Rail plan a waste of taxpayer dollars

Here we go again.

A 20-year, $105 billion plan for high-speed rail Boston to New York? When are these so-called experts going to realize that it would be costprohibitive, as well as detrimental to the environment and to the public? Creation of a true high-speed right of way to sustain 150 mph traffic would entail enacting eminent domain here in the heavily populated Northeast. That could mean displacing folks from their homes and businesses involuntarily. Tunnel 16 miles under Long Island Sound? Imagine the damage to the ecosystem and the fishery. How about the cost overruns, which are a fact of life?

The New Haven Railroad's Merchants Limited made the trip from Boston to New York in three hours and 55 minutes in 1949. The Acela Express, touted as the train of the future, trumpeted three-hour service Boston to New York in 1999 (which has never happened), and completes the trip in three hours and 45 minutes. Ten minutes less than a conventional train of 72 years ago. So other than creating a political pork barrel, what is the sense of this enormous outlay of taxpayer funds? It doesn’t take an economic genius to figure out that such a venture would have to be eternally subsidized. Railroads can be competitive with the airlines midtown to midtown in the 500-mile-and-under market with dependable, frequent, timely, less costly service on the present right-of-way.

If travelers were in that much of a hurry, we would still have the supersonic transports, which whisked people to Europe in just under three hours, but met their demise due to rising maintenance costs and low passenger count due to astronomical fares. Comparisons to Europe and Japan’s systems cannot be made. Driving in and to European cities is time-consuming, expensive and stressful, ergo they rely on railroads, which were rebuilt as straight as practicable courtesy of the Marshall Plan and in Japan's case SCAP.

The grandiose proposal by the North Atlantic Rail Initiative is just that, grandiose and a waste of taxpayer dollars.

Joe McMahon Bethany