Commuter Rail should not be a priority in New Hampshire for more reasons than I can count, but I’ve counted them for the past 12 years, with some success. Now, it looks like Amtrak has imagined a spur from Masskachusetts to Concord. Why? Seriously, why?
Congress wants it. Rail. All over. That’s what it says. Paid for with more inflation now and debt my great-grandkids can inherit? No, thank you.
As for the Granite State, there is no economic benefit unless you’re talking about human or drug trafficking up from Lowell and Lawrence. Commuter rail will help that exponentially. Other crimes will as well, I’d suspect, those go hand in glove. Maybe the Dems can sell it alongside their defund the police rhetoric.
Commuter rail. The best way for Massachusetts criminals to feed off Granite Staters while we cut police budgets! They want that, don’t let them fool you. NH Dems pine for the sort of chaos sowed by the decades-long one-party rule in places like Detroit, Baltimore, Minneapolis, Lawrence, and Lowell. But that’s just a political side gig for them when it comes to commuter rail.
They want it here because, on paper, it advances other goals. Limiting your ability to move at will anywhere you please. Rail justifies making costing people out of personal transportation, which leaves them confined to the limits of local public transportation, and the cost to maintain commuter rail in NH has always been a big fat negative.
Support has long been prefaced on taxing people near the corridor to cover operating costs. There is no real scenario where it pays for itself.
A few years back, one proposal suggested a special business tax on everyone within a mile of the rail line. You know, because they gained some supposed benefit. But if that were true, then all that added commerce from booming commuter rail traffic would result in more tax revenue without the new penalty.
Nope, it’s always been a dog.
No one has ever expected that, so you tax businesses to pay for the cost of supporting infrastructure with no commercial benefit. A cost that companies could avoid by opening their doors outside the area of effect and that would make rail even less appealing, yes?
They also considered a higher gas tax or a special vehicle registration fee hike for people who live in communities along the rail line. Talk about a disincentive to live near that boondoggle.
Related: Nashua Didn’t See its “Housing Crisis” Cuz it Was Hiding Behind “The Rail Study.”
There are other problems. The presumption is that this will ease traffic or reduce transportation emissions. I like t0 call this Zero proof planning. There is zero proof it will reduce anything but the private income of people who will never use it or need it. But we do know that rail studies in Nashua suggest that traffic near rail stations will be a huge problem.
We’ve written about all of the negatives here. I won’t belabor the point in this piece any further. But Congress is itching to spend money that isn’t there on infrastructure we don’t need in the pursuit of solving a problem that doesn’t exist.
Amtrak has their wish list map, and New Hampshire is on it. And there are Dems and Republicans who will gladly spend money that isn’t there on a project that will reach deep into taxpayers’ pockets forever because that’s the price you’ll pay for that inflation posting “fiat Money” with the strings attached.
New Hampshire has no commuter rail and the most robust economy in New England. Let’s not ruin it by pretending a rail line in southern New Hampshire will help anything. It won’t. It will only become another boondoggle propped up by tax dollars.