By: Dale M. King
I’ll tell you something up front. I love trains. I love traveling on them. I spent years commuting to college on the old New Haven Railroad in its dying days. And I was one of the most excited when President Richard Nixon pulled together the nation’s crumbling passenger railroad system in 1970 by creating Amtrak.
I suppose I should be happy that the U.S. Department of Transportation is going to spend $2 billion for high-speed rail in the Northeast and the Midwest, and invest in high-tech locomotives and rail cars to transform travel in America.
I’m happy to see improvements to America’s rail service. What bugs me is that this $2 billion was initially bound for Florida to create a system of high-speed transit between Tampa and Orlando when Gov. Rick Scott pulled the switch and sent the $2 billion back to Washington. He called it “a big government boondoggle.”
So, if you’re keeping score at home, here’s Gov. Melonhead’s budget tally: Less money for needy kids, less money for senior citizens, a reduction in the number of weeks of compensation for the unemployed (Florida is already 50th in the nation in that department) and no new train.
I understand most everyone at the state and federal level was on board to spend $2 billion for the Tampa-Orlando rail link. My wife and I just happen to have taken Amtrak to Tampa a few weeks ago, and I was amazed at the number of riders. There’s even a brand new station in Lakeland en route to Tampa.
Dale M. King
Seems to me if you’re going to build a high-speed train, do it someplace that has great potential for ridership. Like Tampa, which has a population (a cabbie told me) of 1.5 million people. It even has a streetcar system like San Francisco.
But noooooo. Gov. Slickscalp wants Uncle Sam to take his money back and spent it somewhere else. Well, damn, that’s just what Sam is going to do. He’s giving it to 24 states that DO want it – like New York, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Maine, Pennsylvania, Illinois and California, among others. He’s also giving a big chunk to Amtrak and other transit systems.
I’ve gotten to know a lot of politicians in my day. And they have one mantra about money. If the federal government gives it to you, don’t you dare give it back. You know why? Because the government won’t give it to you again.
I figured that one out. And I only have a small amount more hair than Gov. Scott.
I checked a long, long list of who is getting the rail money. And the closest it gets to Florida is North Carolina, where a high-speed rail line is planned, connecting Richmond to Raleigh.
I can’t understand Florida’s love-hate relationship with trains. People love to hate them. I remember when I moved here in 2000, one of the first things I did was vote in the famous presidential election that won Palm Beach County the buffoon of the year award.
Hidden on that ballot was a referendum on whether to create a high-speed rail system in Florida. Wouldn’t you know, it passed!
But from the time the electorate crawled out from under the Gore-Bush avalanche and realized what they had done, they began working to rescind the rail vote. Thus began the Derail the Bullet Train effort.
It finally worked. But then, along came another bullet train idea. Only this time, everyone loved it. Everyone except Gov. Scott, that is. It ain’t going to happen here, he has emphatically said.
I can only imagine that Henry Morrison Flagler is spinning in his grave.