The following commentary was sent to us by a friend who is concerned about a questionable Metrolink service expansion from Fullerton to Laguna Niguel.
A fourth track is currently being built at the Fullerton Station, exclusively for Metrolink’s new Orange County service — dubbed Metrolink Service Expansion Program (MSEP) by the folks at OCTA. I believe the concept is flawed from the start, and last I heard it is costing taxpayers at least $417 million.
Anyone up for a ride to Laguna Niguel?
Read the rest of “Metrolink Expanding, But Where Are The Riders?”
Tony, have your ever rode the train? It is better than sitting in freeway gridlock.
That’s not the point. The point here is whether or not ridership justifies expenditure.
Way back in the 60’s they (we) spent millions (Billions in today’s dollars) on freeways that were barely used.
Even today the automobile user pays only a small faction of the cost of the operating and ownership costs of the freeway and roadway systems.
Building and rebuilding the railway corridors for the future is the smart move to make.
Cook. The following text is from page 22 of a UCLA report. While this post is about Metrolink my thinking relates to the proposed HSR system and expenditures in general.
“state governments cannot run large deficits and accumulate large debt loads without raising the specter of an ultimate inability to repay. Thus the ability of the state government to adopt a countercyclical fiscal policy, especially during a recession, is very limited.
As an example, during the recessions (and after) of the early 1980s and early 1990s, the federal government ran deficits as a proportion of gross domestic product of 3% or more for several years without sparking a concern about a Treasury default. But California during those same recessions found itself in financial difficulties. If California’s state government deliberately followed a policy of long term deficits, it would quickly exhaust the willingness of the financial community to lend.”
During Steve Franks presentation last Saturday he told us that we had a cap on our state borrowing of 6%. As a result of our ever increasing debt that cap was increased to a whopping 14%.
Our state credit rating is surely not the most favorable.
This is not the time for our legislature to focus on “wants” when we have unmet “needs.”