Thursday, February 12, 2009

Another Earmark in Earmark-Free Bill?   [Mark Hemingway]

Accoring to the AP:

In late-stage talks, Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., pressed for $8 billion to construct high-speed rail lines, quadrupling the amount in the bill that passed the Senate on Tuesday. Reid's office issued a statement noting that a proposed Los Angeles-to-Las Vegas rail might get a big chunk of the money.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has been trying for sometime to publicly fund a high speed rail between the two cities, including earmarking $45 million for the project last year. What's odd is that this puts the government in direct competition with a private company that's been trying to do the same thing with private funds:

The provision in the pending bill, which the Senate has not yet voted on, would give new life to the Maglev project and accelerate a battle with DesertXpress, which is privately financing a high-speed train projected to travel at up to 125 miles per hour and bring passengers from the Los Angeles area to Las Vegas in an hour and a half. DesertXpress says regardless of the pending language, it is moving full-speed ahead and hopes the $3.5 billion project will be done by 2012.

Of course, 125 mph train between the two cities isn't enough for Reid. He wants a whiz-bang 300 mph maglev train. Touble is that maglev trains are ridiculously expensive—China's budget for the trains eventually doubled. A maglev train between L.A. and Las Vegas would cost billions just to construct. And there's the question of who will pay for the ongoing use of such an expensive train. Amtrak cancelled service between Los Angeles and Las Vegas over ten years ago due to low ridership. "I remain skeptical that there's sufficient demand to make it appear it could be a market success," Rand Corp. transportation expert Martin Wachs said just last year of a proposed high speed train service betweent the two cities. "And it would depend ultimately on the willingness of taxpayers to subsidize to some extent that service."

02/12 12:46 PMShare