For decades, we have had modern-day “people from the past” yammer that NH NEEDS A COMMUTER RAILROAD! With stops at various places like Manchester and Nashua. They talk about the “enhanced economy” and “less emissions” as those folks who “bedroom” here in NH go to jobs in MA on the train.
Frankly, I know this idea is little more than a longing for this 19th-century technology and convenience – which is to say “not very” for the vast majority of NH residents who would be expected to fork over their money to pay the subsidies for the tiny minority that would use it. Why else hasn’t a private company come along and done the work because they believed there was a universe of customers that would use their services (in sufficient numbers to pay the startup capital costs, operational outflows, and maintenance upkeep of their system)?
They are smarter than the NH politicians who want this and have no financial skin in that game – who look at us as piggy banks to pad their progressive “resumes.”
If they were truly wise and prudent (ok, I know – you can stop laughing and wincing now), they would see their choo-chii future in this story.
$10 Billion Boondoggle Opens
Honolulu officials worried that their new train would be “overwhelmed” with riders when it opened at 2 pm on June 30. They needn’t have worried; a local news station reported that “scores of people lined up to ride the trains, which were free the first five days of operation. In fact, about 9,000 people rode the train the first afternoon. Considering that each train can hold 800 passengers and they ran six times an hour until 6:30 pm, they were operating at about 40 percent of their capacity on opening day. Over the next four days, another 62,000 people rode the trains, less than 25 percent of their capacity. When the agency began to charge fares, daily ridership fell to under 1,300 per day, or about 2 percent of the rail line’s capacity.
Taxpayers spent $9.9 billion, or $900 million per mile, for this 11-mile line to nowhere.
1963 was when the talk started in Hawaii. That was 60 years ago, and it was supposed to be “easy.” The price went from $350K for a study to a finished cost of $10 billion. The long story can be found here. It is a fascinating tale of over-promising and under-delivering with absurd low-ball estimates that ended with “it cost WHAT to build”?
The full 20-mile stretch (they’ve only got 11 miles so far) is estimated at close to 12.5 billion. And guess what, folks! Even though most US Citizens will NEVER step foot in Honolulu, we’re ALL paying for it. The Federal Government has become not much more than a washing machine that cleans us all of our money, washes-rinses-folds-and “puts it away” in someone else’s pockets. And most projects end up with this lovely line as well:
Construction was plagued by wheels too narrow for the tracks, cracked pillars, safety issues (that were solved by firing the whistleblower), and other problems.
Of course, the Government’s doublespeak of the guilty vs innocent is mind-boggling. I’d suggest that everyone in NH against the Choo-Choo Train Totalitarians read both articles for backup when this issue raises its smokey stack again. After all, I’d bet this line would be the “final word” for use, too:
Instead of Skyline, the city’s name for it, one local activist calls it the Skylying.
HT | The AntiPlanner
