Colin McNickle At Large

A California lesson for Pittsburgh & Pennsylvania

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Thank goodness for California. No, really.

Over the decades The Golden State has taught us myriad ways to tarnish sound public policy – from turning commonsense conservationism into extreme, radical eco-craticism, to attempting to command the marketplace, making it less affordable for all, to making mass transit a massive mess that is synonymous with “boondoggle.”

Today’s dispatch centers on the latter and should be an object lesson to the Port Authority of Allegheny County and Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in how not to promulgate public transportation policy.

Of course, that could be an arduous task for those in state government who, somehow, think it has been a great policy to legislatively shake down and severely indebt the state Turnpike Commission to fund mass transit.

Be that as it may, The Wall Street Journal editorializes that a coronavirus-induced “budget crunch in California is causing Democrats to re-examine some wasteful spending. This includes, fiscal saints be praised, former Gov. Jerry Brown’s bullet train to nowhere.”

The Journal recounts how current Gov. Gavin Newsom last year “scaled back progressive ambitions for a 500-mile high-speed train from Orange County to San Francisco due to cost overruns, logistical headaches and legal challenges.”

The state then decided to build a 171-mile “starter train” between Bakersfield and Merced in the Central Valley.

But now Democrats want to shorten the line even more — to the 120 miles of track already under construction and run diesel trains instead of more expensive, cleaner electric ones.

“Recall that the train’s original purpose was to reduce carbon emissions,” that Journal editorial reminds, adding how California’s 2008 bond initiative also said the train “will not require operating subsidy.”

Cue the laugh track.

The Journal reports the state High-Speed Rail Authority “now projects the 171-mile stretch would cost $20 billion to build and lose between $40 million and $90 million a year.”

But that “assumes millions of people living in the Central Valley each year will ride the train to Merced and then use commuter rail to connect to San Jose.”

That’s about as likely to happen as the Port Authority starting to count ridership on Pittsburgh’s North Shore Connector, which the mass transit agency had to bribe the public with “free” rides to ensure its half-billion price tag would not have been to made to look more ridiculous than it already was.

That’s also about as likely to happen as – as some pols have been giddily predicting – massive development taking place along the coming Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) project between downtown Pittsburgh and Oakland.

And rest assured, when such development doesn’t happen along the BRT line, government will be rushing to subsidize with even more public dollars what the marketplace has decreed to be a non-starter.

It once was written that “We shall not grow wiser before we learn that much that we have done was very foolish.”

Sad to say, when it comes to public transportation projects, such foolishness is spawned by that toxic combination of ignorant hubris and political vaingloriousness to which government types too often wear blinders.

Wisdom cannot grow and lessons cannot be learned by those with such tunnel vision.

Colin McNickle is communications and marketing director at the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy (cmcnickle@alleghenyinstitute.org).

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Colin McNickle
Colin McNickle

Colin received his B.G.S. from Ohio University. The 40-year journalism veteran joined the Institute in October 2016. That followed a 22-year career with the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, 18 as director of editorial pages for Trib Total Media. Prior that, Colin had a long and varied career in media — from radio, newspapers and magazines, to United Press International and The Associated Press.

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