California’s crazy train: On the fast track for fiscal ruin (high speed rail etc.)

New York Post ^ | 12:44 AM, July 11, 2012 | Ben Boychuk

[Olog-hai]

They are not funding this in the same way they funded the interstate highways. That in my mind does not excuse how the interstate highways were executed; the major problem is here how the federal government’s regulations and the politicking here have resulted in a politically-charged right of way for the railroad in question that reduces its utility while increasing its costs, and on top of that how something like this ought to cost far less than even a new-build four-lane interstate (even with electrification), and yet even worse how the best practice of overseas gets ignored (building next to an interstate highway—how easy is that?—new right of way building is extremely minimal).

I am of the mind that every interstate and airport should have been privately funded, mind you. When it comes to those transportation modes, though, this country actually adopted a grossly anti-rail stance when they decided to get into the transportation business and funding infrastructure through allegedly “dedicated” taxes. They had no qualms taxing the railroads, especially their passenger side, out of business, while in some cases providing direct subsidy to airports (and I can only take the word of the government that it is only the gas tax that funds the highways—given their penchant for “creative accounting”, I tend not to believe a single word they say though)—yet the federal government had no problems taxing passenger tickets at a rate of 10 percent during the 50s and 60s and throwing that money into the general fund instead of applying it towards passenger rail infrastructure in like manner to how gas taxes are allegedly applied towards interstate asphalt and naught else.

In the 1930s, the then-new streamlined diesel locomotives were geared to achieve a top speed of 120 miles per hour (which was really high speed for back then), and now thanks to FRA regulation, only 450 miles of railroad in the northeast can reach and exceed 100 mph legally—and that’s eight decades later. What’s wrong with that picture?