There has been a lot of press recently about the upcoming November ballot big-bucks bond measure to establish public financing for a high-speed train service between Northern and Southern California.
Having a train that can wisk you up and down throught the state in just a few hours may, or may not be a good idea. But saddling ALL of California’s residence with bond debt for a service that with benefit relatively few of our state’s residents is wrong, and unfair.
If there is enough of a market for rail travel, then private companies that want to make a go of it can take their future-earnings studies to investors, and get financing to build the train routes and buy the trains.
I am getting sick and tired of people trying to raise taxes or sell bonds to get things paid for that should not be paid for with public moneys. Don’t get me going on public subsidies for sporting arenas.
The High Speed Rail Bonds are Proposition 1 on the ballot this November – be sure to vote no. And be sure that if you see a commercial in support of it, you’ll be able to trace the dollars that paid for the spot directly to those who will financially benefit from the bond measure passing.
(This post appeared last week on the FlashReport’s Facebook Group.)
July 14th, 2008 at 12:00 am
One of the problems with all private financing is that they would need to get various “right of ways” from local governments that with a state partnership they wouldn’t need and that would stop a local municipality from killing the project or more likely, holding it up for ransom.