H -°, L 7° | Tomorrow: 
H 17°, L 4°Editor’s note: Chelsea Lawliss is a member of the WISPIRG Transit Campaign Team.
The adage, “Rome wasn’t built in a day,” may seem as overused as the battle between Sconnies and Coasties. But in reality, there is a lot of truth to be taken from it; anything worth having is worth fighting for and takes time to get. When Kevin Bargnes said in an article printed last Friday (“Current High Speed Rail plan must upgrade, US lags behind”) that the $800 million that is going to help bring high-speed rail to Madison, on a global scale, “is not that impressive,” he had a point. In comparison to countries where a high-speed rail is a norm, the U.S. is seriously behind. However, it’s a starting point to an endeavor whose benefits will be more substantial than any argument about the ridiculousness of oversized sunglasses could ever hope to be.
The Wisconsin Student Public Interest Research Group on campus has made it one of its main priorities to educate and encourage people not only to support high-speed rail, but also to prioritize fixing crumbling roads and bridges over new highway construction and to encourage our legislators to spend taxpayer money more efficiently.
This spring, Congress will decide how to spend transportation funds that are allocated every six years in a bill called SAFETEA-LU. What happens in the next few months in D.C. will determine how this money will be spent on transportation. WISPIRG realizes now is the time to get the people of Wisconsin excited about the prospect of better transit systems.
As a member of WISPIRG’s Transit Campaign team, I know WISPIRG’s platform rests on the goals of trying to reduce oil consumption, traffic congestion and global warming pollution. The numbers speak for themselves: a full bus removes 50 cars from the road, and the combined rail and bus systems reduce the nation’s oil consumption by 3.4 billion gallons, and those are only some of the statistics.
Arguments have been made that instituting high-speed rail on a national scale will be more costly than what the benefits are, and the jobs this project will make will only be temporary. Robert Poole, a transportation expert from the libertarian Reason Foundation said, “Spending money to speed up existing train lines isn’t considered cost effective because the fast lines require new and expensive tracks.” This is true, but we have to start somewhere.
Bringing high-speed rail to the United States is going to be a long and arduous process. Undoubtedly, a lot of money will have to be invested into this project, perhaps a staggering amount, but it will be worth it, in the long run, anyway. The focus will have to be on improving existing rail lines and then moving onto expansion. The Dane County area is only one of many areas that could benefit from better transit.
Jobs will be created, and because this is not a task that can be completed overnight, they will be sustainable jobs. As the push for more environment-friendly options grows stronger, companies like Ford and Toyota will realize there is money to be made in creating rail cars that are energy efficient, instead of cars that pollute the air and increase our dependency on foreign oil — not to mention that it would eliminate the risk of faulty gas pedals.
The American Recovery and Investment Act already designated $8 billion toward transportation improvements. Once this movement for better transportation gets on track, the possibilities will be endless. The push for high-speed rail, and better transit in general, has the potential to have a snowball effect.
We can’t just let this movement pass by. There is too much money at stake to have a passive state of mind and hope everything will work out. Voice your concerns. Get involved and help get this idea out. This is not just an opportunity for a faster way to get from point A to point B. It is an opportunity to help preserve the environment and to live up to the notion that the U.S. is a leader in innovation.
The key is to have patience and to support big ideas that could lead to big changes. If every person who ever had a plan of this size thought, “Damn, this is going to be too hard,” we would all still drive horse-drawn wagons and read The Badger Herald by candlelight.
Chelsea Lawliss ([email protected]) is a sophomore intending to major in journalism.
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High-speed rail can improve the economy only if it is built where it will make an impact. Connecting large cities that are close together will certainly benefit, but in more sparsely populated areas, it’s not likely to pay for itself and may eventually require subsidies. I’m all for it, but only if they do it right.
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agreed. It’s doubtful WI has the population density to support this plan without further subsidies.
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Meanwhile, WISPIRG gets student subsidies through our seg fees. Working students can’t afford to fund any student organizations, let alone those who have pie-in-the-sky dreams that may or may not be good for the student body in the long run.
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lol, yeah my $15 a semester that goes to student groups really hurts my pockets. i work over 30 hours a week and am a full-time student, but i also appreciate how helpful many of these student groups are to our campus. pie-in-the-sky? you are a very pessimistic person, and your thoughts do not reflect those of the intelligent and driven students here at the UW. high speed rail is coming, wisconsin is progressing.
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Agreed, thanks for saying that 84e939cd. Student groups like WISPIRG use that small amount of funding to help bring student advocacy back and work on issues that have HUGE impacts in Madison. If everyone had a “pie in the sky” view on issues, nothing would ever get done.
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Industries the government has painfully failed at running, such as Amtrak, should be handed off to private-sector businessmen who can make them work— or put them out of their misery.
Obama�s spending proposes to take the average Bush deficit for the years 2001�2008, and double it, all the way to 2020. To get out of the Bush hole, we need to dig a hole twice as deep for one-and-a-half times as long. And that�s according to the official projections of his Economics Czar, Ms. Rose Colored-Glasses. By 2015, the actual hole may be so deep that even if you toss every Obama speech down it on double-spaced paper you still won�t be able to fill it up. In the spendthrift Bush days, federal spending as a proportion of GDP average 19.6 percent. Obama proposes to crank it up to 25 percent as a permanent feature of life.
But, if they�re �unsustainable,� what happens when they can no longer be sustained? A failure of bond auctions? A downgraded government debt rating? Reduced GDP growth? Total societal collapse? Mad Max on the New Jersey Turnpike?
If Wisconsin wants to further gild its sparkling ivory towers with a Disneyland monorail system, then ask Wisconsin taxpayers to fund it. Because I’ve got news for you, kids— Uncle Obama is already broke; and his Maoist overlords have no interest in financing your fantasies of luxury rail service. Our bloated Federal deficit can no longer afford these obscene Big Government extravagences.
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Go high-speed rail! Can’t wait to ride the train, thanks WISPIRG!
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Yes, thanks WISPRIG, because they had SO MUCH to do with “high”/moderate-speed rail returning to Wisconsin.
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But it was government that destroyed the railroad system in this country and it is government that has monopolized roads, and look at the results. Why do you think more government is the solution?
“If every person who ever had a plan of this size thought, �Damn, this is going to be too hard,� we would all still drive horse-drawn wagons and read The Badger Herald by candlelight.”
The truth is that the advances from horses to automobiles and candlelight to electricity came about because entrepreneurs were left free to invent and profit from these inventions. Had the government destroyed private-sector wealth like it is doing now, we would be still reading by candlelight.
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Had the government not promoted rural electrification, a good portion of the nation would still be reading by candle light.
If a private passenger rail company were to establish itself and out compete Amtrak, I would be happy to reap the benefits of a lower tax load. Until then, a strong interstate rail system represents an important national security interest just in case a real war breaks out and the government should and will take a loss on it.
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False. Before 1936, a small but growing number of farms installed small wind-electric plants. These generally used a 40V DC generator to charge batteries in the barn or the basement of the farmhouse.
FDR’s inefficient, mega-watt electrical grids are largely responsible for exploding GHG emissions. If the private sector had been allowed to continue innovating (without Big Gov monopoly interference), who knows what rural electrical demand would have spawned in green technological advances.
In an era of resource scarcity, the last thing America needs is more inefficient, electrical grid hogs like high speed national rail. If this made economic sense, the private sector would be doing it already.
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What what history are you basing this on? The government drove out private electricity producers. Some of these competitors took them to court over it.
Government destroyed the rail system and prevents private passenger rail from competing. Who can compete with force?
If a company took people’s money by force and monopolized the transportation system, people would recognize that as unfair and anti-competitive, but when the government does it they yell that the free-market has failed. What a perversion.
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You really think that rural, largely poor areas could have afforded to home generate electricity en masse? The capital costs would have been huge, especially for many people that could barely afford to keep their farms.
As for Amtrak, I’m wondering why you are continuing with the economic argument when I’ve pointed out that it is in the Government/all of our interest to keep our rail network artificially strong in case we need to mobilize nationally.
On topic, even if the local rail network doesn’t turn a profit, investing in infrastructure is a viable and arguably valuable way of encouraging business to come to the area. In order to keep prices low enough to be a proper incentive, the government may have to operate it at a loss. I for one am not going to sneeze at any effort to make our region more economically viable in these troubled times.
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“Artificial strength” and “operating at a loss” sound like euphemisms for actual weakness and inoperativeness…
“in these troubled times.” (Insert dramatic music here.)
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Puhleaze! Show readers the DoD proposal for high speed rail as a national defense priority. The existing commercial rail network was put to the test during Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm, and no significant problems were ever noted. You’re delusional if you’re suggesting DoD backs a mammoth rail infrastructure overhaul. Hasn’t academia demonstrated that the military-industrial complex was pure, undistilled evil?
I’m sorry, but the answer is still no. Wisconsin is not getting a high speed Disneyland monorail system for Christmas, and that’s final.
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Why does there need to be an overhaul? The current system works for defense purposes. I’m only arguing that having a strong rail network in case we have to switch to WWII style mobilization (which is a mite bit more rigorous than Desert Shield/Storm).
The proposed Wisconsin bill would help merge the Madison and Milwaukee markets, bringing Madison’s skilled labor into Milwaukee’s productive sector. I doubt that the system will turn a profit (at least for the next 5+ years) so no private sector source is likely to fund it. Like many public goods it will operate at a loss, and although I’m a little uneasy about that kind of spending (this may surprise you but I would prefer for our governments to stay as debt free as possible), I can understand the issue at hand. The argument is that the increase in productiveness created by the light rail system will lead to an increase in profits a corresponding increase in taxes that will pay for the system indirectly.
For the system to be effective, prices have to be low enough that paying off the capital costs will take a while. I’m not 100% behind the State Government on this issue, but at least I’m looking at the right issue rather than assessing the light rail system as a start up industry.
Just throwing this out there, but the government makes all kinds of inefficient investments to encourage stability/economic growth (Fire Department, Police Station, Infrastructure, etc).
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I see. So you concede that it’s neither necessary nor prudent… but we should do it anyway?
Compelling arguments… not.
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I’m sorry that our literacy programs have so failed you. I maintained that it was necessary and prudent, just not using strict economic rationale.