Randall O'Toole warns Detroit not to repeat the "mistakes" of Portland and Denver by investing in light rail. You can't make this sh!t up.

 

http://dc.streetsblog.org/2011/12/09/ha-catos-otoole-to-detroit-dont-repeat-portland-and-denvers-mistakes/

 

I refuse to look at this link. I just ate and don't want to toss my breakfast. Randal O'Toole...ecchhh... :drunk:

Randall O'Toole warns Detroit not to repeat the "mistakes" of Portland and Denver by investing in light rail. You can't make this sh!t up.

 

http://dc.streetsblog.org/2011/12/09/ha-catos-otoole-to-detroit-dont-repeat-portland-and-denvers-mistakes/

 

I refuse to look at this link. I just ate and don't want to toss my breakfast. Randal O'Toole...ecchhh... :drunk:

The link is to an article exposing O'Toole as a comedian, not O'Toole's article.

Randall O'Toole warns Detroit not to repeat the "mistakes" of Portland and Denver by investing in light rail. You can't make this sh!t up.

 

http://dc.streetsblog.org/2011/12/09/ha-catos-otoole-to-detroit-dont-repeat-portland-and-denvers-mistakes/

 

I refuse to look at this link. I just ate and don't want to toss my breakfast. Randal O'Toole...ecchhh... :drunk:

The link is to an article exposing O'Toole as a comedian, not O'Toole's article.

 

Well I read it...before I ate...

Michigan Tea Party mayor rejects federal grant for transit center in her city:

 

Click here for a big version of this file:

http://i81.photobucket.com/albums/j231/jmecklenborg/Cincinnati%20Monocle/2011-nytimes_troytransitcenter.jpg

 

Yep, it's official: they're nuts!

There's been a lot of discussion about that rejection. So far this year, the far right has pissed off the military, police and firemen. Many churches are rapidly revising their stance on homosexuality. And now the far right starts angering auto suppliers by refusing transportation choices for their employees. They're not going to have any friends left.

There's been a lot of discussion about that rejection. So far this year, the far right has pissed off the military, police and firemen. Many churches are rapidly revising their stance on homosexuality. And now the far right starts angering auto suppliers by refusing transportation choices for their employees. They're not going to have any friends left.

 

They're too hard headed to realize they are planting the seeds of their own demise. Pay close attention to the last three or four paragraphs, which shows the displeasure of the business community at the rejection of the funds. Let's hope they implode with the next election.

KJP...I am waiting with great anticipation your reaction to your buddy Brent Larkins post (and I assume article in the PD) on Cleveland.com

[NOTE: I heard a grinding sound coming from the West Side... probably KJP's teeth...]

 

Rail money that Ohio spurned chugs into the California sunset: Brent Larkin

Published: Saturday, December 24, 2011, 9:00 AM    Updated: Saturday, December 24, 2011, 12:17 PM

 

year ago, Gov.-elect John Kasich received a note in the mail from California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

 

It arrived a few days after Kasich told the Obama administration he didn't want $400 million in federal money to build a so-called high-speed rail system in Ohio. The note from Schwarzenegger, written on thick, gold-embossed stationery, thanked Kasich for his decision and promised the redirected money -- most of which went to California for its rail project -- would be put to good use.

 

http://www.cleveland.com/opinion/index.ssf/2011/12/rail_money_that_ohio_spurned_c.html

What an awful nonsensical piece by Larkin.  So if the CA project is such a boondoggle (which it probably is), why does he think it's the right decision to dump more money into it?

What an awful nonsensical piece by Larkin.  So if the CA project is such a boondoggle (which it probably is), why does he think it's the right decision to dump more money into it?

 

His assertion that rail projects are "flying off the tracks" all across the country is a flat out LIE. In fact, the opposite is the case. Ohio, Wisconsin and Florida are exceptions, but he provides no facts to back up his lies because he CAN'T. He must be afraid the rail idea will come to life and upset the highways-uber-alles continuum.  :x

KJP...I am waiting with great anticipation your reaction to your buddy Brent Larkins post (and I assume article in the PD) on Cleveland.com

 

I refuse to read it any more than I wish to ask my cat for his opinion on rail issues.

Nice move Rick Scott

 

"State study shows High Speed rail would have been profitable"

 

http://www2.tbo.com/news/breaking-news/2012/feb/06/high-speed-rail-would-have-been-profitable-state-r-ar-355492/

'House Transportation Bill 'Technical Correction' Would Strip Workers Of Pay Protections '

 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/12/house-transportation-bill-rail-drivers_n_1271644.html?ref=politics

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/F?c112:1:./temp/~c112E7gu9t:e750383:

 

WASHINGTON -- A little-noted provision in the House Republicans' controversial energy and transportation bill would strip several thousand workers within the rail-industry of their federal minimum-wage and overtime protections, potentially making low-wage jobs pay even less.....

 

 

Americans for Prosperity vs. Metrorail

—By Stephanie Mencimer

 

| Fri Jun. 1, 2012 10:42 AM PDT22.

 

What is it with conservatives and trains? They hate Amtrak; they hate light rail; and now, apparently, they are even opposed to subways that are one of the few solutions to permanent traffic gridlock in the nation's most populated cities. The latest: Americans for Prosperity, the advocacy group that is partly funded by Koch brothers, is currently funding a campaign in Virginia to try to kill off an expansion of the Washington Metrorail system from Reston, Virginia, to the Dulles Airport and into Loudoun County, areas around DC that are choked with traffic.

 

AFP is sponsoring robo-calls to area residents urging them to contact their local officials and lobby them to fight off the subway project, which they oppose because of potential tax increases associated with the project.

 

Read more at: http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2012/06/americans-for-prosperity-vs-metrorail

The Attack on High Speed Rail

 

http://gooznews.com/?p=4018#more-4018

June 25, 2012

 

By GoozNews

 

Next month, city officials in Normal, Ill., will open a $22 million downtown transit center to house what has become the second busiest stop on the Amtrak line that connects Chicago to St. Louis. The project, financed with one of the first Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery (TIGER) grants, anchors a $150 million downtown redevelopment project that includes two hotels and a conference center.

 

The private investors behind the hotels anticipate the crowds moving through the center will jump sharply when the state completes an upgrade of the 300 miles of track that link the larger cities to Normal’s north and south. That $1.5 billion project, which will increase maximum speeds on most of the line to 110 miles per hour, received funds from the federal government’s surface transportation trust fund and a matching state fund.

 

Local officials in the college town eagerly await the high-speed line. Rail traffic between Chicago and St. Louis has grown at double digit rates in recent years as gasoline prices soared and businesses pushed their road warriors to cut costs. When the high-speed trains debut in 2014, “we think it will spur even more traffic and more economic development in the area,” said Wayne Aldrich, development director for Normal, a town of about 52,000.

 

 

The Reason Foundation is quite unreasonable......

 

California High-Speed Rail Will Increase Pollution

http://reason.org/blog/show/california-high-speed-rail-will-inc

 

Funny how they leave out the part if high-speed rail is not built, the state will have to instead build 3,000 lane-miles of highways, 91 airport gates and five additional airport runways to handle the same projected traffic growth.

Since this is in a federal bill, I think it deserves being posted outside just the streetcar thread:

 

Cincinnati streetcar attack could block highway, railroad, bus, ferryboat projects

Contact:

Ken Prendergast, All Aboard Ohio, 216-288-4883

Jack Shaner, Ohio Environmental Council, 614-446-1693

 

A Cincinnati congressman today hailed an over-reach of the federal government’s power as he attempts to snuff out federal funding for the Cincinnati Streetcar project.

 

U.S. Rep. Steve Chabot (R-1, Cincinnati) and many of his House of Representatives colleagues flexed their federal muscle to bully the locally-driven, urban economic development project. By voice vote, the House voted June 27 to adopt Rep. Chabot’s measure to prohibit the use of any new federal surface transportation funds for a Cincinnati streetcar.

 

The amendment to House Resolution 5972 (the 2013 appropriations bill funding the Departments of Transportation, and Housing and Urban Development, and related agencies) says: “None of the funds made available by this Act may be used to design, construct, or operate a fixed guideway project located in Cincinnati, Ohio.”

 

More at:

http://allaboardohio.org/2012/06/28/cincy-streetcar-attack-could-block-highway-railroad-bus-ferryboat-projects/

You can post press releases in their entirety here. They are not copyrighted.

Here is one anti-rail hitman who has changed his tune. Now if we could just get him to understand that since the rails are privately owned, the passenger rail operations need to be subsidized in order to compete with the heavily subsidized infrastructure of highways and airways (See: http://allaboardohio.org/2012/09/21/road-air-subsidies-huge-growing-safe-amtraks-are-small-shrinking-attacked/).....

 

Martinez: Rail travel better than expected

By Rick Martinez

 

Last week, I accomplished what relatively few Americans have: I took a vacation that relied completely on public transportation. It wasn’t half bad, and I’d probably do it again.

 

But it wasn’t my first choice.

 

When I decided to head to Washington. D.C., to see my beloved Los Angeles Dodgers try and claw their way into the playoffs, my first travel choice was to hop on an airplane. Then I discovered that nonstop service from RDU to D.C. (Reagan National) is limited to commuter planes. For a variety of reasons, I avoid putt-putt aircraft. Flying to D.C. on big-boy jets now requires a connection. And that pushes the travel time way up. I had settled on taking the pocketbook hit for gas and drive the pickup to the nation’s capital when my wife suggested I look at the train.

 

Me? Take a train? I have devoted countless columns to deriding rail transit as soooo 19th century. Worse yet, I thought, don’t government bureaucrats man these behemoths of the past?

 

READ MORE AT:

http://www.newsobserver.com/2012/09/25/2369188/all-aboard-more-than-you-might.html

Just stumbled across this article.

 

All good Libertarians are pro-transit

 

Nowadays you propose a train system and (L)’s and ®’s scream “socialism.” For me, that’s a serious WTF moment. Because railroads were PRIVATE ENTITIES THAT SUCCESSFULLY FOUGHT FREE PUBLIC COMPETITION FOR NEARLY FORTY YEARS.

 

http://keephoustonhouston.wordpress.com/2011/12/15/all-good-libertarians-are-pro-transit/

I feel the author's facepalmistry.  That's often what I feel like talking with other conservatives and libertarians about trains.

Well, I'm pretty sure that was just about the best-written piece I've seen on "the double-standard" in a long time.

I'm digging this map!

 

In Liberals' Dreams, This Is What America's High-Speed Rail Network Looks Like

By Will Oremus, Posted Friday, Feb. 8, 2013, at 1:11 PM ET

 

In the real world, President Obama's grand plans for a national high-speed rail system sputtered out in the face of Republican opposition. But in the alternate world depicted by graphic artist Alfred Twu, we've realized them all, and more.

 

The map above depicts Twu's vision of an America whose major cities are all connected by state-of-the-art, 220 mph trains. His map isn't strictly based on the Obama administration's actual plans, shown here. It's far more ambitious than that. In short, it's a mass-transit lover's wildest dream. New York to Boston in an hour flat. New York to Los Angeles in a single day. Connections to Vancouver, Toronto, and Monterrey.

 

http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/02/08/u_s_high_speed_rail_map_artist_alfred_twu_s_alternate_reality.html

CNN rail reporting: Open mouths, insert feet

Written by  William C. Vantuono, Editor-in-Chief

 

My heartiest congratulations to CNN’s Anderson Cooper and Drew Griffin. You two numbskulls have just been awarded Premier Level membership in the “I Know Absolutely Nothing About Railroads But I’ll Shoot My Big, Uneducated Mouth Off About Them Anyway” club. You guys, like Fox News, will twist words and facts (or make them up) and rely on some fairly inane talking heads just to create a story where there really is none. You join fellow passenger rail bashers and purveyors of refried cow pies like the Reason Foundation and the Cato Institute.

 

I’m going to let Tanya Snyder
 do the talking here. Snyder, an astute journalist who deals in facts and thinks things through before she puts keystrokes to computer screen, 
is the Capitol Hill editor of Streetsblog www.streetsblog.org, a website devoted to transit, bicycling, walking and public space. I refer to her Thursday, Jan. 31 blog, “Keeping CNN Honest: 10 Ways Anderson Cooper Got the Rail Story Wrong”:

 

“Last Friday, CNN’s Anderson Cooper ran a segment about high-speed rail as part of his ‘Keeping Them Honest’ series. Reporter Drew Griffin did an ‘exposé’ of a Vermont [passenger] rail project that spent 0.00006% of the federal stimulus money on needed track improvements and came in on time and under budget. Scandal!


 It amounts to a high-profile smear campaign on the high-speed rail program from a mainstream media source trying to expose government corruption and waste where none exists. Cooper makes it clear they’re going to stay on the story; they already did a similar takedown of the California rail program. 


I’ve counted ten ways this story was misreported. 




 

“1: Higher-speed rail is not a failure. Perhaps the Obama Administration could have done a better job making clear that their rail program was split into two halves: one for high-speed rail and one for incremental upgrades to intercity passenger rail. Not all of the projects were intended to bring speeds up to 110 mph. 


‘We’ve never been very public about this but, yes, we’ve felt for a long time that the administration has done a poor job around messaging,’ said Dan Schned of the Regional Plan Association. ‘The bulk of the money went to regional projects, but they still had the Transportation Secretary going around the country and calling this the “high-speed program.” The crux of the CNN story is that while the Vermont project did everything it set out to do and was a responsible steward of taxpayer money, it’s not the high-speed rail that you or I think of.’ Well, no. There’s a reason for that.

 

Read more at: http://www.railwayage.com/index.php/blogs/william-vantuono/cnns-anderson-cooper-and-drew-griffin-open-mouths-insert-feet.html?channel=

Thursday, September 25, 2014

The Koch Brothers’ War on Transit

by Angie Schmitt

 

Transit advocates around the country were transfixed by a story in Tennessee this April, when the state chapter of Americans for Prosperity made a bid to pre-emptively kill Nashville bus rapid transit. It was an especially brazen attempt by Charles and David Koch’s political network to strong-arm local transportation policy makers. But it was far from the only time the Kochs and their surrogates have taken aim at transit.

 

The Koch brothers, who owe their fortune to fossil fuels, are best known for funding global warming deniers and Republican insurgents aligned with the Tea Party. With their political influence under greater scrutiny during election season, now’s a good time to pull together the various strands of Koch anti-transit activism.

 

The Kochs fund a wide-ranging network of “think tanks,” non-profits, and political organizations. Their best-known political arm is Americans for Prosperity and its various offshoots and subsidiaries. David Koch was founding chairman of Americans for Prosperity, and both brothers provided funding for its launch. Among other activities, the group does plenty to manufacture Agenda 21 paranoia, which has cable subscribers around the country convinced that smart growth is a United Nations conspiracy that will lead to one-world government.

 

The Kochs also have plenty of ties to widely quoted, transit-bashing pundits like Randall O’Toole, Wendell Cox, and Stanley Kurtz — people employed by organizations that receive Koch funding, like the Cato Institute and the Reason Foundation, and who spout the same talking points against walkability and smart growth.

 

READ MORE AT:

http://usa.streetsblog.org/2014/09/25/the-koch-brothers-war-on-transit/#.VCR1jrBJ8ig.twitter

Monopoly Men: How Two Billionaires Are Destroying High Speed Rail In America

The greatest story never told?

BY JULIE DOUBLEDAY • NOVEMBER 8TH 2014

 

Eighteen years have passed since the establishment of the California High Speed Rail (CHSR) Authority. Over the course of those eighteen years, high speed rail in the state has been discussed and planned and delayed and delayed more. There have been proposals, referendums, debates, studies and budgets, but no tracks laid, no passengers queued, no trains roaring between Los Angeles and San Francisco in the promised three hour travel time at speeds exceeding 200 mph. I began looking into the state of American high speed rail in pursuit of a few simple answers. Why don’t we have the sort of rail infrastructure seen across Europe, in Japan and now in China? What do proponents and opponents say about the various projects underway today? Put simply, what are the pros and cons of funding and maintaining high speed rail lines in this country, and what do our legislators make of them?

 

As with every partisan issue (read: every issue), I expected to find two very different perspectives. One side of the aisle vehemently advocating for construction, their counterparts citing worrisome figures with equal fervor.  I expected to find debate, analysis, anger, passion, probably a fair amount of name calling and a more than fair amount of bureaucracy. But, naively, I expected to find the story of an imperfect democracy, clattering along toward something resembling compromise at a leisurely sort of pace. Instead I found myself down a deep rabbit hole of lobbyists, think tanks, fossil fuel billionaires, propaganda, and dark money. On the downside, it was disappointing to discover that private entities with explicit financial interest in destroying public transit wield significant influence in the debate over public infrastructure. On the plus side, it was a lot more interesting than pouring over budgets.

 

READ MORE AT:

http://www.attn.com/stories/295/monopoly-men-how-two-billionaires-are-destroying-high-speed-rail-america

A friend just sent this to me. I encourage pro-rail/transit Ohioans to apply...

 

Just a bit of intel.....I noticed on my Linked-In jobs page that Americans for Prosperity is seeking to fill three positions, including a State Director, Field & Grassroots coordinators. Looks like the Koch Bros. are looking at making a big pre-Election Day move into Ohio....which will not be good for anything transit or rail related.

 

https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/americans-for-prosperity-jobs

Monopoly Men: How Two Billionaires Are Destroying High Speed Rail In America

The greatest story never told?

BY JULIE DOUBLEDAY • NOVEMBER 8TH 2014

 

Eighteen years have passed since the establishment of the California High Speed Rail (CHSR) Authority. Over the course of those eighteen years, high speed rail in the state has been discussed and planned and delayed and delayed more. There have been proposals, referendums, debates, studies and budgets, but no tracks laid, no passengers queued, no trains roaring between Los Angeles and San Francisco in the promised three hour travel time at speeds exceeding 200 mph. I began looking into the state of American high speed rail in pursuit of a few simple answers. Why don’t we have the sort of rail infrastructure seen across Europe, in Japan and now in China? What do proponents and opponents say about the various projects underway today? Put simply, what are the pros and cons of funding and maintaining high speed rail lines in this country, and what do our legislators make of them?

 

As with every partisan issue (read: every issue), I expected to find two very different perspectives. One side of the aisle vehemently advocating for construction, their counterparts citing worrisome figures with equal fervor.  I expected to find debate, analysis, anger, passion, probably a fair amount of name calling and a more than fair amount of bureaucracy. But, naively, I expected to find the story of an imperfect democracy, clattering along toward something resembling compromise at a leisurely sort of pace. Instead I found myself down a deep rabbit hole of lobbyists, think tanks, fossil fuel billionaires, propaganda, and dark money. On the downside, it was disappointing to discover that private entities with explicit financial interest in destroying public transit wield significant influence in the debate over public infrastructure. On the plus side, it was a lot more interesting than pouring over budgets.

 

READ MORE AT:

http://www.attn.com/stories/295/monopoly-men-how-two-billionaires-are-destroying-high-speed-rail-america

 

When I see crap like this, I just wonder once again: when is the pro-transit lobby grow a pair and really start to "out" the Kochs and this kind of nonsense?  I mean, it's great to get this information in a few lefty mags or blogs like this one or Salon, New Republic, etc.  But what about the mainstream media bully pulpit?  This is absurd, backwards, selfish and harmful to the nation and the general public should know about it.  Unfortunately, though, the word isn't getting through and the Kochs continue to move about the nation smashing transit efforts from state to state; we know how well-entrenched they were/are in Ohio.  As the writer adroitly noted, if the Kochs owned Philip Morris, we'd all likely be walking around with lung cancer.  The key is to shine a light on these fools and they will scatter like cockroaches.  But it just seems like the transit lobby is just too timid to take the Koch's and their sleazy political operatives in our state and federal legislatures on.  Why?  Transit people have access to the same media weapons as do the Kochs and their Reason jackasses. 

How do you suggest the rail/transit lobby take them on?

I occasionally listen to Glen Beck, Rush Limbaugh, etc., and they talk about the Koch Brothers as to make fun of those who blame things on the Koch Brothers.  They make it so that if anyone brings up the Koch Brothers, the person who brings them up is a bigger problem than the Kochs. 

When I see crap like this, I just wonder once again: when is the pro-transit lobby grow a pair and really start to "out" the Kochs and this kind of nonsense?  I mean, it's great to get this information in a few lefty mags or blogs like this one or Salon, New Republic, etc.  But what about the mainstream media bully pulpit?  This is absurd, backwards, selfish and harmful to the nation and the general public should know about it.  Unfortunately, though, the word isn't getting through and the Kochs continue to move about the nation smashing transit efforts from state to state; we know how well-entrenched they were/are in Ohio.  As the writer adroitly noted, if the Kochs owned Philip Morris, we'd all likely be walking around with lung cancer.  The key is to shine a light on these fools and they will scatter like cockroaches.  But it just seems like the transit lobby is just too timid to take the Koch's and their sleazy political operatives in our state and federal legislatures on.  Why?  Transit people have access to the same media weapons as do the Kochs and their Reason jackasses. 

 

You're underestimating them as opponents if you think that just "shining a light" on them will make them "scatter like cockroaches."  Anyone doing what they're doing with that weak of skin already scattered long ago.  The use of the Koch name as a boogeyman to liberal causes has been commonplace for years.

When I see crap like this, I just wonder once again: when is the pro-transit lobby grow a pair and really start to "out" the Kochs and this kind of nonsense?  I mean, it's great to get this information in a few lefty mags or blogs like this one or Salon, New Republic, etc.  But what about the mainstream media bully pulpit?  This is absurd, backwards, selfish and harmful to the nation and the general public should know about it.  Unfortunately, though, the word isn't getting through and the Kochs continue to move about the nation smashing transit efforts from state to state; we know how well-entrenched they were/are in Ohio.  As the writer adroitly noted, if the Kochs owned Philip Morris, we'd all likely be walking around with lung cancer.  The key is to shine a light on these fools and they will scatter like cockroaches.  But it just seems like the transit lobby is just too timid to take the Koch's and their sleazy political operatives in our state and federal legislatures on.  Why?  Transit people have access to the same media weapons as do the Kochs and their Reason jackasses. 

 

You're underestimating them as opponents if you think that just "shining a light" on them will make them "scatter like cockroaches."  Anyone doing what they're doing with that weak of skin already scattered long ago.  The use of the Koch name as a boogeyman to liberal causes has been commonplace for years.

 

Not to take this too far off topic, but they've actually started to "shine the light" on themselves.  This is a long, but interesting read.

 

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/01/25/new-koch

 

Gramarye is right. Their very existence is a strong fundraising tool for liberal causes. I was made aware of their Ohio hiring plans by someone who does fundraising for various causes among major donors. He's very good at what he does and this news will aid him greatly.

Seriously, I'm looking for the suggestions on how to take on the Koch Bros and Americans for prosperity, given that All Aboard Ohio's entire annual budget as a non-profit is about equal to or less than what this grass roots coordinator position will pay.

Watch what they do, and do it.  We can't match their spending on ads but a lot of what they're doing is astroturf, which can be duplicated cheaply. 

 

Also, get involved with your local Democratic Party.  The other side is well-oiled machine at this point, and they make no effort at even appearing to be centrist.  Meanwhile, our side goes out of its way to nominate moderates before the rank and file even gets to comment.  As a result we're facing serious voter apathy, and we're the party who depends on turnout!

I've always heard "astroturf" used as a derogatory term for expensive, non-grassroots organizing dressed up to look like a grassroots movement.

 

But the fundamental dynamics of rail infrastructure funding in this state are honestly not as dependent on the Kochs' money as it seems some people may be assuming from the last few posts.  In most Ohio cities, you're already dealing with a Democratic administration that will generally be receptive to rail advocacy but which will also be dealing with enormous other financial commitments.  When they say "no," it's not generally because they have ideological opposition; it's just that their budgets are already incredibly strained, and the logistics of getting rail in place where it doesn't already exist are often daunting in already-crowded urbanized areas.  In the statehouse, of course, it's completely different: you're not dealing with people who might somewhere believe in rail but can't overlook the Kochs' campaign contributions or ability to mobilize grassroots anger; you're in large part dealing with people who genuinely believe that rail projects are generally boondoggles that never stay within budget, never deliver promised ridership, and either never offer any ancillary economic benefits or take too long to produce too little, even if it's positive.  Kasich was not beholden to Koch money when he ruled out the 3C line; he ruled it out because he personally saw no advantage in it, not because some shadowy Illuminati group behind him stood to lose money on highway projects from it.

How do you suggest the rail/transit lobby take them on?

 

Commercials for one thing.  We see PSAs and super pac commercials frequently.  "... ask Gov. Kasich to stop taking Koch Brothers' money to kill a job-producing, urban-enhancing project like HSR nationally and here in Ohio..."

But lots of people who "genuinely believe" rail is a boondoggle aren't basing their belief on personal experience, and were exposed to that idea by anti-rail advocacy.  It's not about Koch money, it's about the subtle spread of Koch ideas via propaganda branded as scientific or economic research.  That's where the astroturf effect comes into play.  When it's successful, people just magically believe what you want them to, and they think they arrived there without influence.

Ohio's transit agencies receive almost no state money.  This is as much as 180 from some cities, such as Baltimore, which receives *all* of its funding from Maryland.

There's been a partisan, special-interest group in Ohio for years, issuing reports as independent research. They've pretty well faded away so I guess I shouldn't be surprised that a new group is coming in.

But lots of people who "genuinely believe" rail is a boondoggle aren't basing their belief on personal experience, and were exposed to that idea by anti-rail advocacy.  It's not about Koch money, it's about the subtle spread of Koch ideas via propaganda branded as scientific or economic research.  That's where the astroturf effect comes into play.  When it's successful, people just magically believe what you want them to, and they think they arrived there without influence.

 

Truthiness

 

In most Ohio cities, you're already dealing with a Democratic administration that will generally be receptive to rail advocacy but which will also be dealing with enormous other financial commitments.  When they say "no," it's not generally because they have ideological opposition; it's just that their budgets are already incredibly strained...

 

The City of Cincinnati has an annual budget of nearly $1 billion. There is plenty of money for rail transit. However, they spend most of it on other things.

Almost all of any city's operations budget goes to police and fire, and most of its capital budget goes to road resurfacing, bridge maintenance, retaining walls, etc.  Parks are usually completely separate, as are water & sewer, as are schools, as is any municipally-owned airport, as is its public transportation.  Typically these various functions have their own administration and public funding completely separate from a city, and a mayor and city council have almost no power over them.  Cincinnati has the very, very unusual ownership of a major mainline railroad, which deposits about $20 million annually into the city's capital budget rather than staying in a restricted fund.   

 

It's pretty rare to have public transit administered by a transit agency overlap a city's ordinary capital and operations budget as will be the case with Cincinnati's streetcar.  But those expenses will comprise about 1% of the capital budget and 1% of the operations budget.  In short, the expense of building and operating the streetcar is almost a non-issue for the City of Cincinnati.  You can post links to the city's public budget for the streetcar, but armchair opponents double-down in their hatred when their initial outrage is proven to have been outrageous. 

 

But lots of people who "genuinely believe" rail is a boondoggle aren't basing their belief on personal experience, and were exposed to that idea by anti-rail advocacy.  It's not about Koch money, it's about the subtle spread of Koch ideas via propaganda branded as scientific or economic research.  That's where the astroturf effect comes into play.  When it's successful, people just magically believe what you want them to, and they think they arrived there without influence.

 

But plenty of people who genuinely believe that rail is a can't-lose proposition also are not basing their views on personal experience, either.  (Experience riding a train doesn't count any more than experience driving down I-71 counts as the opposite.)  Also, you don't need to believe that rail is a complete boondoggle to oppose it--note that even Democratic cities that support rail in principle generally don't dedicate a tremendous revenue stream to it in practice (if any at all), because budgets are about priorities, and even those who support rail in principle can find it forced down the list of priorities when confronted with more urgent ones like emergency services, bridges, and crumbling existing road infrastructure.

I suppose it's only fair then that both sides have a strong PR and lobbying push!  Looks like the Kochs are all squared away.  One thing we could do, a page from the Koch playbook, would be to create orgs like "The Center for Wealth and Future Studies" and produce completely unbiased favorable reports.

Americans for America

you're in large part dealing with people who genuinely believe that rail projects are generally boondoggles that never stay within budget, never deliver promised ridership, and either never offer any ancillary economic benefits or take too long to produce too little, even if it's positive.  Kasich was not beholden to Koch money when he ruled out the 3C line; he ruled it out because he personally saw no advantage in it, not because some shadowy Illuminati group behind him stood to lose money on highway projects from it.

In Ohio, you're also dealing with people who really don't see the benefits of a high speed rail line that runs through their district at 100mph+ but doesn't stop anywhere close. 

 

That was a big part of the objections to the 3C line.  Then if those stops do get added, you're slowing it down immensely and what's the point?

Well, it could have express and local trains, just like they did 100 years ago, and which still exist everywhere else in the world. 

Any hints on where to get the funding for those reports would be appreciated. We don't have billionaire backers and do a great job with volunteers and no budget. I'm being serious, any assistance would be greatly appreciated because I don't know of the funding source.