One of President Obama’s key infrastructure initiatives is dead in the water, reports Michael Barone in National Review. Despite being allocated $8 billion from the 2009 Stimulus bill and another $2.5 billion from the Democrat-controlled Congress, the President’s $53 billion vision for a nation-wide high speed rail network has flatlined.

The majority-Republican House has declined to furnish this proposal with any further money, while the Democrat-controlled Senate Appropriations Committee voted to allocate it a meager $100 million. As Barone notes, coming from Democrats, this is a blatant vote of no confidence in the high speed rail initiative. Following this rejection, it is nearly impossible to see a revival of the President’s high speed plans in his remaining tenure.  

Allegedly, this sophisticated rail network was going to employ millions of Americans in construction, engineering, and railway jobs, while upgrading transportation access.  State governments, however, never warmed up to this proposition, because the costs vastly outweighed the benefits. Once the initial government subsidies end, states would be left to pay for the mammoth costs of a higher-speed version of the failing Amtrak model.  In fact, none of the lines would actually meet the technical definition of “high speed.”

The textbook example of high speed rail’s failure is the California High Speed Rail Authority’s gross mismanagement of taxpayer funds to build a veritable train to nowhere. Facing an upcoming Congressional  election, Democratic incumbent Jim Costa received a $900 million grant to build a high speed line connecting two barely inhabited communities. This train to nowhere now sits incomplete despite having nearly $5 billion allocated to it.

As this case illustrates, the idea of high-speed rail is a transparent ploy at “progress” by putting America back to work- except that it is wholly unnecessary and any temporary construction jobs will be cancelled out by the extraneous government spending and taxes needed to maintain it. That both parties seemingly recognize this speaks volumes about how utterly this idea is a dead-end one.

A feasibility study by Burk-Kleinpeter Inc. and HDR Engineering emphasizes the economic and social benefits of the proposed high-speed rail linking New Orleans to Baton Rouge. Currently under revision, the final report is due March 16.

With an estimated 78% probability of having a positive return on investment, the study claims that the value creation offsets the project’s costs. However, a Baton Rouge news site reports that Louisiana would bear the burden of $11 million to $14 million in annual subsidies. These costs are too high for a state already facing large deficits.

The BR-NO rail has been debated for years, but the controversy heated up when the state turned down stimulus money that would have funded its creation. While Bobby Jindal rejects the plan due to its high costs, Cato Institute scholar Randal O’Toole concentrates on the project’s hidden negative impacts.

In a Pelican Institute publication, O’Toole argues that the new high-speed rails will be “an expensive slippery slope” leading to higher costs for Louisiana taxpayers. The project would not relieve overall traffic congestion, and only few Louisiana residents will use the new trains. In other words, the possible economic benefits from new rails line will be greatly offset by high maintenance costs and low customer usage.

O’Toole believes that Louisiana should not build new rail lines; it should instead spend the federal stimulus money on safety measures by improving signaling and crossing gates on existing lines.