Opinion: Letter

Trains are viable stimulus

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Recently, there was an article published in The Badger Herald (“Amtrak proposal unrealistic,” March 2, 2009) that suggested using money from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (or as it’s more commonly known the stimulus package) on public transit would be bad for the state. The author of the article suggested that it would be a travesty to plan to spend government funds that do not benefit every citizen in Wisconsin. He thought that a better way forward would be to distribute the money from the ARRA to city governments so that they might spend it on whatever they see fit. While this may sound good in principle, Wisconsin needs a more focused and coherent approach in response to the dual threats of the failing economy and the increasingly dire transit situation.

Public transit — or more specifically, the establishment of a high-speed rail throughout the state of Wisconsin — would provide an enormous amount of benefits. From an economic perspective, a train would create many jobs (in fact 19 percent more jobs than building new highways) while increasing tourism revenue in many different parts of the state. At the moment, citizens spend 20 percent of their household budgets on transportation cost. Switching to cheaper alternatives would allow these people to reinvest in and rejuvenate our state and national economies. The easy sell is to give people government money and let them have total freedom in using that money, but that leaves Wisconsin with no guarantee of either economic progress or an improved transit system.

Another major focus in the shift to public transit is the environment. As much as it may seem like old news, climate change is an important issue on local and state levels as well as on a national level. Switching toward public transit would reduce our dependence on fossil fuels (especially foreign oil), reduce our carbon footprint and reduce our utter helplessness in the face of sporadic changes in gas prices.

Varied public projects on a local level may sound like an intelligible idea, but these projects would not do nearly as much for our future as the establishment of local and statewide high-speed rail system. I am encouraging people to support a viable, technologically sound alternative to the same old ideas and urging Wisconsinites to support 21st-century public transit in any way they can.

Jonah Bromwich

Sophomore, political science

WISPIRG Public Transit Campaign

bromwich@wisc.edu

4 Comments | Leave a comment

Anonymous | March 11, 2009 3:38 AM | Reply
IP hash: bfef168f

I love how this comes from a political science major and not an economics major.

First the idea that a high speed train will help lower the 20% this person claims people spend on transportation is just a silly thought. People do not regularly travel by train anywhere in our country because its too big. For trains to be effective you’d have to have 300 mile and an hour trains going literally all over the place. Besides that most people do not use trains anyway. I am from the D.C. area and honestly most people do not use trains because prices are expensive compared to driving when you include the opportunity cost of how long it takes to travel on them.

Most importantly however is who will run this grand train system? There is not a single train system operated by a government in the entire world that is not a bankrupt system, excluding Japan but they have a tiny little island again with a greater density of train systems than we have here.

It’s not that a high speed train is not a great idea. It just costs more to design, operate efficiently, and build than citizens will get out of it. Besides why should we all pay taxes for a system only a few people will use? It’s wrong to assume that tourism would go up. Why would it go up? Seriously name any tourist event that someone would not take the time to go to now that would somehow happen because of a $100 dollar train ticket. The idea is laughable and absolutely not a reason to build a train system.

Anonymous | March 11, 2009 11:14 AM | Reply
IP hash: b962f639

I love how economics majors think they know everything.

Anonymous | March 11, 2009 12:35 PM | Reply
IP hash: 34f51f46

3:38, wrong. China is investing in high speed rail from Hong Kong to Beijing. Last time I checked, China was the world’s sugar daddy.

Anonymous | March 11, 2009 3:44 PM | Reply
IP hash: 70642d0d

Pabble bed nuclear power plants and electric cars would be a much better and cheaper alternative.

The cost of rail is usually higher than buying every rider a new car and a lifetime supply of gasoline.

Note I said gasoline - ethanol take more energy to produce than it privides.

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