Mr. Governor, Back Away from the Shiny Trains
by Kristina Rasmussen Governor Pat Quinn is spending more of your money to study the feasibility of “high speed” rail lines in Illinois. Not daunted by the $8 billion budget deficit he’s failed to balance, yesterday the governor announced $1.25 million to study high speed rail between Chicago and Champaign. Over a billion dollars are already pouring into...
Governor Pat Quinn is spending more of your money to study the feasibility of “high speed” rail lines in Illinois. Not daunted by the $8 billion budget deficit he’s failed to balance, yesterday the governor announced $1.25 million to study high speed rail between Chicago and Champaign.
Over a billion dollars are already pouring into track upgrades between Chicago and St. Louis, which could shorten the travel time by minutes. That’s right, minutes. I’m not sure where the governor is expecting the additional tens of billions of dollars to come from for this new 220-mph train line. Well, actually, I do: your wallet and my purse. California’s bullet train is on the road to bankruptcy. But let’s leave the documented fiscal concerns aside for a moment and look at the big picture.
Quinn said the project, if realized, could take 50 years to build — that’s half a century. How Americans move from place to place could be radically different than how we get around today. Why would we lock ourselves into an obsolete and prohibitively expensive mode of transportation? Trains simply can’t adjust to changing population distribution and passenger itinerary demands as readily as cars and planes, and who knows what technology improvements are just around the corner.
At the cash-for-analysis announcement, Quinn told the crowd that “the way to prosper is to have a big vision.” This isn’t vision. It isn’t prosperity. It’s a boondoggle.