Shuster family: Communist trains bad, expensive roads to nowhere good
Shuster family: Communist trains bad, expensive roads to nowhere good
Remember those Commie trains to hell that Joe Biden proposed in Philadelphia yesterday. They've arrived in Congress already, and they're (gasp) dead!
The announcement was met immediately by deep skepticism from two House Republicans that could be crucial to the plan's success, raising questions about whether it can clear Capitol Hill.
House Transportation Committee Chair Rep. John Mica (R) of Florida said previous administration grants to high-speed rail projects were a failure, producing "snail speed trains to nowhere." He called Amtrak a "Soviet-style train system" and said it "hijacked" nearly all the administration's rail projects.
Meanwhile, Railroads Subcommittee Chair Rep. Bill Shuster (R) of Pennsylvania said Mr. Biden's plan was "insanity," adding: "Rail projects that are not economically sound will not 'win the future' " – coopting the slogan President Obama coined in his State of the Union address.
Meanwhile, the actual (sort of) Communists in China are laughing at us (assuming that they're taking a break from those calculus drills). The irony here is Pennsylvania's Bill Shuster attacking government spending as insanity, when his father -- the longtime House GOP transportation guru Bud Shuster -- never met a worthless pork barrel transportation project he didn't like, especially in his district in the Altoona area.
This is from the conservative Cato Institute:
A bit over a week ago the New York Times ran a piece on the recent completion of the final 18-mile leg of Interstate 99 in central Pennsylvania. I-99 is known as the "Bud Shuster Highway" in honor of the legendary pork-barreling congressman responsible for securing the federal largess to build it. Federal budget hawks have more derisive labels for it such as "Bud Shuster's Rollercoaster" and "The Road to Nowhere." The latter nickname stings me personally as I grew up in Bud Shuster's "Nowhere" district.
Nonetheless, critics of the highway who question why taxpayers in the other 49 states should pay for the powerful former House Transportation Committee Chairman's vanity plate are correct. I recently traveled Bud Shuster's highway for the umpteenth time over the holidays and often went a mile or two before seeing another vehicle. The fact of the matter is that had Bud Shuster not been the powerful chairman of said transportation committee, this road does not become interstate-anything.
You want some more irony. Altoona is famous for...trains. Thanks to the famed horseshoe curve of the Pennsylvania Rail Road, there's now a thriving rail museum there. But trains don't have to be tossed on the ash heap of American history. They are, though, thanks to the small mindedness of people like John Mica...and the hyper-hypocritical Shuster family.
Visiting the sins of the father upon the son. What a dishonest way to frame an argument.
Let's try using facts instead:
From USA Today (10/27/2009):
U.S. taxpayers spent about $32 subsidizing the cost of the typical Amtrak passenger in 2008, about four times the rail operator's estimate, according to a private study.
Amtrak operates a nationwide rail network, serving more than 500 destinations in 46 states. Forty-one of Amtrak's 44 routes lost money in 2008, said the study by Subsidyscope, an arm of the Pew Charitable Trusts.
...
Leading the list was the train traveling between New Orleans and Los Angeles — the Sunset Limited — which lost $462 per passenger. Taxpayers subsidize the losses to keep the passenger train service running.
http://tinyurl.com/yk59unl
We should turn all of Amtrak into a museum. It would be cheaper to fund with tax dollars.— Honest_Cloud- Name an interstate highway that has turned a profit. As a matter of fact, to keep from being a hypocrite, you should stay off the roads, pal.
— Hamlet - Poor analogy. Interstates are funded by fuel taxes, not by ridership. A proper analogy would be toll roads, which turn a profit. That's why big spending Rendell repeatedly tried to toll PA interstates.
Additionally, the interstates were built to fulfill a constitutional mandate; there is no such mandate for commuter rail.
I'll leave it to you to figure out the constitutional mandate. Here's a hint -- it has to do with a cross country trip made by a young Dwight D. Eisenhower. And there is arguably a second constitutional mandate that the interstate system fulfills. Of course you'll never be able to find it, because liberals can't understand the document since it's a century old!— Honest_Cloud - Well actually, gotta say I travel out to that area frequently. I kind of like 99. After driving alongside the Villanova-trained lawyers in their Beamers treating the Surekill like it's Monaco, it's nice to change pace - even if the pickups out there usually have rifles hanging from the rear window.— CiceroSpuriousDeodatus
- Can anyone even imagine what our infrustructure would be like if Bush had spent over $1 trillion on it rather than enriching his friends on his war boondogles? We arn't becoming a second-rate country, we're working on third. I don't want to hear any Republican talk about government spending on rail, roads, or any other investment in our country's future. If they supported Bush, they are just playing politics and lying.— Hamlet
Comment removed.
If you libs are so progressive, why are you so hyped up on a mode of transportation that was last popular 70 to 100 years ago. I took a train to Florida a while back, and I was glad we had arrived just before my noose was complete.— jmc- Comment removed.
- Light rail is growing and is very popular in Denver, Phoenix, and many other metro areas. Colorado is spending billions expanding their rail system (approved by referendum) which will still not come close to the coverage of SEPTA's system. Our roads are heavily subsidized. Gasoline taxes don't come close to covering the cost of maintaining them.— plugh
- That is because money is being diverted from licensing fees and gas taxes to subsidize public transit. Leave the money for what was intended.
— georgel - so basically Will's arguement is Shuster built a strech of road through Altonna for 18 miles - So we should automatically accept the $53 billion dollar rail line. great arguemnt will. To quote your lacky TPS -- mommy, mommy, they did it first.....................
no not a mile or two before seeing anyone - that drives your point home even more - we are all iditos Shusters highway was vacant for 2 of the 18 miles, lets spend $100 billion instead - evne better no cap - spend until it is complete, high speed rail is like mastercard - priceless!!!!!!!!!!— reddog44 - Comment removed.
- 53 billion is hundreds of billions? Right wing math. And people do want high speed rail, it has done quite well the world over.
- Will, you might want to state when that Cato Institute article was written, since the section of I-99 you mention has been open since late 2008... Shuster does have a valid point though. High speed trains that don't link viable sites are pointless.— buttermilk67
- Will, if light rail were so great, wouldn't investors be falling all over themselves to invest? Would Amtrak still need billions from the govt every year if it was so profitable? Roads that go to nowhere are a waste, I agree. That is why the evil Republicans have spoken out against earmarks, and President Obama said he will not sign a bill with earmarks. Maybe they need some light rail in Egypt. That would quell the violence!— Bush3
Will wants so badly to be able to hop on a fast train and go visit his Mommy and Daddy in Westchester County, NY. He's even willing to have $60 billion of your money spent on making his ride faster.— Mr. Smith- Comment removed.
- Light rail in other parts of the country, like Phoenix (where I used it several times during my reporting trip there last year) is thriving. Maybe the problems in Jersey are more a commentary on Camden and Trenton and the local economy.— will
- Light rail in other parts of the country, like Phoenix (where I used it several times during my reporting trip there last year) is thriving. Maybe the problems in Jersey are more a commentary on Camden and Trenton and the local economy.— will
- Comment removed.
- The son does not want to make the mistakes of the father. Not sure you can, rather should, visit the sins of the father on the son. And light rail is a black hole for money. It can't even support itself. As an example, how is that Trenton-Camden line doing?— georgel
- shuster has lent vocal support to rail projects in PA. sadly, obama's snail trains have been more harm than good for the rail cause in general. the allocation of money was botched. the truth often lies somewhere in between the rhetoric of both sides.— dreinterests
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