Editor,
With all the discussion of passenger rail service to Hollister at the town hall meeting for the SBC general plan update, a reality check is needed. COG’s Citizens Rail Advisory Committee explored SBC’s options seven to eight years ago. COG directors had hired one of the nation’s top transport consultants to do a formal study. R.L. Banks & Associates, Inc. was paid $70,000 for the study, which cost SBC’s taxpayers $636,300. Their report confirmed what transportation men already knew, and so we wasted more than a half-million of taxpayers’ dollars. What did we learn from that wasteful study?
Here’s the bottom line: Outside of New York City, passenger rail has never reduced highway congestion, and is prohibitively expensive. Wasting transport tax revenue on passenger rail (Lite Rail, heavy socialism) actually worsens highway congestion by diverting badly needed highway taxes paid by motorists to practically unused rail transit.
As James Madison said in “The Federalist No. 41”: “A bad cause seldom fails to betray itself.” Refused to be deluded by passenger rail advocates and their highly-paid consultants, COG’s directors’ decision to reject the Caltrain model of funding restoration of passenger train service to our county was a common-sense decision that showed that “bad cause” betrayed itself rather quickly to our local elected leaders.
While acknowledging the obvious benefits of restoration of passenger train service to our county, COG’s directors showed us that they understand that it cannot be financed the same way that urban counties do. They soundly rejected the proposal to give America’s 154th largest corporation in 2000 (UP) a check for $20 million from the county’s taxpayers. They understood that it is not feasible to impose 85 percent of the cost of the service on homeowners and small business owners, while the riders pay only 15 percent of the cost of operations. They also realized that capital costs would probably be double the original estimate of $20 million, and that the operating subsidy would far exceed the subsidy we pay for the county’s bus service. They found that it would be cheaper to buy houses in Gilroy for Hollister’s Caltrain riders than to furnish the boondoggle Caltrain service.
The history of the 20th century shows us long-term, sustainable transportation solutions are only found in the private sector. Secretary Mineta’s famous words were answered by COG’s directors with their knowledge of the realities of this county, and they bravely acknowledged the fundamental differences we have with San Francisco, San Mateo and Santa Clara counties.
“The crucial question in transportation today is: What should government do? And what should it leave to others?” By choosing the private sector route, COG’s directors recognized that we lack the population and tax bases of the Caltrain counties, and that adding more “traffic impact fees” and taxes to operate unemunerative passenger trains would mean less affordable housing, and take us down the same road that the Soviet planners took the USSR.
Having paid $70,000 for an already completed passenger train study, they realized that spending our $1 million appropriation from Congress for another “study” was wasteful, and would have cost taxpayers more than $9.09 million in additional taxes just for the meaningless study. I said then, and I repeat, state and federal tax subsidy appropriations, if spent properly, can build a sustainable transportation option to highway travel. Guided by history and wise policy, COG’s directors refused to build a bottomless pit like Amtrak and Caltrain, or to allow a Black Hole to be brought into our midst.
Joe Thompson, Tres Pinos
