The real cost of the choo choo to nowhere is $200 billion. That also includes the sales tax and property tax on homes and business that will not happen because government took the land. We know the train will not pay for itself—BART has a massive deficit, hundreds of millions are spent each year to subsidize this money and rider losing scam. The High Speed Rail, on its own will bankrupt the State of California.
“Earlier this month, Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao put a highly-regarded project to modernize Caltrain, the commuter rail line between San Jose and San Francisco, in jeopardy. Acting at the behest of Congressional Republicans opposed to high-speed rail, Chao delayed a $647 million grant for Caltrain electrification, throwing its future in doubt.
CalTrain is a section of the high speed rail—but LOW speed—part of the scam. Thanks to Chao this could be stopped. The HSR Authority has no money to pay for billions in contracts, the cap and trade auction, expected to give them $500 million a year, just took in $8 million instead—without Federal money this scam dies. When will the criminal investigations begin?
Photo courtesy of skew-t, flickr
Local GOP Reps Counting on Elaine Chao to Trip Up Transit Projects
By Angie Schmitt. Streetsblog, 2/27/17
Earlier this month, Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao put a highly-regarded project to modernize Caltrain, the commuter rail line between San Jose and San Francisco, in jeopardy. Acting at the behest of Congressional Republicans opposed to high-speed rail, Chao delayed a $647 million grant for Caltrain electrification, throwing its future in doubt.
It looks like Republicans in other states were watching and learning.
State lawmakers in Minnesota are appealing to Chao to sink Minneapolis’s Southwest Light Rail, a 15-mile route between downtown the western suburbs expected to draw about 35,000 weekday passengers.
State Senator David Osmek wants a $900 million federal transit grant to go to roads instead, or barring that, anything else that’s not transit for Minneapolis. Photo: Minnesota Senate
A grant from the Federal Transit Administration’s New Starts program is supposed to cover $929 million of the $1.85 billion project, which is currently in the engineering phase.
State Senator David Osmek, who represents the western suburbs, has introduced a resolution in the Republican-controlled legislature asking Chao to divert that $929 million to roads and bridges around the state.
By law, however, the FTA grant funding can’t be transferred to roads. “They can’t reprogram [Federal Transit Administration] funds,” said Stephen Lee Davis of Transportation for America. “There’s no way to do that. They’ll just lose the money. That money will just go to another place.”
That wouldn’t bother Osmek, who told the Star Tribune he would rather lose the money to another state altogether than see it spent on transit.
It’s unclear if Chao can even rescind the money at this point. While a full funding agreement has yet to be signed, the FTA has approved the grant. Yanking the funding away would be highly unusual at the very least, said Davis.
Trump’s upcoming budget could give ammunition to local Republicans looking to disrupt urban transit projects, Davis warned. The budget is expected to include sweeping cuts (except to military spending, naturally), and the GOP has been targeting transit funding for years.
Even if the GOP stops short of zeroing out federal transit funds, an idea supported by the brain trust reportedly drawing up the blueprint for Trump’s budget, less severe cuts could still cause havoc, robbing projects like Southwest Light Rail or Indianapolis’s Red Line bus rapid transit of anticipated funding.
About Stephen Frank
Speak Your Mind