California
has a huge state debt and Washington has a huge national debt. But
that does not discourage either Governor Jerry Brown or President
Barack Obama from wanting to launch a very costly high-speed rail
system.
Most of us
might be a little skittish about spending money if we were teetering
on the brink of bankruptcy. But the beauty of politics is that it
is all other people's money, including among those other people
generations yet unborn.
The high-speed
rail system proposed for California has been envisioned as a model
for similar systems elsewhere in the United States. A recent story
in the San Francisco Chronicle used the high-speed rail system
in Spain as an analogy for California.
Spain is about
the same size as California, and has a similar population density
– and population density is the key to the economic viability of
mass transportation, from subways to high-speed rail.
It so happens
that I have ridden on Spain's high-speed rail system. It was very
nice, especially since I did not have to pay the full costs, which
were subsidized by the Spanish taxpayers.
While the Spanish
government has been subsidizing the passengers on its high-speed
rail system, the European Union has been subsidizing the Spanish
government. Someone once said that government is the illusion that
we can all live off somebody else. Spain's high-speed rail system
is not even covering its operating costs, never mind the enormous
costs of setting up the system in the first place. One reason is
that half the seats are empty in the high-speed trains in Spain.
That is what
happens when you don't have the population density required for
passengers to cover the operating costs. You would need the hordes
of Genghis Khan riding the high-speed rail system to cover the additional
costs of the rails and the trains.
An economics
professor at the University of Barcelona says that Spain "has not
recovered one single euro from the infrastructure investment."
The most famous
high-speed rail system is that in Japan, one of the most densely
populated countries in the world. The "bullet train" between Tokyo
and Osaka has 130 million riders a year. Tokyo alone has more than
three times the population of San Francisco and Los Angeles put
together.
In California,
an element of farce has been added to the impending economic tragedy,
if the envisioned high-speed rail system actually materializes.
The first leg
of the system is planned to run between Fresno and Bakersfield.
If those names don't ring a bell with you, there is a reason. They
are modest-sized communities out in the agricultural San Joaquin
Valley, well removed from San Francisco or Los Angeles.
You can bet
the rent money that high-speed rail traffic between Fresno and Bakersfield
will never come within shouting distance of covering the operating
costs. Some people have analogized putting such a rail line between
these two towns to the infamous "bridge to nowhere" in Alaska.
Why are they
doing it? Because they can.
If
they began this project where they want it to go – between San Francisco
and Los Angeles – they would run into so much opposition from the
environmentalists, and from local politicians influenced by the
environmentalists, that the delays could take the high-speed rail
advocates beyond the time limit for using the federal subsidy money.
But the green fanatics have not yet taken over politically out in
the San Joaquin Valley.
The only reason
for even thinking about building a high-speed rail line between
Fresno and Bakersfield is just to get the project underway with
federal money, making it politically more difficult to stop the
larger project for a similar rail line between San Francisco and
Los Angeles.
In other words,
they are going to start wasting money out in the valley, so that
they will be able to waste more money later on, along the coast.
This may not make any sense economically, but it can make sense
politically for Jerry Brown and Barack Obama.
An old song
ended, "You've been running around in circles, getting nowhere –
getting nowhere very fast." On high-speed rail.
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