The Ideological Left's Equivalent of a Gold-Digging Trophy-Wife

I've been blogging this subject for years because at every opportunity Democrats (and a handful of Republicans) resurrect the notion that running a commuter rail line into and or up through the Nashua-Concord corridor would be good for something.

That's like saying "hey doc just leave the endoscope in my colon, that way the next time I need it it will already be there."

It is damn near the biggest waste of time and money we could imagine, destined to become nothing more than a fiscal albatross that bleeds us dry, and yet like some three-year old who relentlessly carpet bombs you in the ten-items-or-less aisle with ear piercing screams until you relent and buy them that chocolate bar, the mass-transit zombies you thought you'd put down keep getting back up so they can eat your brains.

Commuter rail is as useless in New Hampshire as a one legged man in an ass kicking contest and whose only possible value (and I use that word very loosely) is as the ideological lefts equivalent of a gold-digging trophy wife you can never divorce--that's more expensive, and paid for by you whether you use it, need it, ever see it, or not.

So hey, how about another study on commuter rail?  If we keep getting studies done eventually we'll have one that says exactly what we need it to say in a way that will allow us to get our future, gold-digging, commuter rail trophy wife to the alter.

Sooner or later.  I'm still on the side of later and I've laid down plenty of text in support of that.  So rather than re-write it again I'll just give you some links and pull quotes and let you take it from here.

Here are some links with pull quotes to previous 'rants' on New Hampshire commuter rail

December 2009 'Rail'

Passenger rail costs are not limited to the root infrastructure itself.  That would be rails versus roads.   Taxpayers would have to subsidize passenger rail-cars, fuel the cars, maintain the cars, probably pay the workers and their benefits, and support the entire system when it fails to turn a profit, which will be always and probably forever.   While roads have some other infrastructure nothing compares to rail.

In contrast people buy their own cars, and pay for their own fuel and maintenance.  They may buy the car to get to a job that’s probably not funded by taxpayers either. (Except in Concord) Taxpayers do not need to subsidize any of that where with rail we’re supporting all of it.  So there is no possible apples to apples comparison to road and rail taxes.

February 2010 'The Real Third-Rail for Commuter Rail'

... Such is the case for commuter rail in New Hampshire, a liberal fantasy that is a solution looking for a problem.  And apparently it’s found one but not the one it was hoping for.  A recent report has revealed some of the thinking behind the cost and revenue options available in forcing commuter rail down the throats of New Hampshire residents; and it’s filled with words and phrases and clauses that might just derail conjunction junction before it ever leaves the station.

... (how to pay for it...?)

[A] business improvement assessment" of $1.02 per $1,000, on top of existing local and statewide property taxes, could be levied on all properties in a mile-wide corridor along the track, a half-mile on each side.

They could also choose “…to add a 16 cents per $1,000 property tax surcharge on all properties in 27 communities in the Nashua-Manchester areas.”

Then there’s “a vehicle registration fee [which] "has actually been a pretty common approach across the country. You basically tax what you want people to avoid, if you will," Williams said He said that with 528,273 vehicles in the 27 communities in the region, a $15.82 charge would be needed to raise $8.3 million.

May 2010 ' De-Railed?'

According to the state Department of Transportation, I-93 costs roughly $10,000 per lane per mile to maintain. At four lanes, I-93 between Concord and the border would cost about $1.6 million a year. After the Manchester to Massachusetts widening, it would be about $2.6 million a year — roughly half of Burling’s lowest estimate for operating the train. Double the I-93 maintenance figure, just to be safe, and we’re still at the low estimate for the state’s portion of operating a train.

 February 2011 'Democrats, Trains, & HB 218'

(Includes a round up of previous content related to the newest effort to get Railed.)

Democrats are aghast that the NH House would dissolve the New Hampshire Rail Transit Authority–the head of a beast seeking to force commuter rail upon us–because hey it doesn't cost anything.

But it does cost and it could lead to something that costs us even more in the future.  A lot more.

April 2011 'Psst.  Hey Buddy.  Want to Buy A Train?'

The morning Union leader chides New Hampshire Governor John Lynch for saying this to the Nashua Telegraph.

“I think rail would be an economic driver for this region. Ultimately, we would realize more money than we could even contemplate at this point.”

...What he meant was that if we added commuter rail "there would be more spending than we could even contemplate at this point."

There's more but I think that should cover it.  All the same arguments against it still apply, the most important of which is that it will never pay for itself, which means that all of us will end up paying for something most of us do not want, do not need, and will never use.  And that more or less describes Democrat governance up and down the line.

You are reading  "The Ideological Left’s Equivalent of a Gold-Digging Trophy-Wife"   by  Steve Mac Donald originally posted at GraniteGrok.com (Home)

Steve has been recognized as the Americans For Prosperity Blogger of the month for December 2012

Democrats, Trains And HB 218

The Union Leader has a great editorial in this mornings Sunday News titled "Free Trains."  It is great for several reasons the least of which is that it mirrors concerns I have been expressing for years.  That no matter who pays to build them, someone has to pay to keep them.  That would be New Hampshire Taxpayers. But Democrats are aghast that the NH House would dissolve the New Hampshire Rail Transit Authority--the head of a beast seeking to force commuter rail upon us--because hey it doesn't cost anything.

But it does cost and it could lead to something that costs us even more in the future.  A lot more.

December 2009 at NH Insider - I hit it out of the park when someone compared road taxes to rail taxes.

Passenger rail costs are not limited to the root infrastructure itself.  That would be rails versus roads.   Taxpayers would have to subsidize passenger rail-cars, fuel the cars, maintain the cars, probably pay the workers and their benefits, and support the entire system when it fails to turn a profit, which will be always and probably forever.   While roads have some other infrastructure nothing compares to rail.

In contrast people buy their own cars, and pay for their own fuel and maintenance.  They may buy the car to get to a job that’s probably not funded by taxpayers either. (Except in Concord) Taxpayers do not need to subsidize any of that where with rail we’re supporting all of it.  So there is no possible apples to apples comparison to road and rail taxes. 

The state also makes a lot of money on registration fees and fuel taxes for road vehicles, tolls and license plates, and some towns rely so heavily on registration fees that even minor reductions can cause budget issues.   Passenger rail offers no comparable net increase in revenues and in all likely hood a net loss.  So Passenger rail risks reducing revenues and increasing tax obligations for no significant greater good. 

Read the whole thing here. 

But that's hardly the most pressing point about the ongoing illusion of free commuter rail...

February 2010.  NH Transportation Commissioner George Campbell, as reported by John DiStaso at the time, accidentally releases a report that tells the truth about the real costs to taxpayers for commuter rail and how we might pay for it.

Again at NH Insider...

The report lays out recommendations for funding the project by bumping up against the third rail of higher property taxes, more vehicle registration fee increases, and phrases like, “”(the) "concept of this business improvement tax was that if they were going to have a benefit, then we could tax them on that benefit,"”  this from Steve Williams a former executive director of the Nashua Regional Planning Commission.

Taxes to pay for free commuter rail?  Do tell!

[A] business improvement assessment" of $1.02 per $1,000, on top of existing local and statewide property taxes, could be levied on all properties in a mile-wide corridor along the track, a half-mile on each side.

They could also choose “…to add a 16 cents per $1,000 property tax surcharge on all properties in 27 communities in the Nashua-Manchester areas.”

Then there’s “a vehicle registration fee [which] "has actually been a pretty common approach across the country. You basically tax what you want people to avoid, if you will," Williams said He said that with 528,273 vehicles in the 27 communities in the region, a $15.82 charge would be needed to raise $8.3 million.

The Union Leader revisits this and other truths in this morning editorial...

So the authority has the power to raise whatever revenue is necessary, by whatever "other means" necessary, to finance a $300 million passenger rail line that will cost at least $8 million a year to run. And yet the people are told by its supporters that it is purely a "volunteer" effort that will cost "ZERO tax payer dollars."

Not just an ad hoc panel of transportation enthusiasts milking the federal teat to saddle us with a big annual revenue hole? How about that hole?

Back to March of 2010, John DiStaso reported the remarks of Peter Burling the head of the NH Rail Authority , which rightly sends me off the rails in this post, again at NH Insider...

PETER BURLING, head of the New Hampshire Rail Transit Authority (NHRTA), was in Manchester this week to promote his dream of building a commuter rail line from Concord to Boston.

He suggested that operating commuter rail would cost taxpayers less than maintaining the highway.

The rail line would cost $5 million to $8 million a year to run, Burling said. (The NHRTA officially estimates a total cost of $10 million a year, with 50 percent covered by fares, but all these numbers are guesses.) “Compare that to the cost of maintaining our highway system,” he said.

That's nonsense.  According to the state Department of Transportation, I-93 costs roughly $10,000 per lane per mile to maintain. At four lanes, I-93 between Concord and the border would cost about $1.6 million a year. After the Manchester to Massachusetts widening, it would be about $2.6 million a year — roughly half of Burling’s lowest estimate for operating the train. Double the I-93 maintenance figure, just to be safe, and we’re still at the low estimate for the state’s portion of operating a train.

And the train would carry only a tiny fraction of the traffic the highway carries.

That makes it enormously more expensive per passenger- mile. Financially, highways make more sense.

So we can wrap it all up with this from my Feb 2010 post...

Any good liberal will tell you this.  Never talk about how much something really costs, or who will have to pay for it, until after you have convinced them it will be good for them.  You do this by creating an overwhelming desire for fairness, appeal to some moral phantom named equality, or in the case of massive infrastructure projects with storied histories as terminally bankrupt taxpayer propped up boondoggles, convince them of the “Benefit.”

And what is the benefit this time around?  Well it is free of course. (Again from this mornings UL)

Republicans in the New Hampshire House of Representatives have a bill that would eliminate the New Hampshire Rail Transit Authority. That prompted the New Hampshire Democratic Party to tweet last Thursday: "Why is the NHGOP opposing an Eisenhower style investment in rail, that costs ZERO tax payer dollars??..."

 

Legislators should eliminate this boondoggle of an authority not only because neither the state nor the federal government can afford what it exists to create, but also on the principle that such blatant deceptions should carry heavy penalties.

 

You need to hold people responsible for their deceptions.  One way would be to support the bill to eliminate the New Hampshire Rail Transit Authority.  (HB 218) The democrats and the projects supporters are lying about the cost, or too stupid to be trusted.  Or they just view it as a means to an end.  The same end they are always looking to.  A budget so big, and so chock full of things "we don't dare cut," that we just have to get us one of those sales or income taxes all the other crappy left wing run deficit states have.

 

So those democrat run states have a sales and or income tax and they still have a deficit?  How the hell did that happen?  I know the answer.  They lied about that too.  More revenue solves nothing-it is always about the spending.  And commuter rail, well that's a lot more spending.

 

HB 218

Docket

Status

 

 Cross posted



De-Railed?

This editorial from today's Union Leader on Commuter Rail caught my attention.

PETER BURLING, head of the New Hampshire Rail Transit Authority (NHRTA), was in Manchester this week to promote his dream of building a commuter rail line from Concord to Boston.

He suggested that operating commuter rail would cost taxpayers less than maintaining the highway.

The rail line would cost $5 million to $8 million a year to run, Burling said. (The NHRTA officially estimates a total cost of $10 million a year, with 50 percent covered by fares, but all these numbers are guesses.) “Compare that to the cost of maintaining our highway system,” he said.

That's nonsense.  According to the state Department of Transportation, I-93 costs roughly $10,000 per lane per mile to maintain. At four lanes, I-93 between Concord and the border would cost about $1.6 million a year. After the Manchester to Massachusetts widening, it would be about $2.6 million a year — roughly half of Burling’s lowest estimate for operating the train. Double the I-93 maintenance figure, just to be safe, and we’re still at the low estimate for the state’s portion of operating a train.

And the train would carry only a tiny fraction of the traffic the highway carries.

That makes it enormously more expensive per passenger- mile. Financially, highways make more sense.

Last December I suggest that rail would cost us more here, not just for the system but as an impact on the budgets of local towns...

Passenger rail costs are not limited to the root infrastructure itself.  That would be rails versus roads.   Taxpayers would have to subsidize passenger rail-cars, fuel the cars, maintain the cars, probably pay the workers and their benefits, and support the entire system when it fails to turn a profit, which will be always and probably forever.   While roads have some other infrastructure nothing compares to rail.

In contrast people buy their own cars, and pay for their own fuel and maintenance.  They may buy the car to get to a job that’s probably not funded by taxpayers either. (Except in Concord) Taxpayers do not need to subsidize any of that where with rail we’re supporting all of it.  So there is no possible apples to apples comparison to road and rail taxes. 

The state also makes a lot of money on registration fees and fuel taxes for road vehicles, tolls and license plates, and some towns rely so heavily on registration fees that even minor reductions can cause budget issues.   Passenger rail offers no comparable net increase in revenues and in all likely hood a net loss.  So Passenger rail risks reducing revenues and increasing tax obligations for no significant greater good.

Add to that details from a report released in February 2010 on the potential plans to pay for adding the benefit of commuter rail here...

[A] business improvement assessment" of $1.02 per $1,000, on top of existing local and statewide property taxes, could be levied on all properties in a mile-wide corridor along the track, a half-mile on each side.

Then there’s “a vehicle registration fee [which] "has actually been a pretty common approach across the country. You basically tax what you want people to avoid, if you will," Williams said He said that with 528,273 vehicles in the 27 communities in the region, a $15.82 charge would be needed to raise $8.3 million.

They could also choose “…to add a 16 cents per $1,000 property tax surcharge on all properties in 27 communities in the Nashua-Manchester areas.”

 ...and the cost figures in the UL editorial, you would think, should put the issue in its grave.

If only we could be so lucky.

Rail, like gambling, is one of those issues that like slasher film serial killers just never dies no matter how many times you think you've killed it.    While the costs are clearly excessive, and demonstrate no potential benefit to the state, you can probably bet your unemployment check that next session we'll be forced to deal with yet another raft of bills to give New Hampshire something it does not need, that costs more than the current circumstances--Commuter rail.

The Real "Third-Rail" For Commuter Rail

Any good liberal will tell you this.  Never talk about how much something really costs, or who will have to pay for it, until after you have convinced them it will be good for them.  You do this by creating an overwhelming desire for fairness, or appeal to some moral phantom named equality, or in the case of massive infrastructure projects with storied histories as terminally bankrupt taxpayer propped up boondoggles, convince them of the “Benefit.”

 

Such is the case for commuter rail in New Hampshire, a liberal fantasy that is a solution looking for a problem.  And apparently it’s found one but not the one it was hoping for.  A recent report has revealed some of the thinking behind the cost and revenue options available in forcing commuter rail down the throats of New Hampshire residents; and it’s filled with words and phrases and clauses that might just derail conjunction junction before it ever leaves the station.

 

John DiStaso reports in this morning’s Sunday News the details of costs and taxes proposed to prop up commuter rail in the Nashua-Manchester-Concord Corridor, along with an apology by Transportation commissioner George Campbell for releasing the report.  This is like apologizing to a family member for asking about a deceased relative when they didn’t even know they were dead.

 

The report lays out recommendations for funding the project by bumping up against the third rail of higher property taxes, more vehicle registration fee increases, and phrases like, “”(the) "concept of this business improvement tax was that if they were going to have a benefit, then we could tax them on that benefit,"”  this from Steve Williams a former executive director of the Nashua Regional Planning Commission.

 

Steve is wielding pure government knows best logic.  First you imagine a benefit, and then you tax people for the privilege of their having imagined it for you.  The unfortunate reality however is that commuter rail in America is just another unfunded welfare program, a public transit money pit that will forever need filling with taxpayer dollars.

Like...

[A] business improvement assessment" of $1.02 per $1,000, on top of existing local and statewide property taxes, could be levied on all properties in a mile-wide corridor along the track, a half-mile on each side.

 

They could also choose “…to add a 16 cents per $1,000 property tax surcharge on all properties in 27 communities in the Nashua-Manchester areas.”

 

Then there’s “a vehicle registration fee [which] "has actually been a pretty common approach across the country. You basically tax what you want people to avoid, if you will," Williams said He said that with 528,273 vehicles in the 27 communities in the region, a $15.82 charge would be needed to raise $8.3 million.

 

This all courtesy of Steve Williams.

 

After the details were made public, New Hampshire Commissioner of Transportation George Campbell says he committed “a major mistake” when he released the balance sheet detailing new taxes and fees as possible ways to help fund a passenger rail line for the southern part of the state.

 

The mistake was not the information, but the revelation, perhaps epiphany is a better word, separating reality from fantasy.  You have to pay for the privilege of commuter rail, even if it means taxing you out of your car to get you to pay to use the train you never actually needed or wanted.  It’s a boondoggle, and we owe Commissioner Campbell our thanks for his “major mistake.”  He has unveiled the third rail of commuter rail; that it will cost taxpayers a lot of money for something they’ve managed to live without, and some of them a lot more than others.