{"id":29605,"date":"2012-04-17T07:10:00","date_gmt":"2012-04-17T11:10:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planetsave.com\/?p=29605"},"modified":"2012-04-17T07:10:00","modified_gmt":"2012-04-17T11:10:00","slug":"oh-wi-nj-fl-governors-lied-to-public-to-kill-high-speed-trains","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planetsave.com\/articles\/oh-wi-nj-fl-governors-lied-to-public-to-kill-high-speed-trains\/","title":{"rendered":"OH, WI, NJ, & FL Governors Lied to Public to Kill High-Speed Trains"},"content":{"rendered":"

 
\nRemember the exciting announcements about a nationwide high-speed rail network that Obama made in 2010<\/a>? And remember how several Tea Party governors killed high-speed rail<\/a> in their states? Well, if it wasn’t painfully obvious before, Angie Schmitt of Streetsblog recently wrote a great post on the lies these Tea Party governors of FL, OH, NJ, and WI used, and the actual facts. Here’s that post reposted in full<\/a><\/em>:<\/p>\n

\"rick<\/a>
Image Credit: Miami Herald\/Politifact<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Wisconsin, Ohio, New Jersey, Florida \u2014 the Republican governors in\u00a0each of these states recently aborted a major rail project claiming it was too expensive. Their methods were remarkably similar; their justifications aligned. In many ways, it was like they were all working from the same playbook.<\/p>\n

Now that the Government Accountability Office\u00a0has exposed<\/a>\u00a0New Jersey Governor Chris Christie\u2019s distortions (a.k.a. lies) to justify killing the ARC rail tunnel project to Manhattan, it makes you wonder if similar investigations in Wisconsin, Ohio and Florida would reveal the same.<\/p>\n

Today James Rowen, who writes\u00a0The Political Environment<\/a>\u00a0blog out of Milwaukee, reminded readers that he was pointing out the distortions put forward by Wisconsin Governor Scott \u201cNo Train\u201d Walker more than a year ago. In August 2010, Scott Walker, then a candidate for governor, told the\u00a0Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel<\/a>\u00a0that the train would cost Wisconsin $8 million annually to operate.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile the\u00a0newspaper\u00a0reported<\/a>\u00a0the actual cost to the state would be less than one-tenth of his claim:<\/p>\n

Operating costs are projected at $7.5 million a year, not counting the part covered by fares. But [WisDot official Carl Anne] Renlund said the state is already using federal funds to cover 90% of the Hiawatha\u2019s $5.2 million annual operating cost \u2013 leaving $520,000 a year for state taxpayers to pick up \u2013 and hopes to do the same with the new line. That would mean state taxpayers would be paying $750,000 a year for the service to Madison.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In Ohio, Governor John Kasich also relied on half-truths or worst-case scenarios in his campaign to kill Ohio\u2019s 3C Rail project. Kasich repeated over and over that the train would be too slow to attract passengers, traveling at an average speed of 39 miles per hour. \u201cThe 39 mph high-speed train is dead when I become governor,\u201d he told\u00a0Ohio reporters<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Kasich did not change his tune when the plan was altered to raise the average speed to 50 miles per hour, as reported by Martin Gottlieb of the\u00a0Dayton Daily News<\/a>\u00a0in October 2010:<\/p>\n

Average speeds will be higher in the middle of the route: 61 mph between Columbus and the suburbs of Cleveland. All told, the Cincinnati-Cleveland run will be 90-minutes shorter than originally projected. The average approaches car speeds, figuring traffic delays and stops.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That prompted Gottlieb to assert that \u201cKasich\u2019s pitch on trains [was] not really about speed\u201d but about \u201cphilosophy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, it was more of the same over in Florida, where Governor Rick Scott said that HSR would have cost state taxpayers $1 billion to build. Scott\u00a0told a Tampa television station<\/a>: \u201cThey offered, the federal government, here\u2019s the deal\u2026 I\u2019m going to give you $2.4 billion \u2014 that sounds nice right? You\u2019ve got to put up a billion dollars to finish the project. And you are going to lose money every year. And if you decide, gosh I\u2019m tired of losing that money, you\u2019ve got to give the $2.4 billion back. It\u2019s a bad deal.\u201d<\/p>\n

Politifact<\/a>\u00a0rated Scott\u2019s claim\u00a0an unequivocal \u201cfalse,\u201d\u00a0reporting that the feds actually expected Florida to pick up $280 million in construction costs:<\/p>\n

So why did the state say the rail line would cost the state $280 million to construct but Scott said $1 billion? The answer is because Scott\u2019s source of information isn\u2019t state transportation officials. It\u2019s the libertarian Reason Foundation.<\/p>\n

On Jan. 6, 2011, the Reason Foundation released an\u00a0analysis about Florida\u2019s rail project,<\/a>\u00a0which concluded that capital costs to build the project would be higher than anticipated and ridership would fall short, leaving the state with operational shortfalls. Scott relied on the Reason analysis in killing the high-speed rail project.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Polifact went on to question the study\u2019s \u201cmethodology and objectiveness.\u201d It was written by pseudo-libertarian Wendell Cox, who has made his career railing against transit and urbanism.<\/p>\n

Relying on the Cox \u201cstudy\u201d \u2014 which was really more of a survey of transportation projects all over the world, not limited to HSR \u2014 Rick Scott predicted the project would come in $1.2 billion over budget and assumed the majority of those costs would be borne by the state, which Politifact said \u201clikely wasn\u2019t true.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sound familiar? Earlier this week, Governor Chris Christie was\u00a0called out by the non-partisan Government Accountability Office<\/a>\u00a0for using similarly deceptive rhetoric when he killed New Jersey\u2019s ARC tunnel. Christie claimed that the state would pick up 70 percent of the project costs. The GAO pegged the real figure at 14.4 percent. And Christie also justified changing his mind about the project by saying overruns would bring the total cost to $14 billion. But as the\u00a0New York Times<\/a>\u00a0reported earlier this week:<\/p>\n

\u2026the range of estimates had in fact remained unchanged in the two years before he announced in 2010 that he was shutting down the project. And state transportation officials, the report says, had said the cost would be no more than $10 billion.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  Remember the exciting announcements about a nationwide high-speed rail network that Obama made in 2010? And remember how several Tea Party governors killed high-speed rail in their states? Well, if it wasn’t painfully obvious before, Angie Schmitt of Streetsblog recently wrote a great post on the lies these Tea Party governors of FL, OH, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":166,"featured_media":29606,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,55,35,43],"tags":[13644,13653,15766,17299,17303,24531,24535,25851,25852,29743,30042,34319,38418,38420],"spectra_custom_meta":{"_thumbnail_id":["29606","29606"],"_rpuplugin_enabled":["yes"],"_oembed_bd21e5a2c78cb7b587184e3db006832a":["