“Train Wreck”
January 15, 2002
(Op-Ed: Nashua Telegraph, Subject: Bass proposal for Nashua-Lowell Train)

On December 22, 2001, Representative Charlie Bass assured voters in New Hampshire that he will continue to do all he can to promote and secure funding for a proposed commuter rail extension from Lowell, MA, to Nashua (“Rail Service Project Makes Sense”, Nashua Telegraph, p. 12).
    
According to Mr. Bass, the rail proposal is “a worthwhile project”. It would result in 1000 fewer cars on the highways each day. It would help alleviate congestion, and help ensure the growth and success of southern New Hampshire.  Unfortunately, Mr. Bass has confused many things, including what is practical, what is community oriented, and what is sanctioned by the document he swore to uphold when he took office.
    
It is ironic that just two weeks after Mr. Bass’ letter discussing federal assistance for an MBTA/NH project, the Amtrak Reform Council should announce its plan to keep afloat another public rail project, one that has been sucking like a leech off American taxpayers for thirty years.
    
After 25 billion dollars and numerous promises to do a better job at a lower price, Amtrak has finally been exposed as the boondoggle it is. It has never, ever, operated at a profit. It has always seized money from Americans in one portion of the nation in order to give rail transit to Americans in another part of the country, primarily those in the northeastern US. Ad campaigns have told us “there’s something about a train that’s magic”, while public rail makes our tax dollars disappear. Spokespeople have lauded their new “high speed train” as a breakthrough, yet the people in the Heartland will probably never ride one. Around the world, no fewer than forty countries have been replacing similar government run rail service with more efficient private systems.
    
The Amtrak Reform Council may yet see the light. On January 11, it proposed that much of Amtrak’s routes be offered to private companies to begin competitive service. While the federal government will still own the lines, this introduction of a “sink of swim” for-profit system may begin to expose the areas where rail service is and is not feasible.
    
The quaint facade of “community values” that public rail service supposedly represents is slowly being recognized as the fraud that it is. Yet politicians such as Charlie Bass still appeal to local voters with enticements of “cheap” rail service that will supposedly cut auto traffic, and benefit the state as a whole.
    
One thing is certain, public rail service is not “cheap”. At a total of $66 million dollars (and probably much more if it is ever attempted and begins running in the red like most other public transit systems in the world), and servicing only one sector of the population, the Lowell-Nashua line’s attendant costs far outweigh its small local benefits. The program clearly exemplifies the disturbing ethics of wealth redistribution by offering a small number of rail users benefits at the expense of a large number of taxpayers who will never use the system. Rail users, and those businesses in the immediate vicinity of the rails, will see benefits, while the expenses will be disbursed among people who are never seen. When public attention is given to such wonderful “community projects”, only the faces of those who receive immediate benefits are seen on television, only the voices of those who like the system are heard on radio. The man in Boise who had to shell out tax money to help pay for another person’s train ride will never be heard.
    
Additionally, the entire paradigm of “public value” is called into question when a politician proposes spending tax money on a service that could, if it represented a “value” to the consumers in the area, be provided by a private enterprise. If train service from Lowell to Nashua would be as beneficial and as valuable to area consumers as he claims, then one must ask why a private company has not recently tried to provide that service at a profit. The reason is clear. There is not enough demand for such a product on the part of the consumers, and thus such an endeavor would fail. If it was potentially profitable, there would be incentive to try it, like Vermont Transit has done with bus riders. The very fact that no one deems it worth risking their own capital to start a train system ought to make voters question Mr. Bass’ proposal to risk other people’s money, without their consent. Subsidizing a project that could have been provided by private enterprise, but was not because it was unprofitable, indicates one thing: it is an inefficient expenditure.
    
Peter Gordon, of the University of Southern California, wrote for the Reason Public Policy Institute that a “downward spiral currently affects public transit. It worked best in a world of high concentrations of origins and destinations... and with large numbers of people too poor to own and operate an automobile.” (“Does Transit Really Work?” RPPI, 2000.) The population of southern New Hampshire has clearly grown in recent years, but it is nowhere near the density that justifies a train system. Nor are it’s citizens inclined to trade in their autos for the train in sufficient numbers to make such a proposition financially feasible or ethically justified.
    
It would be wise if people such as Mr. Bass stopped appealing to our personal interest to get a ride at the expense of others, and instead concentrated on upholding the US Constitution, which never sanctioned such federal spending in the first place. He swore an oath to uphold the Constitution, not to pick the pocket of another American in order to give me a ride to Lowell.