Nixon should rescind billion-dollar rail bid, focus on road woes | From the Roundtable

While watching our state’s highways crumble and hearing the widespread calls for budget cutbacks, Gov. Jay Nixon has come up with a pothole of a plan. The governor has applied for nearly a billion dollars in federal funds for various dubious passenger rail projects.

The Nixon administration is seeking federal funds spurned by several other states to shore up railroad passenger service on the 283-mile trans-state line AMTRAK has used since 1971. Another allocation, perhaps more appropriately sought, is for initial planning of a true high-speed rail line linking St. Louis and Kansas City — presumably electrified and running through Columbia.
“Attention! Listen up, Columbia and Boone County!” Like the stationmaster of old calling out arrivals and departures, this might revive plans to build what in 1933 was referred to as the shortest rail connection between Missouri’s two largest cities — a 232-mile route that would have passed through the Columbia area.
The project dating back 80 years included construction of two new bridges across the Missouri River, for which all approvals had been secured. Of course, the Great Depression squelched the whole idea.
Columbia, Boone County and its various adjuncts need to pay attention and be sure they’re at the table when this high-speed rail comes up for discussion.
Rail fans love to recount the euphoria in this country after World War II, when dozens of privately funded railroad companies poured hundreds of millions of dollars into passenger equipment and the infrastructure these new cars rolled upon. The thrill and any prospect of profitability were largely gone by 1955, undone by burgeoning highway and airline competition, onerous taxes on structures and right-of-way and costly union “featherbedding” practices.
“High speed” at the time was an illusion at best in North America: 80 mph was the exception, and an average speed of 50 mph was typical on the majority of passenger lines.
On the other side of the Atlantic, France was showing the world what grande vitesse was really all about.
On March 29, 1955, state-owned SNCF’s Alstrom electric locomotive No. CC-7102 was clocked doing 206 miles per hour (331 kmph) on a straightaway between Bordeaux and Dax in the Landes department. That established a speed record that stood for more than 50 years.
Then came the construction of the first ligne à grande vitesse (LGV) on a new dedicated right-of-way between Paris and Lyon, followed by other new high-speed lines and upgrades. Although 300 kmph (186 mph) is the advertised speed of France’s TGV trains, most of the ordinary electrically propelled trains in that country attain average speeds between 100 and 120 miles per hour.
But this is in France, a country about the size of Texas with 13 times the population of Missouri. Here, questions must be raised about making significant investments in the old Missouri Pacific line. Is the idea to atone for the nearly 30-year period that began in the 1930s when the MoPac was bankrupt and operating under the tutelage of a receiver? This is, largely, a single track right-of-way that’s more than 50 miles longer than it needs to be, sensitive to river flooding in places and more than 30 miles from Columbia, central Missouri’s largest city.
One dreams of the construction and operation of a true high-speed electrified rail line between St. Louis and Kansas City with Columbia in between. Another dream speaks of high-speed, all-electric service between Hannibal and Branson that connects Columbia, Jefferson City, the Lake of the Ozarks and Springfield. Both new lines would be reliable customers if the Callaway II nuclear plant is ever built.
Following French practice, Missouri’s new TGV line would mean laying down a brand new dedicated right-of-way laced with an overhead network of 25,000 volt catenary wires along a corridor that would be proximate to Interstate 70.
The latest news from France tells us that high-speed rail progress has been slowed by the world economic malaise and the stupendous and continuously rising cost of construction. Billions of euros. No, tens of billions of euros is the anticipated cost to upgrade with all new right-of-way between Tours, Bordeaux and Toulouse with another new line proposed between Bordeaux, Bayonne and Hendaye on the Spanish border.
Cities such as Poitiers and Angoulême are already annoyed because the new line will skirt and no longer pass through their city centers. Private capital now mingles with Réseau Ferré Français, the government entity that builds and maintains these lines while the départements traversed by the new lines increasingly balk at forking over their share of needed capital. That’s like asking Boone County for money; one wonders how far that would go.
The French have one wild and wacky dream. And as much as I admire how other countries have attacked and executed their high-speed rail projects, here in the states we need to call a time-out for a serious reality check.
What needs attention today is our infrastructure of deteriorating roads, highways and bridges. Think what the nearly billion dollars the governor wants to pry from the federal government for unrealistic passenger rail improvements could mean for our highways.
Would someone tell the governor to drop this boondoggle? Then let’s start begging for our highways because they sure could use our help right about now.