We are having a similar debate up north in Wisconsin. The Dem. governor wants a train between Madison and Milwaukee. We have federal money to build most of it, but the yearly operating costs will be at least $10 million. The state will have to pick up that cost year after year.
Our train would be high speed, but would start in Milwaukee, then make three stops before it got to Madison. The drive by car is 90 minutes. With the stops it will take about 60 minutes. Then once you get to the destination you have no car to get where you really want to be!
Our train will be costly and inconvenient. I bet yours will be too.
Then once you get to the destination you have no car to get where you really want to be!
Madison is a civilized community
Wherever they decide to locate their station, I'm certain it will have provisions for taxi/bus service, rental cars, local light-rail, etc, etc.
They're not going to build a station to strand people in the middle of nowhere.
Our train will be costly and inconvenient.Cost overruns should be blamed on the obstructionists who are attempting to limit travel options merely to give us no choice other than filling our gas tanks with overpriced fuel.
Saw something in the Shepard Depressed about this last week. The writer wrote about the $800 million cost which would be paid by the federal government, else that money would go to someone else’s train.
Same thing happened in Minnesota a decade or so ago. Gov. Turnbuckle insisted we build the first leg of a Twin Cities rail “system” because otherwise we wouldn’t get the $300 mill in federal funding for our $600 mill line. Of course actual, DIRECT cost came to over $800 million for an 16-mile, 11-stop line from downtown Mpls to the Sprawl of America. Plus the hidden costs not included in the original grant application, like the electric company having to move underground substations at their own expense and the $10 million per year operating deficit.
Ventura railroaded the project through, despite SEVERAL studies over the decades that showed there was NO economically viable corridors in the Twin Cities! This line became known as the Metro Transit Hiawatha Line (as if there were another line to confuse it with). When the local rag was looking for a nickname for the MTHL, my immediate response was “The Motherlode.” It of course seriously disrupted traffic and has resulted in deaths.
In the new push to slap another money-eating line from Mpls to St. Paul down University Ave. (instead of a block away which would disrupt far fewer businesses), I found it particularly funny that after plans were practically approved, the local PBS station finally complained that that route would disturb their studios, and that wasn’t acceptable.