All Aboard the Crazy Train

Conn Carroll / April 16, 2009

The left is all atwitter over the Obama administration’s release of their High-Speed Rail Plan, which, as with most everything that comes out of the Obama administration these days, is long on hope, short on details, and completely out of touch with reality.

The plan includes an $8 billion “down payment” from the $787 billion stimulus package and calls for another $5 billion from the FY 2010 budget. This $13 billion will be spent in two rounds: 1) “on projects that can be completed quickly and yield measurable, near-term job creation”; and 2) funding for “comprehensive high-speed programs covering entire corridors”. Obama has identified ten such corridor’s including the “California Corridor” and the “Chicago Hub Network.”

Sounds nice and all, but the reality is the first round of spending will not go to anything that can be accurately called “high speed rail” and the second round of spending is comically short of what it would cost to implement Obama’s dreams. Heritage scholar Ron Utt explains: (more…)