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Gov. Ted Strickland says Ohio will get $400 million for 3C rail project

Florida Taxpayers will get stuck with an annual operating deficit when they will have take the stimulus money stimulus money to pay for high speed rail systems, indefinitely. Ohio plans to take $400 million stimulus money to build Ohio high speed rail.  Even the most rosy predictions for passenger rail have not promised that these new rail lines will be cost effective transportation. Passenger fairs never cover the cost of operating the trains.

Will Ohio future tax payers be forced to pay for rail systems that don’t make a profit and require state subsidies? Other states are questioning the benefits of state subsidized rail between major cities. Tax money subsidies for rail will compete with already short funds necessary for other state funded priorities.

This news appeared in the Washington Examiner…

True cost of Florida rail will far exceed Obama’s $1.25 billion grant

By: Mark Tapscott
Editorial Page Editor
01/29/10 5:27 PM EST

President Obama’s announcement of more than $8 billion in economic stimulus program grants for high-speed rail transit projects in 13 “transit corridors” is supposed to make possible 168 mph passenger trains routinely running between major cities.

But $8 billion now is only the beginning because costs are likely to increase on these projects faster than a speeding bullet train.

Consider the $1.25 billion grant Obama announced Thursday to build a new high-speed rail line between Tampa and Orlando. The federal money was approved despite the fact a recent environmental impact statement recommended against going forward with the project.

Robert Poole of the Reason Foundation says the $1.25 billion is likely to pay for only about a fourth of the utlimate cost to build the system and put it into operation.

“A 2009 GAO report that looked at recent high-speed rail projects in France, Spain, and Japan shows them averaging $51 million per mile (excluding one very high-cost Japanese line). For the 84 miles of the Tampa-Orlando route, that totals $4.28 billion.

So merely to build this project is going to require another $3 billion from somewhere. Florida is facing a several billion dollar budget deficit this year, so it’s hard to see where the extra money could come from,” Poole says in a devastating analysis.

Private investors aren’t likely to come forward for the project, either, because, according to Poole, a recent Congressional Research Service (CRS) report found that only two of the dozens of high-speed rail systems built worldwide in recent years are “estimated” to have recouped initial investment costs.

Worse, it’s difficult to see how the Tampa-Orlando system can attract sufficient ridership to pay for maintenance and upkeep, since, as Poole notes:

“This corridor does not make CRS’s list of the top 12 city-pairs for potential high-speed rail ridership. In fact, CRS estimates that the train in this corridor would likely reduce traffic on I-4 by less than 2 percent. That doesn’t bode well for high-speed rail ridership, especially since 84 miles is way too short for people to fly, so all potential riders must come from those who would otherwise drive.”

Conclusion?

Poole predicts that “Florida taxpayers will get stuck with an annual operating deficit that they will have to pay for, indefinitely. Bottom line: this gift horse looks to me like a gift that will keep on taking.”

You can read all of Poole’s report on the Tampa_Orlando project here. For a Reason analysis by Wendell Cox, Joseph Vranich and Adrian Moore of the Los Angeles-to-San Francisco project that Obama awarded $2.25 billion, go here.