Innovation NewsBriefs Vol. 22 No. 20 The release by the Senate Environment and Public Works (EPW) Committee of its reauthorization proposal and its July 21 hearing on “Legislative Issues for Transportation Reauthorization” were greeted with a muted reaction. Despite Sen. Boxer’s official optimism, we have encountered widespread skepticism about the bill’s chances of gaining political [...]
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For California’s high-speed rail boosters including their chief cheerleader, U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, the month of May must have felt like a month from hell. First came a scathing report by California legislature’s fiscal watchdog, the non-partisan Legislative Analyst’s Office (LAO), questioning the rail authority’s unrealistic cost estimates and its decision to build the first $5.5 billion segment in the sparsely populated Central Valley between Borden and Corcoran.
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Pragmatic funding decisions have marked the third and final round of awards in the Administration’s $10 billion High-Speed Rail Program. The awards, announced on May 9, confirmed what critics, including this column, have long maintained: the White House high-speed rail initiative, stripped of its high-blown rhetoric, is in fact a program of modest incremental improvements to existing Amtrak passenger rail services. As such, the initiative represents a small but useful step in restoring more reliable intercity passenger rail service— but it hardly deserves the hype and exaggerated claims that have been used to characterize it. Rather, it is a “victory for incrementalism,” in the words of Scott Thomasson, policy director of the Progressive Policy Institute.
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An undated 498-page draft of US DOT’s legislative proposal for surface transportation reauthorization, the “Transportation Opportunities Act,” has been making the rounds in Washington for the past week. Its publication, however, has been largely ignored by the transportation community. What would ordinarily be an eagerly awaited event and the source of much comment, has passed virtually unnoticed…Partly, it is because the DOT draft contains no surprises: it merely restates the proposals already revealed in the President’s FY 2012 Budget request. But more importantly, the draft has been ignored by Washington stakeholders and political observers because it has been judged to lack political savvy and realism.
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In the interest of maintaining some balance and perspective on what the Administration proudly calls “President Obama’s bold vision for a national high-speed rail network” we have tried to offer our readers a range of different points of view. It is in this spirit that we present below two commentaries. The first contribution is by Matt Dellinger, author of the highly praised book, “Interstate 69: The Unfinished History of the Last Great American Highway” and a frequent contributor on transportation topics to the progressive website, Transportation Nation. The second contribution is by Ron Utt, Senior Research Fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, whose analyses of transportation policy have been a longstanding feature of that Foundation’s work.
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As Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan is fond of saying, the debate in Congress has changed from how much we should spend to how much spending we should cut. The April 5 release of his proposed FY 2012 Budget Resolution, subtitled “The Path to Prosperity,” testifies to this new resolve. The New York Times’ David Brooks calls Ryan’s report “the most comprehensive and most courageous budget reform proposal any of us have seen in our lifetimes.” Although the Budget Resolution nominally addresses the FY 2012 budget, its message is likely to resound and influence the debate about fiscal policy and the role of the federal government in the U.S. economy long into the future.
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A well-intentioned but quixotic presidential vision, to make high-speed rail service available to 80 percent of Americans in 25 years, is being buffeted by a string of reversals. And, like its British counterpart, the London-to-Birmingham high speed rail line (HS2), it is the subject of an impassioned debate. Called by congressional leaders “an absolute disaster,” and a “poor investment,”, the President’s ambitious initiative is unraveling at the hands of a deficit-conscious Congress, fiscally-strapped states, reluctant private railroad companies and a skeptical public.
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