A few days ago, Moody’s lowered the State of Illinois’ bond rating to the lowest in the country .
Standard and Poor’s has our outlook just one step above another state that has been in defacto control of the Democrats for years – the State of California (No, please don’t tell me Schwarzenegger was anything close to a Republican). In doing so, Moody’s cited “weak management practices” and a recent legislative session that “took no steps to implement lasting solutions”.
The State of Illinois shares one other commonality with the State of California – a love of High Speed Rail.
High Speed Rail has been the dream of urban planners for years. There has also been a good deal of envy of those sophisticated types in Europe and Japan that compared to us backwater rubes here in the United States. Well, if the French have high speed rail, then we need to have it too, or so goes the mantra.
Unlike the State of Illinois, at least there is starting to be a small glimmer of hope for California. The California High Speed Rail Peer Review Group came out with a recommendation last week that the State should not approve an additional $2.7 in bond funds to construct the first phase of a new high-speed rail project.
Particularly damning, the report states:
“We cannot overemphasize the fact that moving ahead on the (high-speed rail) without credible sources of adequate funding, without a definitive business model, without a strategy to maximize the independent utility and value to the state, and without the appropriate management resources, represents an immense financial risk on the part of the state of California.”
The fine folks at the Los Angeles Times still couldn’t help themselves by declaring that even though the experts’ analysis was “unassailable”, they “didn’t take politics into account”.
Inexplicably, the editors of the Los Angeles Times compared the building of High Speed Rail to the pyramids in Egypt:
“Worthwhile things seldom come without cost or sacrifice. That was as true in ancient times as it is now; pharaoh Sneferu, builder of Egypt's first pyramids, had to try three times before he got it right, with the first two either collapsing under their own weight or leaning precipitously. But who remembers that now? Not many people have heard of Sneferu, but his pyramids and those of his successors are wonders of the world.”
Sorry, but High Speed Rail won’t be around in 3,000 years like the pyramids, and no one is traveling 150 MPH on the crumbling stones.
Now that here in Illinois we have a bond rating lower than California’s, how are we approaching High Speed Rail? Are we looking at the cost feasibility of the project? Are we examining if we can pay for it in the future? Ha-ha, you joke, right? No, we are doubling down on High Speed Rail.
The Feds just announced that the State of Illinois is getting an extra $186 million that Florida decided that they didn’t want because their Governor decided that they couldn’t afford it.
Most politicians and high speed rail supporters point to the construction jobs that will be created by creating the new service. As one Iowa politician said during that state’s debate on the subject, “I can have one person dig a ditch and then hire another person to fill it in and create 2 jobs, but have I really done anything?” The point is, are we creating anything that will help us in the future?
One of the systems that is touted is the French system. In France, their rail system covers only about half of their operating costs via ticket sales – see page 10. What that means is that for every $50 you would spend to buy a ticket, the actual cost to operate the train service is $100. That doesn’t include the cost to build it – it’s only the operating costs. The important distinction is that France is more heavily populated area than Illinois.
France’s 65 million people live in a country of 260,588 square miles, or 252 citizens per square mile. Illinois’ 13 million people live in 57,914 square miles or 222 citizens/square mile. They also live in more heavily populated areas. France has 33 cities with a population of over 100,000. Illinois only has 8 cities of more than 100,000 and five of them are within the Chicagoland area. Rail depends on densely populated areas. Without it, people won’t ride.
Let’s look at the farebox recovery ratio for existing service here in Illinois.
In the Chicagoland area,
- Metra has a farebox recovery ratio of 55%.
- CTA has a farebox recovery ratio of 55.2%
- Pace only has a farebox recovery ratio of 34%
- Amtrak has a farebox recovery ratio of 71%, but it appears that those figures include support from states (i.e. taxes), so that number may be elevated.
If the Chicago to St. Louis High Speed Rail line is anything like services around the country, Illinois taxpayers will be subsidizing the operation for years to come. Of course the #1 user of the system will be Chicago politicians and lobbyists going to Springfield to fleece us out of even more tax dollars.
