Obama to call for $53B for high-speed rail - MSNBC

afiggatt wrote:Also $53 billion is an around 4 weeks of current DOD funding, not even including the costs for the continuing operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

David Benton wrote:4 weeks defence spending , wow .

According to this article: http://www.militarytimes.com/news/2011/ ... ts-021011/

"On Wednesday, Republican lawmakers rolled out a plan to give the Pentagon about $518 billion, which is about $1 billion more than the 2010 level".
Just an FYI, a 2011 budget has yet to be passed, so they are operating at 2010 budget levels. If you do the math, that comes out to be 39.6 billion in 4 weeks. Mind you, that has to cover four branches of service, and all the current development costs, project costs,etc for each branch, as well as costs for Iraq and Afghanistan. Some would argue argue its still too much, but others would argue that it inst enough (if you look around the web, there is alot of info on how drastic some cuts have had to be for the military).

Also to consider: The size of Amtrak's operations is quite a bit smaller than that of the cargo/logistical operations of the USAF alone. So its not as clean cut as "this department gets more than that department, they should be equal."

Back on topic: There is still no denying that the DoD's budget is enormous compared to any proposed HSR funding, and I am sure Amtrak could do quite a bit with just 4 weeks worth of the DoD's budget. I'd love to see the $53 billion pass for HSR/Amtrak.

*Note: I am not trying to start the debate on if the DoD's budget is necessary, just providing facts. Please, keep this conversation on topic so it doesn't get locked by the mods.*

For what it's worth, the highly-respected rail journalist Fred W. Frailey painted a gloomy forecast for what I'll characterize as "true" HSR in the U S in his column in this month's Trains. Here's a link:

http://district5diary.blogspot.com/2011 ... il-is.html

I'm not attempting to "diss" the entire HSR concept; if anything, I think its suitability (within major corrifdors only) is understated, particularly if, as I suspect, we're in for another ugly lesson in the economics of petroleum this summer. But the most zealous of the HSR advocacy has, in the mindset of many of us who follow statecraft on a daily basis, been caught up on one side of a highly polarized issue. Only time will tell if it can be extricated from this "cornfield meet" with the damage limited to a point where meaningful progress can be resumed fairly quickly.

i was listening to national radio today , there was an interesting piece on the benefits of govt spending on infrastructure . it stated that 50 % of economic growth in the USA came from govt spending on infrastructure . I didnt catch what period they were talking about , but i think it was either the 30's or 50 's . but it was saying that the govt spending so demonised by most economists , actually created more growth dollar for dollar than private sector spending , and by a wide margin .
If you think about it , how can hsr not be a good investment ??? .I think the only problem is that they will not invest enough in it .

David Benton wrote:i was listening to national radio today , there was an interesting piece on the benefits of govt spending on infrastructure . it stated that 50 % of economic growth in the USA came from govt spending on infrastructure . I didnt catch what period they were talking about , but i think it was either the 30's or 50 's . but it was saying that the govt spending so demonised by most economists , actually created more growth dollar for dollar than private sector spending , and by a wide margin .
If you think about it , how can hsr not be a good investment ??? .I think the only problem is that they will not invest enough in it .

I think it is the so-called "Chicago School" of economists that were so keen to discredit Keynes that they wanted to reduce all forms of government expenditure. The harm they have done throughout the world is hard to count up. NZ was one of their experimental areas - with Rogernomics.

The US is steadily reducing itself to third world status by following this economic theory.

According to some of the sources I follow, a split is developing within the Obama administration, between an "Establishment Liberal" faction, which supports a large package of new centrally-coordinated programs with a substantial increase in marginal tax rates to finance it, and a faction composed primarily of ethnic minorities and recent immigrants, who live much "closer to the street" and are more concerned with day-to-day issues.

The New Deal worked in part because it rested on an uneasy alliance between rural Southerners (susceptible to the populism of Huey Long) and urban ethnic blue-collar workers (prone to the populism of Father Charles Coughlin); the majority of non-whites simply did not have a say in the matter at the time, and that scenario can not be replicated today. SOURCE: David Kennedy, "Freedom from Fear", the Oxford History of the American People - Vol 9

With the continuing financial crisis now straining state and municipal budgets, not to mention a fiscally-conservative coalition which quickly revived in the wake of TARP and the bailouts, this does not bode well for further attempts to expand the role of the Federal government along the lines of the New Deal and the failed Great Society, and it is not a concept with which a reasonable development of rail transport alternatives should be associated in the form of an exotic, expensive and inflexible figurehead. The struggling, presumably?-legal newcomer is likely more interested in obtaining a set of wheels, however shopworn, and possibly, inexpensive local and regional transportation, than in a shiny new Acela targeted mostly toward an upscale urbanite market.

Last week, I posted

Stridency hurt the Administration with regard to the health-care issue during its first two years, yet they seem determined to hold to the same strategy.

and Mr. Petrich replied

Stridency? Obama's team wimped out on the public option, and if anything, the stridency was on the other side, with rhetoric like "death panels".

In rebuttal,I woud submit that the "public option", viewed by many conservatives as likely to turn Medicare into a health-care ghetto along the lines of Medicaid, is precisely what derailed any attempt at reasonable health-care reform. The same principle applies with regard to transportation planning.

Unfortunately, the politics of this will likely prevent the successful implementation of HSR. HSR could work if the right markets are served by putting the stations where they *should* be - downtowns and airports.

george matthews wrote:

David Benton wrote:i was listening to national radio today , there was an interesting piece on the benefits of govt spending on infrastructure . it stated that 50 % of economic growth in the USA came from govt spending on infrastructure . I didnt catch what period they were talking about , but i think it was either the 30's or 50 's . but it was saying that the govt spending so demonised by most economists , actually created more growth dollar for dollar than private sector spending , and by a wide margin .
If you think about it , how can hsr not be a good investment ??? .I think the only problem is that they will not invest enough in it .

I think it is the so-called "Chicago School" of economists that were so keen to discredit Keynes that they wanted to reduce all forms of government expenditure.

We now live in the the era of modified Keynesian economics, which is precisely how I describe the work of Milton Friedman. Many of Keynes theories were highly flawed, but politicians always embraced the concept of borrowing money to spend on pork barrel projects. Everyone loves big fat contracts. Politician basically hand the money over to their buddies who in turn make campaign contributions - or simply rewards the pols more directly. Freezers full of cash. Free houses. That sort of thing.

Of course, nobody cares to pay down the resulting deficits during times of prosperity, which is the other side of Keynesian economics. It also is impolite to mention precisely why Keynesian economics failed during the 1970s, when high unemployment coexisted with high inflation. Keynes didn't anticipate that. In truth, Keynes was the P.T. Barnum of Economics. Keynes was a great promoter but not much of theorist.

Currently, the debt issue is the real problem. We've primed the pump in just about every way imaginable. The money is gone and now we're starting to see the consequences of the spending spree. Did it work? Should the money have been spent more wisely? All I can state with certainty is that the money has been spent. It's over and done with.

As it happens, the bulk of the money wasn't spent on HSR. There was a very brief opportunity in 2009 to fully fund very significant HSR projects. Now it's gone. It's over.

I think the bulk of the debt was not public debt ( govt debt ) but private debt , and at least alot of the govt debt produced some infrastructure , whereas the private debt brought big flash cars to be sold at auction for a tenth of the price . It is amusing to see people talking about govt debt whilst maxing the credit card to the hilt . (not that im saying anyone here is necessarrily doing that ).

The point is , hsr is a relatively small investment , and in the end there will be something to show for it , even if it turns into ordinary speed rail , or even the row converted to a road .

David Benton wrote:I think the bulk of the debt was not public debt ( govt debt ) but private debt , and at least alot of the govt debt produced some infrastructure , whereas the private debt brought big flash cars to be sold at auction for a tenth of the price .

That example is pure nonsense. Used car values are buoyant, having recovered some time ago, and collectible car values barely went down during the recession. Nobody was buying cars for ten cents on the dollar at auctions, even during the depths of the recession.

David Benton wrote: It is amusing to see people talking about govt debt whilst maxing the credit card to the hilt . (not that im saying anyone here is necessarrily doing that )

There's a bit of a difference between an individual being in debt and defaulting and an entire country doing the same.

David Benton wrote:The point is , hsr is a relatively small investment , and in the end there will be something to show for it , even if it turns into ordinary speed rail , or even the row converted to a road .

First of all, HSR is not a small investment. The capital costs are astronomical, and in the context of Florida, individual counties would have been forced increase taxes to pay for operating subsidies. That is a staggering burden.

Finally, an abandoned or incomplete right of way is of very little immediate value in comparison to the costs. It's also hard to convert a railroad right of way into a highway, and within the context of Florida, it wouldn't make any sense whatsoever.

218+51+1

If you want HSR, write your Congresscritters and Senators:

www.house.gov
www.senate.gov

In the current House, the reasonable man would not expect this proposal to get very far, absent a lot of voter support.

John_Perkowski wrote:218+51+1

If you want HSR, write your Congresscritters and Senators:

http://www.house.gov
http://www.senate.gov

In the current House, the reasonable man would not expect this proposal to get very far, absent a lot of voter support.

If you want HSR, this proposal is a non-starter. I think it's better to make a fresh start than to press ahead with an unholy mess. This sort of funding could have been accomplished in a single fiscal year, but it's not 2009 anymore.

If you want HSR, it's time to demand labor concessions and a viable funding base for passenger rail. After all, Wisconsin, Ohio and now Florida have all rejected HSR grants due to the thorny issue of funding operating losses.

It's time to restart the HSR debate and concentrate on the fundamentals of passenger rail. It's one thing to build a line or institute a service, but another to commit to ever increasing operating subsidies.

As far as "voter support," I just don't see any. If anything, HSR has become a political albatross, not only damaging Amtrak's immediate prospects, but setting back the cause of passenger rail.

goodnightjohnwaynewrote:

If you want HSR, it's time to demand labor concessions and a viable funding base for passenger rail. After all, Wisconsin, Ohio and now Florida have all rejected HSR grants due to the thorny issue of funding operating losses.

It's time to restart the HSR debate and concentrate on the fundamentals of passenger rail. It's one thing to build a line or institute a service, but another to commit to ever increasing operating subsidies.

As far as "voter support," I just don't see any. If anything, HSR has become a political albatross, not only damaging Amtrak's immediate prospects, but setting back the cause of passenger rail.

Hear!, Hear! ... (underlining for emphasis added)

As of right now, the price of regular at local outlets is right about where it was in early March of 2008 ... it simply manifested itself a month sooner. We might not have as robust?? ... an economy as three years ago, but the possiblity of speculative interest pushing prices up is at least as great, and there's no guarantee the Middle East won't heat up.

The public ... at least the part that reads beyond the "pop wisdom" .... is slowly catching on to the fact that petroleum supply is going to place a semi-permanent limit on economic recovery in North America unless the development of serious and pragmaitic alternatives are addressed. The private industrial sector is ruled by econmic reality, and will adjust on its own.

But while high prices will dissuade some casual automotive use, I've always been a believer in the adage that you can catch more flies with sugar than you can with vinegar. And the billions sought for HSR use could generate more attention, in more markets, if they were diverted toward expanding our current suburban rail networks further into the exubs. The success of higher speeds onthe NEC is probably the strongest evidence in support of this point.

If you want HSR, it's time to demand labor concessions and a viable funding base for passenger rail. After all, Wisconsin, Ohio and now Florida have all rejected HSR grants due to the thorny issue of funding operating losses.

I'm all for viable funding bases, whether on the federal or state level. But a major issue is that a lot of people don't want ANY funding base to be required for rail service. Critics want HSR to make money, to be independent of ANY public funding source, and they hold faithfully to this line when in fact this has not been easily achieved anywhere on the planet. I am more than happy to hear examples where this theory has worked, but I think we all know that TOTAL self sufficiency (covering all infrastructure and operating costs with farebox revenue) doesn't happen often, nor is it necessarily required to have a successful rail line. This is a major mental roadblock that can stop a project dead in its tracks. Even if you relieved a state of the burden of funding the losses of a HSR route, the issue would simply become a federal one to be kicked around by fiscal conservatives in Congress.

A HSR proposal that predicts 100% self-sufficiency is, at the very least, being extremely optimistic. At the worst, it represents a deliberate and misleading departure from reality. On the flip side, a HSR critic demanding that a system be 100% self-sufficient is....exactly those same things. Extremely optimistic, or willfully ignorant of reality. Perhaps somewhere in between.

It would be unwise of me to say that it is impossible to have an effective HSR (or medium speed rail) line that requires no financial support from any government. But to hold all rail proposals to such a standard is a case of letting perfect be the enemy of good. Or letting fantasy trump reality. Either way, I'm tired of this enormous red herring. It's like demanding that someone build you a car that costs nothing to maintain and doesn't require any sort of fuel.

So...a viable funding base could allay some fears and establish some sort of consistency that more states are comfortable with. But when the most strident opponents of HSR do not want ANY funding base to be required whatsoever, where do you go from there?

2nd trick op wrote:And the billions sought for HSR use could generate more attention, in more markets, if they were diverted toward expanding our current suburban rail networks further into the exubs. The success of higher speeds onthe NEC is probably the strongest evidence in support of this point.

What makes you think that the transit authorities are so popular with the voters? You need look no further than the MTA, which is the subject of almost universal ridicule due to a 3 year old payroll tax, not to mention the general financial quagmire and garden variety service complaints. As far as expanding service, voters have rejected the expansion of Metro-North north of Poughkeepsie, despite already paying MTA taxes. Before advocating Federally funded expansion of commuter rail, it would be advisable to reform the authorities and gain support from state and local voters. Otherwise, you'd see commuter rail grants being rejected by governors, of both parties, much in the same way that HSR grant money has been rejected.

The NEC might be the only existing, sustainable HSR market, but the nationwide HSR controversy has hurt the prospects for increasing or even sustaining Amtrak funding.