 Last weekend the governor announced that $102 million will be spent improving
the high-speed rail line between Chicago and St. Louis over the next three
years.
The money comes out of the $550 million railroad-specific allotment from the $31
billion Illinois Jobs Now! spending program Quinn signed into law in 2009.
“This investment is going to put people to work and take us one step closer to
completing the high-speed rail connection between Chicago and St. Louis,” Quinn
said in a statement. “None of this work on the Chicago-St. Louis high-speed line
would be possible without the outstanding cooperation of the Union-Pacific
Railroad. Investing in our Chicago-St.Louis line today will pay dividends to
Illinois residents for years to come.”
The multimillion dollar investment will be used to build a second set of tracks
between Mazonia and Elwood, and a new Kankakee River bridge necessary to meet
the demands of increased capacity, the governor said.
According to the governor’s office, passenger trains currently travel at 110 mph
between Dwight and Pontiac. By the end of 2015, the trip between Chicago and St.
Louis will be reduced to five hours from the current five and a half hours. When
all of the improvements are finished in 2017, the trip will have been reduced
even further to four and a half hours.
The governor’s office states that the railway work will “create or support” 918
construction jobs over the next three years.
But some critics say high-speed rail isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, especially
with such a large amount of taxpayer dollars at stake.
Randal O’Toole works on urban growth, public land and transportation issues as a
senior fellow at the Cato Institute. He says high-speed rail projects are
usually fools’ errands.
“Beside the fact that the entire project will cost hundreds of millions of
dollars, all it does is supposedly reduce the travel time a bit. Is this amount
worth that?” O’Toole asked. “We already have an extremely efficient and
cost-effective way of traveling from St. Louis to Chicago, it is called
airplanes.”
O’Toole also pointed out the flaws of touting the environmental benefits of
high-speed rail and attacking the environmental dangers of air travel.
“Usually on these projects, people like to say using railways are better for the
environment than flying in planes,” O’Toole said. “That’s true on its face
today, but what’s buried under that assertion is that right now planes are
becoming more fuel efficient by about three percent a year while trains aren’t
increasing their energy efficiency at all. In a few years, planes will be better
for the environment than trains anyway.”
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Union Pacific Railroad, with oversight from the Illinois
Department of Transportation, will perform the construction of the
tracks.
“We value the public-private partnership between IDOT’s Bureau of
Railroads, the Federal Railroad Administration and Union Pacific
Railroad in making the rail corridor between Chicago and St. Louis
the premier high-speed passenger corridor in the county,’’ Union
Pacific Railroad’s Assistant Vice President for Public Affairs Wes
Lujan said in a press release.
Andrew Nelms is the director of policy and communications for
Americans for Prosperity, a group that advocates for less
government, lower taxes, and fiscal responsibility. He says projects
like this don’t provide the benefits their proponents claim they do.
“At a time when the state’s finances are in such dire straits and
there are real, tangible infrastructure problems that need our
attention, it sure seems unwise to spend this much money on
high-speed rail,” Nelms said.
Illinois doesn’t have the best track record of upholding its end of
the bargain, Nelms said of the governor’s claim that the rail work
will drastically reduce travel time and provide an economic boost.
“Even if it goes exactly as planned and shortens the trip time
significantly, that doesn’t mean this is a good way to spend tax
money,” Nelms argued. “A relatively small percentage of the
population utilizes high-speed rail services on a consistent basis.
If we’re talking about using public money for public benefit –
especially this incredible amount of public money – there are so
many better things it could be used for.”
Emily Goff is a transportation policy analyst at The Heritage
Foundation, and says high-speed rail systems are almost never a net
benefit for taxpayers.
“In the whole world, only two high-speed railway routes are make a
profit, and those are in France and Japan,” Goff said.
Goff agreed with Nelms that these kind of projects rarely realize
the celebrated transportation marvels they are advertised as
creating.
“The politicians who stand to gain popular clout by trumping up a
grandiose vision of the entire country connected via high-speed rail
are being deceptive and exaggerating,” she said. “The federal
government has subsidized over $11 billion since 2009 into
high-speed railway systems with basically nothing to show for it.”
The additional $102 million brings the state’s total investment for
the Chicago-St. Louis high-speed rail route to nearly $359 million,
with another $1.7 billion in federal funds planned for the project.
Work on the tracks is set to begin in 2016 and be completed in 2017.
[This
article courtesy of
Watchdog.]
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