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The Nation's Pulse
A Billion per Mile
It’s the spending, stupid, the stupid spending!
President Obama’s constant refrain about the government’s unprecedented levels of red ink points to “millionaires and billionaires” as the problem, not the massive amounts of waste, fraud, and inefficiency in government operations.
Remember when a million per mile seemed like a crazy price for a new road? Now it’s a billion per mile for a transportation project and the politicians are just fine with it, even if the project is totally unnecessary, even if we’re already broke.
To make it allegedly easier for people in San Francisco to get in and out of Chinatown in a hurry, a new 1.7 mile subway line is in the works.
The original projected cost was $647 million. Now it’s $1.6 billion, and growing.
There’s already bus and light-rail service that covers the same route — plus roads for cars if you’re still the un-green and independent type who enjoys riding alone and listening to the radio and maybe even downing a good hoagie while driving between points A and B.
The 1.7 mile subway line “misses connections with 25 of the 30 light-rail and bus lines that it crosses, and there’s no direct connection to the 104-mile Bay Area Transit line or to the ferry,” stated the Wall Street Journal in a recent editorial.
There’s also the problem of going eight stories underground to get to the new super-short subway — not a good underground place to be during an earthquake, or during a terrorist attack.
And then there’s the red ink, of course, simply because there’s no money to pay for it. San Francisco’s metro system already loses $500,000 a day.
So they’re coming after all our wallets, seeking nearly a billion dollars from the Federal Transit Administration.
They’ll probably get it, even with the feds already over a trillion a year in the hole, because there’s a big soft spot among the central planners for anything that promises to get some cars off the road.
The Journal quotes a January 2010 statement by Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood. “Everywhere” he goes, he said, people tell him they “want the opportunity to leave their cars behind” and want “to enjoy clean, greener neighborhoods.”
And “everywhere” includes Detroit? I’d guess that jobless auto workers would tell LaHood that they’re more important than a slightly quicker ride to Chinatown.
Either way, if getting rid of cars is the goal, adding more buses would be millions cheaper than this $1.6 billion boondoggle.
July’s Silver Fleece Award highlighted another example of egregious government spending, a $64 million federal “stimulus” award to provide broadband service to Gallatin County, Montana.
“According to an analysis conducted by Navigant Consulting, 93 percent of the households in the project’s proposed service area were already served by five or more broadband providers,” explained Mark Kirk, U.S. Senator for Illinois.
About the Author
Ralph R. Reiland is the B. Kenneth Simon professor of free enterprise and an associate professor of economics at Robert Morris University in Pittsburgh.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (46) | Leave a comment
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Ken (Old Texican)| 8.30.11 @ 6:43AM
Ralph,
I already get chills just thinking about the cost of that 3,000 mile bullet train boondoggle.
The boondoggles like you mention here just keep popping up though. How in the world can we stop the nonsense.
Solo| 8.30.11 @ 1:46PM
How to stop the nonsense, you ask?
Simple. Get rid of politicians!
Politicians derive their power by spending money. It doesn't really matter on what the money is spent--only that they get to spend it.
Change that and you change the direction of the country. Otherwise........
lily | 8.30.11 @ 9:44PM
Either way, if getting rid of cars is the goal, adding more buses would be millions cheaper than this $1.6 billion boondoggle.
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Curtis Rasmussen| 8.30.11 @ 2:53PM
I'm with you. California foolishly took federal funds to build a section of of high speed rail from nowhere to nowhere. If the full run is ever completed, all fares will be generously subsidized since ridership estimates have always been too low to support this crazy experiment in liberal political correctness. Don't get me started on the economically unsound alternate energy mandates.
The only thing running at high speed in California is the conversion of our once prosperous state into the new Detroit.
Quartermaster| 8.30.11 @ 6:39PM
When the Revolution comes you will ALL be taken to the camps and properly educated.
Curtis| 8.30.11 @ 7:21AM
Can't we have a sensible conservative step up and say "Why are these yahoos hoping for high speed bullet trains, when even our low speed freight train routes are in disarray?"
A lot of small upgrades to RR crossings and curves would do a heck of a lot more good then some pie in the sky bullet corridor. Railway electrification would probably be a good idea too.
Doctor_X| 8.30.11 @ 7:22AM
Three words for you
North Shore Connector (Pittsburgh)
$528.8 million for 1.2 miles of subway from nowhere to nowhere.
POST American| 8.30.11 @ 7:28AM
-----AND NOW about that 1.5 QUADRILLION
in FAKE USURY derivatives debt.
Pecos Pete| 8.30.11 @ 8:15AM
As to broadband, maybe some home owners don't want broadband?
Federal bureaucrat says to home owner, "What, you don't want broadband? Don't you understand that you need broadband? I'm from the government and I'm hear to help you."
Home owner to bureaucrat, "Heck, fellow, I don't have a computer and I don't want to pay any amount for broadband or dial-up, or a computer. I don't have a television or a telephone. I live in a mud hut because I can't get a job, my kids are eating dog food and my water well just ran dry. My hut depends upon solar power for electricity and the sun hasn't shined here for two weeks. I sure wish the gubmint would get out of my life!"
Ken (Old Texican)| 8.30.11 @ 8:33AM
Pete, I had to laugh to keep from crying.
thanks
Denver Todd| 8.30.11 @ 8:53AM
...but what if that one house that gets broadband has someone living there who discovers a cure for cancer? Then it'll all be worth it. [rushing sound of logic going out the door]
JFGalt| 8.30.11 @ 12:34PM
If someone had the cure for cancer, he would die a mysterious death. You know how many people make money out of there not being a cure available.
Solo| 8.30.11 @ 1:50PM
Damned right!
Healthcare is a HUGE industry. Multitudes of entities make $Billions every year to attend to your ILLNESS.
Cure the illness and.....all that money dries up!
The surest way to a quick death is to be the one who finds a cure for cancer.
Occam's Tool| 8.30.11 @ 3:45PM
Dear Solo:
One word in counter---Salk. Polio gone, he died a very old wealthy famous man, having married a former GF of Picasso's.You have no idea how many illnesses I will be treating as you grow older. I'd like a few cures.
Until we figure out immortality, there will always be a need for MDs.
Redstateboy| 8.30.11 @ 8:58AM
Why do you never read comments from avowed Liber-ul Obamatoids such as RCV, Purpleguy, Alan Brooks and the rest of those Bananaheads when it comes to examples like this - what the Tea Party is all about - stopping the insanity! Everytime I read crap like this my poor working back hurts just a little bit more and I'm Sick of this Schitt!!
Clint Brooks| 8.30.11 @ 9:49AM
Because my brother Alan and I are liberal cyborgs who post what our controllers direct us to. We will continue until the conservatives can give us more entitlements and abolish all crimmal laws involving pedohiles.
Bob Grant| 8.30.11 @ 9:50AM
Carpe Diem?
Quartermaster| 8.30.11 @ 6:43PM
When the Revolution comes, you will ALL be taken to the camps and properly educated. Including Brooks who is in need of more education than all others combined.
Bob Grant| 8.30.11 @ 9:40AM
It's the republican's, conservative's, TEA Party's, fault (as usual) for not getting the message out.
Instead of using cute names like "Golden Fleece Award" or the like, we need to do a better job of bottom-lining the issue, i.e., what it means to EVERY CITIZEN and HOW it will negatively effect us all.
Greece is a real-time example of how this insane spending will make the Weimar Republic look prosperous.
We are now at code red so no time to "pussy foot" around the subject. We need to hit Americans right in the face with facts.
PolishKnight| 8.30.11 @ 9:56AM
I'm not arguing with the author's fundamental premise (that the wireless subsidies and overpriced rails are boondoggles) but quibble over him citing the availability of 3G as "broadband". I don't use 3g, but a quick google shows that it tops out about 1400kb/s or 1/2 the speed of an old 3600 baud modem. It's basically SMS speed. I find this rather puzzling because intuitively it would seem that a high speed mobile network should be trivial since most mobile phone are already using digital voice...
In any case, the available of satellite internet makes broadband for rural areas moot. It's a little more expensive and not as fast, but packages are in the 50 to 70 dollar a month range.
Bob Grant| 8.30.11 @ 10:06AM
How about if we stick with his fundamental premise and how we message it to our advantage.
Always Question| 8.30.11 @ 1:50PM
PolishKnight, you're facts are incorrect. 1,400 kb is approximately 1.4 gb. It's slower than cable or DSL (depending on location), but I've used it for work related computer access many times in the past, and it's really quite acceptable unless you're downloading a REALLY BIG file.
Always Question| 8.30.11 @ 1:51PM
Mis-typed - 1.4MB. Apologies.
PolishKnight| 8.30.11 @ 2:48PM
You're still right. I messed up. 1.4mbs is pretty fast or in terms we would understand, 140 kilobytes per second. However. that is the fastest rate and the typical performance according to the pages I read was 72 kilobytes per second or about 20 times faster than dialup.
Bob Grant| 8.30.11 @ 10:13AM
Because we live in a sports-centric society and we just love our shiny new sports facilities, I would use the Greece Summer Olympic fiasco.
$100 million plus sports facilities built specifically for a two week event than now sit unused with fencing around the buildings and weeds growing inside the premises.
Billions of dollars pissed down the drain. Many economists have speculated that wasteful olympic spending sent Greece's economy over the cliff.
Our boondoggles will do the same to us only on a much larger, catastrophic scale.
Petronius| 8.30.11 @ 10:57AM
BTDT We have another bridge going across the Mississippi as the concrete mafia has run out of places to build sound abatement walls on I270/255 and I64. It isn't costing $1billion yet. But by the time the minority contractor lawsuits are settled out of court and under the table behind our backs, it will get there.
Ground Control| 8.30.11 @ 10:59AM
Government wastes money?! I'm shocked, SHOCKED!, I tell you. The American Voters ELECTED these bozos, and will do probably so again. The Democrat Party is not going anywhere, and they will continue to win elections and ruin everything they come in contact with. And the American People will vote and vote and vote and get screwed. Sheesh.
Mick Hawk| 8.30.11 @ 11:01AM
Why would I want to take public transit from a place I can't get to and ride it to a place I don't want to go??
J.C. Eaton| 8.30.11 @ 1:27PM
My guess is:before he was elected to Congress, Ray LaHood most likely had a functional cerebrum. Years passed and he became a garden-variety prince of the city. A humourless, silly, self-important mental masturbator who came to see himself as an enlightened brahmin who would inconjunction with his meretricious Party save America. Now he's got it in to what used to pass for a brain that digging up, paving, digging up, and repaving the Nation is just what the doctor ordered. Someone once, while marvelling at the super, intergallactically dumb Sen. Inouhe, was overheard to say:"Where do they get such men?" The question might be posed of LaHood as well, and the answer would be the same:from the innards of a local political Rescue Misssion.
wolflen| 8.30.11 @ 1:50PM
the war on cars continues...think not...city of santa monica in reviewing a pending large development...questions the amount of parking provided...as one council member said...i don't want to provide parking for people driving suvs into santa monica...and making good on this attitude the city is exploring the elimination of street parking so bicycles will have a safer riding enviroment... also..santa monica is bringing in a "light rail" system by 2015 and strongly supports a "subway to the sea" pie in the sky project that the city of los angeles thinks will "help traffic" .. and cost billions in overruns..even though cities with subways have the same amount of traffic after the subway projects were completed...and both los angeles and santa monica are pushing "bicycles" as part of the cure for traffic congestion...and little by little the car will look for a parking space as it takes its place next to cigarette smokers looking for a place to light up..
PolishKnight| 8.30.11 @ 2:51PM
I'm surprised that hipsters in S.M. haven't considered overhead monorail since OM was famously shot down by major automotive companies (standard oil and firestone, I think) back in the early 60's.
wolflen| 8.30.11 @ 3:43PM
one of the council members is ALSO a LA MetroTransit wheel...OM would have to be a private company as Metro doesn't provide it...so its not even on the radar...it was not the auto/tire companies that shut down OM...but the cities themselves...inner conflicts..unions..etc .. as OM would eat at the local area transit systems..perhaps the picture becomes a bit clearer through this lense..and don't forget the matching "federal transit $$" .. much like school/pupil attendence...fed $$ for kids in school..it shows the need for the $..same with ridership on metro...if people took the OM..and they would..it would cut into metros monopoly..
J.C. Eaton| 8.30.11 @ 2:00PM
And the irreplaceable Willie Brown says California is just jake!
Ron| 8.30.11 @ 2:45PM
I live in Alaska, and we got hammered for wanting a bridge connecting the airport servicing Ketchikan to the mainland as wanting a "Bridge to Nowhere." For the record, it was not a bridge to nowhere, it connected one of two transportation methods to the city it serves. The only long, flat space for a runway in Ketchikan is on a small island, and the other than aircraft, the only way to get into Ketchikan is by ferry. I do not mean like a Long island ferry, but rather hundreds of sea miles. The only way to access the airport now is via water taxis (boats) which, as you can guess, is subject to the tides of the ocean. Sometimes, the taxis just cannot get to the airport due to wave action.
So, when it is for safety and access, I can see a high price tag, but just for this bullet train, which really only seems to be a sinkhole for money, I do not see the value.
Mike Hawk| 8.30.11 @ 5:23PM
Good, you want a bridge. Why should the American taxpayer fund it for you. Find a way to build it with your own state and local dollars if it is that important.
Bob K.| 8.30.11 @ 8:25PM
I agree! Alaska's Senator's and Congressional Representative should not vote for any legislation like this in any of the other 49 states either. Alaska should just declare independence and keep all the money their state raises from it's resources.
Same thing for the state you live in.
Flee| 8.30.11 @ 4:07PM
Obama and his minions have to try to force all internet communication on every patch of earth in the US. Otherwise how will those woefully uninformed dolts get to hear the brilliant speechifying of the teleprompter in chief? What better way to indoctrinate the unwilling than by plying them with something they didn't ask for paid for by someone else. This administration is disgusting in their continuing down the same path no matter how failed it proved to be in the past. Obama believes when he annoints something as the right way or just that it must be so. Him losing the next election can't come soon enough.
SF_Exile| 8.30.11 @ 4:28PM
I've got two words for all of you: Big Dig.
I lived in and around Boston for the entire time this behemoth was under construction. Like an old gas station pump, the dollars and cents just went around and around all day, ringing up the bill. And now, a huge sinkhole has opened up underneath the I-90/Mass Pike Extension, threatening the integrity of the tunnel. (You'll remember, of course, that this was the same tunnel where a couple drove through late one night in 2006 and had a giant panel of concrete dropped on the vehicle, killing the driver.)
This whole 'subway to nowhere' project is being driven by a group of extremely powerful Chinatown political cronies who look at this as a quid pro quo for dropping their opposition to the dismantling of the Embarcadero Skyway back in the '90s. They fought hard after the Loma Prieta earthquake for the Skyway to be rebuilt because it gave immediate and easy access to Chinatown businesses. So, now that chip has been called in.
Admittedly, there is a need for better rapid transit along this corridor of San Francisco. Stockton Street is Chinatown's main drag. It's nothing but delivery trucks, cars double parking and clumps of pedestrians weaving through traffic willy-nilly, willfully ignoring basic traffic laws.
But what no one is talking about is that this subway line is going to literally dead end in the heart of Chinatown, instead of continuing down Stockton towards North Beach and Fisherman's Wharf. And to add insult to injury, the city Board of Supervisors has approved the purchase of a tunnel boring machine - the kind used on the Chunnel - and which will be left where it is, buried beneath Stockton for the rest of eternity. Or the next earthquake.
Bob Grant| 8.30.11 @ 4:58PM
Interesting Post. Thanks.
I gotta ask one question however:
Any idea how much that tunnel boring machine will cost the tax payers? ....I'm almost afraid to know the answer.
My guesstimation would be $50 mil. How far off am I?
SF_Exile| 8.30.11 @ 11:51PM
I'd say you're in the ballpark, although I really don't know.
The crappiest part about this whole endeavor is that Stockton is now in worse shape than ever. I can't imagine that the elite merchants along this street through Union Square are all that pleased.
aware| 8.30.11 @ 6:28PM
And it never stops. Only grows. But there is an end to everything in this world.
Why does the word "hemorrhage" keep coming to mind when I think of money and government?
POST American| 8.30.11 @ 11:40PM
----AGAIN
----------that 1.5 QUADRILLION in FAKE USURY
derivatives that we've been signed on to.
----------------ANYTIME YOU'RE READY
bluecollarbytes| 8.30.11 @ 11:49PM
$7,112,422 per household sounds a bit high but how can you put a price on the constitutional right to da innernet? If it provides access to only one person isn't it worth it?
jesse| 8.31.11 @ 1:36AM
Railway electrification would probably be a good idea too.
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Good| 8.31.11 @ 1:36AM
Alaska should just declare independence and keep all the money their state raises from it's resources.
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gs425| 9.1.11 @ 4:19PM
The term "good hoagie" and the word San" Fransico" don't belong in this story never the less in the same paragraph.