The Battle for America 2010: De-Railing Russ Feingold
The battle over a proposed high-speed rail line that would connect a scant 70 miles between Wisconsin’s two largest cities and be funded by $810 million in federal stimulus money has become symbolic of the political cage match for one of Wisconsin’s Senate seats this November. An issue usually reserved for political catfights on the state level has spilled over into one of the most highly watched Senate races on the national scene. In a strange twist of political symbiosis, the fevered debate over high-speed rail in Wisconsin could well determine the outcome of Wisconsin’s Senate battle, which could in turn determine the fate of high-speed rail in our country.
In one corner is the challenger, Ron Johnson, a successful plastics executive and political newcomer who has raised about $1.8 million and injected $4.4 million of his own money into the campaign. Johnson, a fiscal conservative, believes the rail line is an example of needless and excessive Washington spending. “Wisconsin taxpayers will be on the hook for about $10 million per year for a costly train that few will ride,” he says, calling instead for investing in existing infrastructure.
In the other corner is career politician and Washington insider, Russ Feingold, who sadly, although seeking his fourth term is still considered the “junior” senator in Wisconsin. Feingold has been in political office since 1982 and is in favor of what would become a $1 billion high-speed rail line carrying passengers between Milwaukee and Madison at 110 mph. “This is in fact building a legitimate, environmentally sound infrastructure for the future of our state,” Feingold told a group of business leaders in Madison recently. He trumpets that the federal government has agreed to pay for it and joins the chorus of local Democrat cheerleaders who point out that if Wisconsin refuses the money, it will simply go to another high-speed rail project in another state — a misguided “it’s not our money” mindset which an increasing number of American voters rightly think is in large part responsible for the deep federal deficit and our Godzilla of a national debt.
Whether the high-speed rail proposal is needed or will work in Wisconsin seems to be overshadowed by the fact that most of the money to pay for it will come from Washington. The rail proposal, part of $8 billion in economic stimulus grants awarded earlier this year to 13 rail corridors, is among the unfunded initiatives pushed by President Obama and strongly defended by Feingold. In January, Wisconsin’s “senior” senator, Herb Kohl, called on Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood to push for federal high-speed rail funding for Wisconsin. Despite massive opposition to the project, Wisconsin’s outgoing governor appears hell-bent on pushing it through and LaHood, in a July appearance in Wisconsin, declared, “There’s no stopping it.” That is — unless Republicans garner enough power next year to derail it. The Wisconsin race between Feingold and Johnson may be, in part, a referendum on the future of high-speed rail in America.
The two combatants are now statistically tied according to a recent Rasmussen poll and the nonpartisan Cook Political Report in Washington moved its ranking of the Wisconsin race from leaning Democratic to toss-up. With many Democrats and most independents running from President Obama and his policies, Johnson may be the odds-on favorite to win. That pro-rail champion Feingold is struggling against an anti-rail newcomer like Johnson will not be overlooked by other pro-rail Democrats across the country and could well affect their barometers on the issue. Democrats have prevailed in Wisconsin in the past six presidential elections, including Obama’s 14-point victory in 2008. Since 1992, Wisconsin has elected only Democratic U.S. senators, although often by slim margins. That may soon change.
Wisconsin’s next governor, on the other hand, is likely to be a Republican, and his coattails may be long. The Republican gubernatorial candidate favored in November is Scott Walker. Walker is adamantly opposed to the high-speed rail line and says if he’s elected, he doesn’t want Wisconsin to be stuck with the bill and no train lines will be built anywhere in the state. Period. “I will put a stop to this boondoggle the day I take office,” he says. His Republican challenger, Mark Neumann, is promising to take the $810 million in federal stimulus money earmarked to build a high-speed rail line between Madison and Milwaukee and somehow use it for tax cuts.
Outgoing lame duck Wisconsin Governor Jim Doyle has touted the fact that Wisconsin “won” an $823 million federal stimulus grant to pay for building the line, as though Wisconsin had won its own lottery. He is pushing hard to cross the “point of no return” on the project, but Walker and Neumann have countered that the money should be rejected and that the project will require additional federal spending — which of course, comes from U.S. taxpayers. Walker has even run a television spot railing against “runaway government spending,” saying the state will have to spend $10 million a year on operating costs for the rail line. He vowed to “stop this train.” Democrats claim that much of the operating money will come from Washington — which, of course, is precisely the point being made by Ron Johnson. It is money Washington doesn’t have.
How and when high-speed rail became a lightning rod for political debate is unclear. However, the April 16, 2009, unveiling by President Obama of his plans for the nation’s high-speed rail (HSR) network certainly served as a catalyst. Obama boldly compared the HSR network to the creation of the Interstate Highway system in 1956, promising “at least” $1 billion per year in subsequent budget allocations in addition to $8 billion in stimulus money. His proposal seemingly fulfills his promise to redistribute wealth, as less than 1% of Americans will ride HSR but 99% will pay for it.
While Democrats in favor of high-speed rail admit that HSR will need to be heavily subsidized by the federal government, they point out that the FAA and the airline industry receives subsidies and our highway system is subsidized with every gallon of gasoline we buy. “We’re gonna be taking cars off of congested highways and reducing carbon emissions,” says Vice President Joe Biden, a fanatical rail supporter.
Fiscal conservatives like Ron Johnson respond by pointing out that most traffic jams are urban, not inter-city, so high-speed rail between cities like Milwaukee and Madison will have no effect on the daily commute of most Americans. More importantly, they claim that the stated cost of anything government does is almost always increased by a factor of ten. CNN has estimated that HSR could cost well over $500 billion and take a generation or more to build, all while failing to serve much of the country at all. In fact, globally, only two high-speed rail lines have recouped their capital costs and all depend on huge subsidies to stay in operation.
President Obama and embattled Senator Russ Feingold look to Amtrak as evidence in support of HSR, but since its founding in 1971, Amtrak has gobbled up almost $30 billion in subsidies and a typical Amtrak trip is propped up by a $35 subsidy. Nearly 150 million Americans commute to work every day, while Amtrak carries just 78,000 passengers. Many voters realize that high-speed rail will not improve those numbers, but its costs will grow exponentially.
With the U.S. economy in shambles and our national debt strangling the country, it doesn’t bode well for Feingold that he supported the wildly unpopular health-care bill, which Johnson wants repealed, as well as last year’s big clunker, the stimulus bill. Feingold’s support for the unfunded and bottomless money pit of HSR doesn’t appear to be working for him either. If an entrenched insider like Feingold loses, it could have serious ramifications for the future of high-speed rail across the country.
Our foreign friends are depending on those contracts!
While Democrats in favor of high-speed rail admit that HSR will need to be heavily subsidized by the federal government, they point out that the FAA and the airline industry receives subsidies and our highway system is subsidized with every gallon of gasoline we buy.
It seems they don’t understand the difference between a tax as user fee and a subsidizy. Here in Colorado, some 40.3 cents of the price of every gallon of automobile gasoline I purchase goes to federal and state taxes. Those taxes in turn are supposed to be used to pay for highway infrastructure. Done properly, this works like a user fee. Those who purchase fuel to use the roads pay for the roads. Likewise, there are taxes and fees on aviation (including fuel taxes) that are supposed to pay for aviation infrastructure. If the taxes pay for the infrastructure, how is that a subsidizy? It would be a subsidizy if the infrastructure costs are higher than the tax collections but I’m not certain that’s the case.
Mass transit, on the other hand, is heavily subsidized not only for initial construction but subsequent operations. There is no viable economic case for spending over $800 million to build 70 miles of high speed rail traffic in Wisconsin, and no way you could charge high enough ticket prices to pay for the expenses. That means the rest of the US taxpayers get to pay (and pay and pay) for something that is a white elephant.
A railway between Milwaukee and Madison? Why? I mean, has anyone driven that stretch, there’s no traffic to speak of…(although I used to stop at the Gobbler to get something to eat and lean against the carpeted walls)
This is a train that would service nobody, going nowhere, with nothing to do and no reason to do it. Utter nonsense.
It’s a “make work” project that will artificially prop up meaningless numbers. “Jobs” would increase, which would give the appearance that the economy was “recovering”. The patient is in a coma, but we are saying he’s “resting comfortably”. No he’s not. HE’S IN A FREAKING COMA!
This…is the reason that not one vote should go to the Democrats. Not one.
This…is putting “The Party” ahead of the people.
Pull the straight Republican lever. These arrogant bastards keep saying that they just aren’t explaining it well enough. Wrong…we understand it…we just reject it.
You don’t need to talk more. You. Need. To. Listen.
Vote them all out. Every single one of them. It’s the only way they will ever listen.
It’s a lesson they must learn. They will say we are throwing a tantrum. They will say they are not proud of us. They will say that we are mean. And Bitter. And cling to religion. They will lie about us, slander us, make up phony reasons for why we voted them out. But, if they ever want another vote that doesn’t come from a union mobster, a leftist traitor, or a special interest leech…they better LISTEN.
To paraphrase Bill Cosby, we brought you into this political world, we can take you out.
Vote. Anyone but the Democrat. The first lesson in repeatedly insulting the People. Don’t.
Ray Lahood is making a boatload of cash for friends and family on this deal as they are the contractor for the Eurotrash down in Illinois that is the go-between in this.
It’s sick. Aside from the abysmal waste of a choo choo that exists mostly for the purpose of making it possible for Madison politicians to travel to Milwaukee and Chicago without driving their own cars, our douche bag of a governor – Doyle – and his buddy DaHood go thru Ray’s pals to the Spaniards INSTEAD OF USING A TRAIN MANUFACTURER THAT HAS ITS FACTORY IN MILWAUKEE.
Given that this manufacturer has been contracted to Mitsubishi to provide cars for the Chicago line, Mitsubishi is so totally incensed they never even were allowed to bid in the deal that they are going to pull out of Wisconsin completely – so hundreds of employed rail builders will be laid off with no prospects of any new contracts anywhere – all to help LaHood’s peeps in Illinois and to curry favor for Doyle with the Obama admin (he’s angling for a Federal judgeship). .
Hey, we Californians can top this. Our brilliant electorate voted for a $10 BN bond issue as the first installment for a high-speed rail link through the Central Valley between LA and SF to “reduce congestion.” Of course, the congestion is in each city, not in between them, which is all farm land. And the first thing travelers do in a strange city is …rent a car.
Still, it’s not a total waste of money. The guys picking the lettuce in the Central Valley won’t have to put up with car passing by every ten minutes.
Btw, what is it with our socialist friends and their sudden passion for high-speed rail, anyway? Does that passion reflect galloping Europhilia? If so, they do realize that we have counties here that are larger than some European countries, right?
The ‘progressives’ didn’t win an election, they won the revolution they think. Because of the JournaList’s of the MSM they were able to lie, cheat and steal the election, have we ever had a Presidential Aspirant with so little knowledge known? That kind of ‘news’ coverage can only be accomplished by propagandists of the worse sort, the illiberal, the communist, they are the only ones capable of this type of operation. The Democrat, the Progressive or as some call them the neo-com’s [the New Communists] have to pay for this sly putsch, this bloodless revolution so far, this take over. The Progressive’s have to be taken out of political play for decades not just one or two election cycles, these people are totalitarian’s by their actions and are ruining our country by plan, this economic disaster is to ruin the capitalistic system that has made the country strong and admired world wide and must fall first before a take over by political gangsters.
Hey, we Californians can top this. Our brilliant electorate voted for a $10 BN bond issue as the first installment for a high-speed rail link through the Central Valley between LA and SF to “reduce congestion.” Of course, the congestion is in each city, not in between them, which is all farm land. And the first thing travelers do in a strange city is …rent a car.
Still, it’s not a total waste of money. The guys picking the lettuce in the Central Valley won’t have to put up with car passing by every ten minutes. Fortunately, California has lots of money. Good thing we’re not in a budgetary power dive.
Btw, what is it with our socialist friends and their sudden passion for high-speed rail, anyway? Does that passion reflect galloping Europhilia? If so, they do realize that we have counties here that are larger than some European countries, right?
Meanwhile, the bus service in Milwaukee is being cut, and cut, and cut, forcing many people out of their current jobs, as they simply can’t get there anymore. Using some of that money to improve the transit infrastructure WITHIN the cities would actually do some good, unlike HSR between the two cities.
Except, perhaps, if one train terminal were at Camp Randall…
It may be subsidized (in the Peoples Republic of Maryland), but the MARC commuter train between Washington and Baltimore gets a lot of use. I use it to visit Baltimore from my home in NoVa suburbs – walking to the bus stop from my house, transfer to Metro, transfer to Marc, takes 2 hours and costs $11 one way. It also isn’t HighSpeed (although the website indicates they are trying to start such a project).
The business question train operators should be asking is: will a higher fare to pay for increased speed reduce ridership enough to sink financial sustainability. I would support an amendment to authorize the feds building prototype trains for research (with all data public domain for Americans). But determining the market for production can really only be done by people willing to put up the money and hoping to be paid back with interest.
Personally, “high speed” ground trains aren’t fast enough to be worth it. If I need a long commute in a short time on a regular basis, I’ll get a pilots license and the job better pay enough to cover the cost. (The Terrafugia can even drive to/from the airport!)
The so called high speed train would go 78 mph, if it was to travel at 120 mph the cost would triple from 850 million to 2 trillion 550 million . You can take a bus from Milwaukee to Madison and travel at 65 mph at no cost to the tax payers.
Have you ever ridden the high speed train between two of the world’s great cities, Paris and London? Probably not, because it is empty. I bought a round trip ticket because that is all they would sell, and I suppose I could have given the return half away if I put some effort into it.
Walker when elected will be true to his word. No doubt about it. The train and the total waste will derail on 11/3/10. Lame duck Govenor Jim Doyle has accelerated spending on the boondogle with contracts signed for nearly half of the total federal monies. Walker has pledged to kill the contracts and stop all spending. Given Walker’s history as County Exec of Milwaukee he’ll do what he says. Walker is the current County Exec of Milwaukee county. Milwaukee is deep blue yet Walker has won three elections with 60% of the vote. He’s budget submissions have shown zero increases in eight straight years. He’s the real thing.
Wisconsin is in terrible fiscal shape due to massive overspending by the Dems. Nov 2010 will see Dems out of Gov office, state houses as well as do nothing Finegold! While not an easy task, Walker is our best bet to change the direction of WI.
“…what is it with our socialist friends and their sudden passion for high-speed rail, anyway?”
There’s some of that, but mostly it’s simple:
They don’t want you to have a car.
If you have a car, you can go where you like, when you like — even to a tea party rally or to meet with other people who oppose them — and it would take a lot of goonpower to even keep track of your movements, let alone control them. You can put stuff in your car and take it to where you can sell it or give it away, and that’s simply intolerable; all must be controlled.
Trains make it easy, almost as easy as the airplanes. Invoke the Holy Name of “security”, and presto, a complete record of who went where and easy choke points to cut people off from traveling where Teh Authorities don’t want them to or carrying things around that are forbidden.
Simple.
Regards,
Ric
The Dems say this is about ‘infrastructure’. While existing infrastructure crumbles (gas lines, bridges etc), we waste Billions on unneeded adds.
In past elections, sprinkling a little cash around helped party incumbants win. Looks like it may be an anchor around their necks this time. Let’s hope so. Let’s also hope the Dems love affair with trains ends as they get run out of town on one!
Four things–first, if now rides trains why are there 8 trains a day in each direction between Milwaukee and Chicago. This is just an extension of that service. Second, this high speed line in the first segment of one that will link Chicago and the Twin Cities. Part of that $810 mill. is going to significant upgrades of the Chicago-Milwaukee route. Third, high speed rail service has suceeded dramatically everywhere it has been built, including places with population densities similar to the Upper Midwest. It’s rather presumptuous to assume “no one will ride it”. That is usually code for “I’ve never ridden a train (or wanted to ride one) and so I can’t understand why anyone else would”.
Finally, as for the claim that the money for the train would be converted to tax cuts, something dramatic would have to be done since the money can only be used for this project.
According this the Chicago-Milwaukee line had ~740,000 riders in 2009. That’s roughly 2,000 riders per day, or 1000 individuals (I assume most people take a round-trip which Amtrak counts as 2 riders). For cities of 600,000 and 2.8 million. Near as makes no difference nobody rides the train.
Passenger rail in this country is a boondoggle outside the NE corridor. It costs almost as much as flying, takes longer than driving, and when you get there you still need to rent a car or rely on public transportation to get around. In addition outside of a few combinations you simply cannot go from point A to point B without a significant bus ride.
It doesn’t have to be that way. There are things that Amtrak could do establish a market niche, and yes they’d cost money, but high speed rail isn’t one of them. You’d still have all the convenience of a trip to the airport with the speed of cruising the interstate.
As an addendum: In 2009 the Milwaukee airport served just shy of 4 million individuals (using the same assumptions about double counting round trips).
I posed Mike’s 4 remarks to the Question Authority and he replied “First, subsidies; thus whatever ridership Mike sees isn’t an honest measure of demand for such service. Second, the very fact Mike tries to excuse this boondoggle by claiming ‘it’s one segment’ of a larger collection of boondoggles undermines his earlier suggestion that the Madison-to-Milwaukee line is justified on its own – Mike is really reaching for a variation of the old two-wrongs-make-a-right lie. (Two wrongs really make two wrongs, plus a leftist’s excuse for committing more wrongs.) Third, Mike’s definitions of ‘succeed,’ ‘dramatically,’ and ‘everywhere’ aren’t honest ones. Really, if high-speed rail were the sure thing Mike insists it is, Mike would be standing next to Obama denouncing big business for ruining the countryside with the high-speed rail lines being built by greedy profiteers. Fourth and finally, when Mike writes, ‘the money can only be used for this project’ he’s lost sight of the reality that money is fungible. If this boondoggle isn’t built, the money isn’t going to be stuffed into a mattress somewhere. So yes, it could be given back to the tax payers from whom it was taken.”
Question Authority (ask him anything)!
At a distance of 70 miles I bet that you can’t even get the train up to 110 before it has to slow down. You can drive it in an hour, how long will the train take to do it? Not much less I would think. This idea is so stupid it has to be a politician’s idea of a good thing. The rail link between Newark, NJ and Washington, DC is about 220 miles and 4 hours by car. A high speed rail would bring that down to 2 hours that at least saves some time, but I don’t know that I would want to spend the money to build it.
I enjoy reading Gary Wickert’s article. I travel through and in Wisconsin several times each year and the traffic from Milwaukee to Madison is easy except around Waukesha for a 5 mile stretch. I listen to NPR talk radio when I am close to Madison and after an hour of listening to people that have no concept of what the reality and of whose grandkids money they are spending I say to myself I hope the rest of find another planet to live on soon. Long serving and controlling Senator Feingold should take responsibility for the condition of the country and our unemployment.
The left in America is no longer liberal (they don’t really believe in liberty–too much democracy) and haven’t really been progressive since the 1970s. They are in effect the nannies of the world who know what’s best for everyone. This high speed train is just another example.
Mass transportation, universal healthcare, cap and trade, more regulations, etc. all work with their view that the world needs to be ruled and they are just the people to do it.
The amortization of $800 MM in capital costs is at least $40 MM/yr, even under wildly favorable assumptions. That’s over $100k/day – so if you can get say $50 one way (which is over 70c/mile) you need over 2,000 passengers per day just to cover capital costs, much less operating expenses. For a train that does the equivalent of a 1 hr or so drive in 40 minutes? Unless you’re a train fan or want to live next to the Milwaukee station and work at the capital why bother?
For reference, note that the Amtrak’s Keystone service, which runs from New York through Philadelphia to Harrisburg gets a whopping 3300 passengers per day – and this includes the New York to Philly run on more than half the trains. The Philly-Harrisburg track was upgraded to allow 110 mph speeds, not quite Acela class but reasonable. The Philly to Harrisburg fare is $23, the 104 mile trip takes 1 hr 35 min for a 4 stop express (most trains are 11 stops, 1:45), which implies an average traveling speed in the 70-80 mph range. To drive downtown Philly to Harrisburg is 2-3 hrs depending on traffic.
This is such an obvious boondoggle – even ignoring the capital costs I don’t see how it is going to operate without continual subsidies.
The reasons so many in Wisconsin vociferously oppose this rail line are many. One,the proposed end point is nowhere near where anyone going to Madison wants to go. It’s proposed to end at the Madison airport, where anyone riding it and actually wanting to go to Madison would then have to take a taxi ride of at least half an hour to get to the actual city of Madison. Taken together, the train ride and the taxi ride would take longer than just driving to Madison on 94W for 70 minutes. Two, there is no fare that could be charged that people would actually pay that will ever pay for this rail line, or that will ever be less than driving the distance yourself. Three, there is not enough daily traffic between the two cities that would ever be able to pay for this rail line at any reasonable fare, thus it will continue to be subsidized forever, something the people of Wisconsin do not want to do.
During our 8 mournful years with King Bill Richardson as governor we have built a commuter rail line between Albuquerque and Santa Fe. The Democrats desperately wanted to name it the Richardson Express (instead it called the Rail Runner). Santa Fe and Albuquerque are just 60 miles apart and are connected by I-25. The big difference is that Santa Fe is over 1,000 feet higher in elevation. This is not a “high-speed” rail, but it’s roughly comparable to highway speeds with moderate tourist traffic.
People in Santa Fe consider Albuquerque to be their “utility town”. Many folks live in Albuquerque (because it’s so much cheaper) but work in Santa Fe. Should be perfect, huh? Actually…no.
I always thought it would be cool to take the train in ABQ until I realized, “what the hell do I do once I get there?” Albuquerque (city proper) covers over 181 square miles. You can’t really go there to shop because you have to hop a bus or a cab for anywhere you want to go (it ain’t exactly walking distance to anywhere). Folks who work in Santa Fe but live in ABQ don’t like it because they have no reliable way of getting to their place of employment from the SF train terminals. Of course…the trains don’t necessarily run on time. I have yet to ride this train even once. The trips takes a little over an hour by train and just under an hour by car on the 75 mph interstate. You simply don’t save enough time or money to make using the train worthwhile.
The rail service to this day remains grossly underutilized and is a sucking chest wound to the states budget.
eh? 800+ million to handle the Madison-Milwaukee traffic?? This sounds like an abstract exercise. Milwaukee is my “home”, but that much amount of money would be best put to work in congested urban areas.. Northern Virginia for example. It took me 90 minutes to “travel” 17 miles this evening. Why not extend the orange line all the way to Gainesville? and bring the rates down/ add more cars etc. Only federal employees can afford to ride the metro, after these relentless fare hikes.
There is no such thing as free money. If the state doesn’t fund it but Washington DC does, it’s still the same people footing the bill.
I wonder if the big spenders ever heard of the internet. A couple of years ago, I was involved in a project being done in Balikpapan Indonesia. Part of the project team was in Houston and the rest in Balikpapan. We often sat in a room with TV monitors and via internet held meetings with the other part of the team. It worked fine and the cost was low. The only minor problem was the time difference. It would be late afternoon in Houston and next day morning in Indonesia. The point is: building a high speed rail line can’t beat the cost and speed of the internet communications.