a black hole for money, large portions of which would go to lawyers who would fight for environmental impact statements and new routings to keep the thing out of the better neighborhoods. They also looked at the ridership projections and noted that they would need more population in their states to be able to fill the cars. Almost everybody turned the offer of partial Federal funding down as unaffordable.
Except California. There it made perfect sense to assume that a quarter the population of the state would want to travel from near L.A. to San Francisco every Tuesday and then return on Thursday, while another quarter would be going the other way. The cost would be borne by the Federal monies the other states had given up, and the whole thing would run about $46Bn. So they approved $10Bn to establish the bureaucracy to run it and do an actual cost study. While this was being done, a preliminary route was selected, which brought out the lawyers demanding environmental impact statements and new routings to keep the thing out of the better neighborhoods.
Then the first cost studies came in, and it now looks like $46Bn will barely buy track from somewhere outside of L.A. to the ever popular hip Mecca of Bakersfield. Building the whole thing is currently estimated at $96Bn and I doubt that anyone thinks that’s accurate either. Directors are bailing out of their plum positions on the H.S. Rail board like rats from an Italian cruise ship. Speed is projected to approach that of the DC-3, and the fare would be about 50% more than the current jet airfare for the same trip. Governor Brown continues to believe, but then the 60’s were very kind to him.
Here in Colorado, we do things differently. Some time back the Mayor of Denver got the idea to resurrect a chunk of the long-defunct Denver tramway system, which had been shut down and the tracks paved over for lack of revenue. He arranged to get built a short stretch of tracks that ran from about 1-1/2 miles south of downtown, through downtown, and about 1-1/2 miles eastward toward the airport. The promise was that the line would soon be extended to the airport and thus serve some useful purpose.The reality was that it ended in rather a seedy part of town. Interestingly the merchants, seeing the “tourists” riding to the end-o-tracks, spiffed up their businesses and formed a low-key vigilance committee to discourage the less reputable denizens from hanging out within sight of the line and are now doing well for themselves. The airport it was going to serve has been closed and moved a long ways out of town.
That first short stretch was the camel’s nose pushing into the tent. The RTD (Reason To Drive) figured out that if they forced riders onto their existing line, they could justify more lines. Did I mention that fares are a lot higher on the trolley? Did I mention that the subsidies are much higher for the trolley? The current plan is to build multiple legs running out to the sort of places people move to to avoid hearing about Denver. Vince Carroll at the Denver Post has a column suggesting that the rail boondoggle now absorbs over half of the state’s transportation budget.
According to the Denver Regional Council of Governments, transit investment in this region dwarfs all state and federal spending on highways and roads. Between 2008 and 2011, those sources will channel $1.8 billion into transportation, with two-thirds of it for transit.
Cities and counties also spend a lot on roads - roughly $1.6 billion a year, according to an estimate that Steve Cook, DRCOG's transportation planning manager, was kind enough to pull together for me. But only about one-fourth of that is invested in the arterial corridors that count for this discussion.
Doing the math suggests that transport subsidies of buses and trains now absorbs about half of all the monies spent on servicing transportation in Colorado. And still we wonder why the roadways are crowded and dangerous. The price of this toy train set has been rising at a rate of about $1Bn/year and the completion date is out to 2044 by which time I don’t doubt that the last legs will be the ones connecting Ft Collins on the north and Pueblo on the south with the baseball stadium downtown.Oh yes, and the West Link, running from Greenwood Village to Aspen Ski resort.
2 comments:
I envision a hybrid train, running from downtown Colorado Springs to the top of Pike's Peak.
Use solar energy to pull the train up the hill with a cable, just like San Francisco would do. Then (here is the great part), you let the train *coast* down however fast it wants to go! And you hook all the wheels to generators, and recharge the last car, which is full of batteries that will be used to recharge the electric car batteries that the city of Colorado Springs would buy, to make the hybrid train pay off!
I imagine another line from Colorado Springs, then coasting to Castle Rock, and winching again up toward the crest south of Denver, then coasting down again into Denver could service all three towns! Run a line from Arapahoe Avenue up to Mountain Air Ranch, and voiler! another sweet tourist venue and free energy!
(I doubt that last would see an awful lot of traffic, though, since there wouldn't be a lot of 'commute' traffic to Mountain Air Ranch. But a stop at the Lockheed Martin plant could be a winner!)
On the other hand, I understand that city bonds, generally, are getting harder to sell to the public, and even harder to find financiers that will stake the money. You might mention to the City Fathers, "Um, how does this *not* look like what Greece did, before they went broke and sold their utilities and sovereign identity?"
While more than half of the funds go to trains, the real bulk of ridership remains the buses. And the funding, coming from a regressive sales tax surcharge, comes largely from those bus riders - demographically speaking - not the train riders.
So we have the lower class subsidizing the upper class. Brilliant. Same thing with the Los Angeles area MTA and its "Metrorail" fiasco.
Post a Comment