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4/5/2010
Riemer is ridiculous, begging for train subsidies
Scandalous in its nebulousness, this Sunday’s Journal Sentinel included a piece by David Riemer, director of the Community Advocates Public Policy Institute* and unflagging advocate for Healthy Wisconsin. I’m sure Riemer has never met a government subsidy or government program he doesn’t like.
One of his big beefs these days is whining about government subsidies for “Wisconsin’s $3.6 billion road system.”
But if it's acceptable to compel the owners of property, workers and businesses in Wisconsin to shell out $1.5 billion in property, income and sales taxes to subsidize our network of roads, why is it somehow an outrage for taxpayers to also support a portion of the cost of railroad construction and maintenance?
…. How can any reasonable person admit it's OK to use $1.5 billion in property taxes, income taxes and sale taxes to finance a 40% bailout of our roads so that users only have to pay 60% of the cost of the very streets and highways they use, but then denounce the use of general tax revenues to pay for even a portion of railroads and insist that this particular type of "road" must be fully paid for by its users?
If we massively subsidize roads made of concrete and asphalt for people who drive cars and trucks, there's nothing wrong with a comparable subsidy for roads made of steel rails for people who ride trains.
What Riemer doesn’t bother to mention is the big bucks being asked to fund his love affair with trains.
So let’s do some comparing, based on the “vehicle miles of travel” or VMT data Riemer mentions, but isn’t too specific about.
- Annual operating subsidy for proposed Madison to Milwaukee high-speed rail: $7.5 million – or more (That’s not even considering construction costs of $810 million from the feds + how much state money?)
- Annual subsidy for roads, as pointed out by Riemer, $1.5 billion (that includes construction costs)
- Estimated vehicle miles traveled equivalent for Madison-to-Milwaukee high-speed rail: 29,912,000**
- Estimated vehicle miles traveled in Wisconsin in 2009 (not even counting trucks): 53,000,000,000 (.pdf p.103)
Do the math. Subsidy per vehicle mile traveled on state roads – all state roads – calculates to $0.028. Lo and behold, subsidy per vehicle mile traveled via the high-speed rail endowed from on high calculates to $0.251. And remember, that’s only the annual operating subsidy – no construction included.
Passenger rail travel is very very expensive. Let’s get that into our heads.
Jo Egelhoff, FoxPolitics.net
* From the web site: http://www.ca-ppi.org/ Community Advocates’ Public Policy Institute has a clear and simple goal: To explain why so many Milwaukeeans are poor, and to develop and implement a practical strategy to greatly reduce the level of poverty in our community and offer the poor the tools they need to lead better lives.
** Here’s how I calculated a VMT equivalent for high-speed rail: Estimated annual number of riders for the train is 361,400. Let’s assume that every rider would have driven his/her own vehicle if he had to drive (more typically, passengers per vehicle is about 1.4 – but we’ll give the rail guys the benefit of the doubt here). Multiply each ride by the 80 miles between the two cities and you get 29,912,000 vehicle miles traveled.
COMMENTS
Jo,
A lot more could be said against passenger trains. Randal O'Toole has just written (dated March 24th) a superb Cato Institute Policy Analysis on that very topic: Defining Success: The Case against Rail Transit. His review of every significant rail transit system in the country is devastating.
Steve Erbach
Neenah
Steve Erbach (Tue Apr 06 09:42:10 2010)
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