Zombie high-speed rail project shuffles on

Kevin Drum:

The LA Times reports that California's Central Valley residents are excited that they'll soon have access to high speed rail. For example, here's Domaris Cid, a student at Fresno City College:

“It kind of sucks how I would have to move out of the valley to....have an education that I want,” said Cid, 18. The high-speed rail, she said, could give her access to UC Merced or UC Berkeley to continue her political science studies. “I wouldn’t have to leave a place I really do like.”

This is nuts. It's less than 60 miles from Fresno to Merced on Highway 99. It's an hour by car or train. HSR will cut that down to....45 minutes, and it won't get you anywhere near Berkeley.

The entire stretch of HSR from Bakersfield to Merced will cut a 3-hour trip to 90 minutes. Add in commuting time to and from the stations plus waiting time and it's barely better than driving.

This whole plan is nuts. HSR all the way from LA to San Francisco is a bad idea that's never likely to happen, but at least it's defensible with a few heroic assumptions. But the Central Valley leg all by itself? There's no credible justification for it at all. It's just a pointless money pit....

Rob's comment:

It's discouraging. I've posted against this project maybe as long as Kevin Drum, but we were just pissing against the wind. It's a zombie project that will never die, which is what its original supporters correctly figured: once it really got started way back in 2008, it coudn't be stopped. 

State politicians like Gavin Newsom and Jerry Brown understood that and kept feeding the project money. (The Democratic Party is mostly responsible for this fiasco, though Republicans have been mostly silent.

And national politicos like Joe Biden did the same. Biden, aka Amtrak Joe, used to take Amtrak from Maryland to Washington D.C., which made him a train true beliver.

And the labor unions loved the project, since it provides a lot of construction jobs, an argument that was surely used by Egyptian pharaohs and the men who built the pyramids in Egypt. 

Moral of the story: Even dumb projects create jobs. The big losers here: federal and state taxpayers in both the short run---the cost to build the project---and the long run, since the project will have to be subsidized to operate forever after it's built.

Randal O'Toole summed it up best: 

All you have to do is mention the words 'public transit' and progressives will fall over themselves to support you no matter how expensive and ridiculous your plans.

See also Willie and Jerry Brown: Development Democrats.