From Bakersfield.com: An essay against high-speed rail

Link: RIC LLEWELLYN: Put the brakes on high-speed rail - Bakersfield.com

RIC LLEWELLYN: Put the brakes on high-speed rail
By RIC LLEWELLYN, Contributing columnist | Friday, Jun 26 2009 10:58 AM

Last Updated Friday, Jun 26 2009 11:03 AM

Alex Horvath / The Californian Columnist Ric Llewellyn

Ouch! I think we shot ourselves in the foot with a bullet train!

The California High-Speed Rail Authority and the State of California have finally wriggled their way into the bullet train business. Now the people of Kern County are saddled with the economic fallout of a $10 billion loan for high-speed rail service to a few metropolitan areas. And that's just a fraction of the total projected cost of California's High-Speed Train System.

High-speed rail sounds like a good idea if you just skimmed the voter's pamphlet or visited the official Web site. But it's not and hasn't been for 20 years, especially in Kern County. Nobody in the private sector has wanted to step up and finance the development of high-speed rail service because it is not a money-making proposition.

Even sub-orbital space flight has a greater profit potential. If the financial return were there, no matter what it cost, we would be riding the bullet train today. Instead the state is going to deliver high-speed rail and make us pay for it.

And it's really going to cost us. Money that could be budgeted for local road improvement and expansion will be spent on EIRs for the bullet train corridors. Instead of improving waste water treatment facilities here in Kern, we'll be buying rights-of-way like a patchwork quilt for the next decade. Instead of downtown redevelopment, we'll be pitching in for studies and preliminary engineering for the bullet train boondoggle. And if a train actually ever runs, we will pay to subsidize a service that benefits a relative few rather than building long-term economic growth here at home. Every dollar we ship to Sacramento for the loan payment or maintenance is a dollar in economic growth lost in Kern County.

In response, proponents point to Japanese and French success as the benchmarks in high-speed passenger train service. But the Asian and European impetus was a real capacity versus demand problem. California has no such critical shortage of commuter train capacity. We just have the dream. We just want a bullet train.

Perhaps Amtrak can show us how this is really going to work out. California has one of Amtrak's busiest passenger rail routes. The Capitol Corridor runs from Auburn across the Valley to San Jose. Last year was a record year for ticket revenue. Yet the revenue-to-cost ratio was only about 55 percent. Amtrak executives extol this lackluster performance as "the best full year recovery ratio in the history of the Capitol Corridor." And nationally, Amtrak reported a net loss for 2008 of $1.1 billion.

Hasn't anyone ever heard of the doctrine of separation of business and state? The bullet train fiasco is the result of government barging into business and business exploiting the political enthusiasm of the government. Yes, some local businesses would legitimately benefit over the long term from developing high-speed rail. But business wants you and me to bear all the risk. So they "partner" with government to get all of us to shield them from the financial exposure.

The flip side is that government fancies itself as entrepreneurial. So the state will build and operate the high-speed rail system. But as we know, the state is mediocre at best when it comes to taking care of business. The rail authority cheerfully declares once it's built, the system will make a $1 billion annual profit. But the non-partisan California Legislative Analyst's Office could only promise voters Amtrak-like performance, saying the ongoing costs of California's bullet train would be "at least partially, and potentially fully, offset by passenger fare revenues ..." It MIGHT pay for itself? What kind of plan is that? I guess it's no big deal for government because you and I can just make up the difference.

With the passage of Proposition 1A last November, we took one giant step forward. That doesn't mean we have to throw ourselves off the cliff. There are significant land use issues associated with high-speed rail in Kern County. Do we replace prolific, productive and profitable ag land with train track? Up and down the Central Valley environmental issues will stymie planners for years to come. Even the rail authority will have to respect species and habitat. Proponents optimistically are counting down to a construction start in 2011, but we will no doubt find the project bogged down in a bureaucratic morass.

High-speed rail isn't what it's cracked up to be. Enormous upfront costs, ongoing financing cost, operation and maintenance costs, irreversible land use and environmental impacts make the bullet train the perfect project to put on hold. Now is not the time. Let's put the brakes on California's High-Speed Rail System.

Ric Llewellyn is one of four conservative community columnists whose work appears here every Saturday. These are the opinions of Llewellyn, not necessarily The Californian's. You can write to him at rllewellyn@bakersfield.com. Next week: Ralph Bailey.