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*A rail reality check that President Obama should heed*

Tuesday, November 16, 2010; 7:39 PM

PRESIDENT OBAMA wants Americans to zip around in high-speed trains, just as
many Japanese, French, and Chinese already do. For him, the goal seems
almost as much about national pride as job creation or energy savings.
"There's no reason that Europe or China should have the fastest trains," he
has said. Congress included $8 billion in the 2009 stimulus bill for
passenger rail projects<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/07/AR2009030701794.html>,
and Mr. Obama spread the money among 13 corridors around the country. But
there is a problem: to the extent that the Nov. 2 election was a referendum
on those plans, voters rejected them.

In two states where Mr. Obama committed money - Ohio and Wisconsin -
Republican governors-elect won office on explicitly anti-rail platforms. And
in Florida, Rick Scott, the Republican who won the race for governor, expressed
doubts about rail <http://www.cnbc.com/id/40080075/>. To one degree or
another, all three men worried that their states would be left with
unsustainable operating costs once the initial federal stimulus money
disappeared.

They have a point. Passenger rail's competitiveness with air and automobile
traffic is far from established - as Amtrak's perennial federal operating
subsidies show. Even high-speed bullet trains don't offset enough plane or
car traffic to reduce America's carbon footprint by much. The president may
admire China's burgeoning high-speed system, but that system is deeply in
the red. On major routes, the trains often whiz along half-empty, since the
tickets are far too expensive for ordinary Chinese. China recently announced
a review of its program in light of a Chinese Academy of Sciences
study<http://www.echinacities.com/biz-china/business-topics/chinese-academy-of-sciences-high-speed-rail-construction-201.html>
warning
that its debts may be unsustainable.

Governors-elect Scott Walker of Wisconsin and John Kasich of Ohio thought
the total of $1.2 billion in rail money slated for their states could be
better spent on roads and bridges. The Obama administration says no: On
Monday, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood
announced<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/09/AR2010110905065.html>
that
they could either use the money for trains or lose it. This blunt refusal to
heed the fresh mandate of Ohio and Wisconsin's voters seems hard to justify
- especially since using the money for other infrastructure would have
created jobs, just as building trains would have.

In any case, the Democratic governor-to-be of New York, Andrew Cuomo, has
asked Mr. LaHood to send him the
money<http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2010/11/06/2010-11-06_well_take_that_126b_in_rail_funds_sez_andy.html>
Wisconsin
and Ohio don't want. If that happens, this story may have a happy ending -
of sorts. Passenger rail makes the most sense in the densely populated
Northeast Corridor, of which New York is a major part. Mr. Obama should have
concentrated rail money there in the first place, rather than trying to
spread it to areas of the country that may not need it and, we now know, do
not want it.

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--
Eric D. Schwerin
Rosemont Seneca Partners
(202) 333-1880
eschwerin@rosemontseneca.co